Does any of this reflect your situation?
A Composite from Our Practice
A fire service had been managing a senior operational staff member for two years. There had been two formal investigations. Both concluded. Neither resolved the situation in any lasting way.
The individual had a long service record and genuine operational skill. The command and control that made them effective in the field did not turn off back at the hall. Applied to colleagues and administrative staff, the same approach had become a source of ongoing harm. Staff had learned to route around it rather than report it. After an incident at a work event that could not be managed quietly, the chief recognized that every available tool had been used. The union, privately, had run out of road with this member. They could not be seen to agree with HR. They needed the situation to change.
ProActive was brought in. The process was not an investigation. It did not produce a finding of fact or a sanction. What it produced was a direct account of harm delivered to the person who caused it, in a setting designed to make that account impossible to minimize or dismiss. The institution bore witness. The affected staff were genuinely seen.
The dynamic that HR had been managing for two years shifted in a way that two formal investigations had not achieved.
What Happens Next
If any of this is familiar, the next step is a conversation.
We work with HR professionals and senior leaders who have reached the edge of what their current tools can do. We do not begin with a proposal. We begin with a direct conversation about what is actually happening and whether our process is the right fit.
That conversation is free, confidential, and without obligation.
Questions We Hear Often
We already have an EAP and a peer support program. Why isn't that enough?
EAP and peer support address individual distress. They were not designed to address relational harm between people, the dynamic that has built up in a team over months or years. Those are different problems requiring different tools. EAP and peer support remain valuable for what they were designed to do. They do not replace a process designed to address harm in the space between people.
The union will never agree to this.
In our experience, unions in first responder organizations often want the same outcome HR wants: the member-against-member dysfunction to stop. What they cannot do is be seen to pursue that outcome in alignment with management. Restorative Conferencing is not a management tool deployed against a union member. It gives all parties a structured way to move forward without requiring either side to capitulate to the other. We recommend that both parties be consulted early, well before any formal engagement begins.
How is this different from an investigation under another name?
A workplace investigation is a fact-finding process. It produces a finding. Restorative Conferencing is not a fact-finding process. It does not produce a finding or a sanction. It does not assess credibility. It takes as its starting point the experiences of the people involved and creates a structured setting in which those experiences are directly heard. We are often a complement to appropriate formal process, not a substitute for it.
A mental health concern is in the picture. Doesn't duty to accommodate limit what we can do?
This is a legal question and the specific facts of your situation matter. We do not provide legal advice and cannot advise on your legal obligations. What we can say from our experience is that a mental health concern does not remove an organization's responsibility to address harm caused to other staff. An organization can support a staff member's mental health and address the impact of their behaviour on colleagues. Those processes can run in parallel. We encourage any organization navigating this to take specific legal advice. ProActive's process addresses the relational harm. The individual's clinical needs remain the responsibility of qualified health professionals and the organization's accommodation process.
What are our obligations under Canadian and Australian psychosocial hazard frameworks?
In BC and Alberta, occupational health and safety legislation now requires employers to address psychosocial hazards in the workplace, including harm caused by sustained workplace conflict. In most Australian states, psychosocial hazard regulations place similar active obligations on employers. The specific requirements vary by jurisdiction. We encourage you to take specific legal or OHS advice on your obligations. What we can say is that the organizations we work with are finding that the regulatory direction and the human need point the same way: the status quo is not a defensible position.