Marie-Ève coordinates a team of 14 professionals at a 150-employee integrated services center. For six months, two members of her team, Josée and Lyne, have been in open conflict following an incident during a shared on-call shift. They refuse to speak to each other directly and communicate through a third colleague, Madeleine, who's been pulled, against her will, into an uncomfortable go-between role.

Marie-Ève has been aware of the problem since her appointment, but doesn't know how to step in without making things worse. She chooses to wait for things to sort themselves out "naturally." To reduce friction, she quietly changes the two employees' schedules — a decision made without any public explanation, and quickly read by the rest of the team as favoritism.

Six weeks later, a third employee files a formal complaint with HR, alleging a toxic work climate and pointing directly at the coordinator's inaction. Marie-Ève, who has never been trained on situations like this or on her legal obligations around psychosocial risk prevention, finds herself summoned by HR leadership to explain herself — a situation she never anticipated when she took the job.

💬 The Eskalon moment

As soon as she became aware of the conflict, Marie-Ève could have asked Eskalon: "Two members of my team have had a conflict going on for several months. I don't know where to start to step in without making it worse." The answer: a four-step mediation protocol, designed for a coordinator, not an HR specialist. Confidential one-on-one meetings to understand each perspective, framing shared needs without revealing confidences, a structured joint meeting with clear ground rules, and co-building a professional coexistence agreement — a working arrangement, not forced reconciliation.

Eskalon would also have explained her legal obligations around psychosocial risk prevention — insight that, on its own, would have been enough to turn her hesitation into quick action.

The impact of an early, structured intervention is clear: the conflict is resolved before it spreads to the rest of the team, Madeleine no longer has to carry the go-between role, and Marie-Ève builds her credibility as a manager in her first few weeks, instead of watching it erode in an HR summons. A conflict that would otherwise have poisoned the climate of an entire team closes cleanly, with a clear framework for the future.