Can Workplace Bullying Training for Managers Serve as Evidence of an Employer’s Exemption from Liability?

Many companies treat workplace bullying prevention training as nothing more than a routine labor-law compliance exercise. They assume that, as long as the training formally satisfies the requirements of the Regulations Governing Workplace Bullying Prevention Measures, the company has fulfilled its obligations.

For employers, however, there is another layer of legal risk that must not be overlooked. If a manager’s improper supervision, abuse of authority, or degrading treatment constitutes workplace bullying and causes harm to an employee, the company may face more than an administrative penalty following a labor inspection. The affected employee—or, in serious cases, the employee’s family—may also seek joint and several damages from the employer under Article 188 of the Taiwan Civil Code.

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1. Managers Are High-Risk Potential Perpetrators, Not Merely Ordinary Training Participants

Workplace bullying frequently occurs between managers and subordinates because managers possess performance appraisal authority, supervisory authority, and the power to assign work.

Public humiliation, deliberate exclusion, excessive workloads, withholding necessary resources, or maliciously forcing an employee to resign may appear, on the surface, to be ordinary management practices. In reality, such conduct may already have crossed the boundary of legitimate managerial authority.

If a company has not provided managers with targeted training on common forms of workplace bullying, the boundary between reasonable management and abusive conduct, preventive measures, and applicable legal obligations, it will be difficult for the company to argue that it adequately warned managers in advance about prohibited behavior.

2. Training Records Are Important Evidence That an Employer Exercised Due Care in Selection and Supervision

Article 188, Paragraph 1 of the Taiwan Civil Code provides:

“Where an employee unlawfully infringes upon the rights of another person in the performance of his or her duties, the employer and the employee shall be jointly and severally liable for damages. However, the employer shall not be liable if the employer exercised reasonable care in the selection of the employee and in the supervision of the performance of the employee’s duties, or if the damage could not have been avoided even through the exercise of reasonable care.”

Accordingly, whether an affected employee may successfully claim damages does not depend solely on whether the manager committed an unlawful tort. Another critical issue is whether the employer can prove that it exercised reasonable care in selecting and supervising the manager.

From an HR perspective, education and training should not be reduced to a sign-in sheet. Training materials, attendance records, assessments, notices, and follow-up measures may become important evidence supporting the employer’s argument that it fulfilled its duty of care and should be exempt from liability.

If the curriculum covers the boundaries between reasonable management and workplace bullying, prohibited conduct, reporting channels, investigation procedures, protective measures, and appropriate communication techniques, the company will be able to show more than simply, “We held a training session.”

It may instead produce concrete evidence demonstrating that:

“We provided instruction, issued warnings, and imposed clear requirements.”

This may help establish that the manager’s bullying conduct was an individual act committed in violation of the company’s express policies and instructions, for which the manager should bear personal responsibility.

3. Training Is Not a Complete Shield from Liability, but It Can Reduce Litigation Risk

The fact that a manager has received training does not automatically exempt the company from liability. However, if managers have received no relevant training at all, the company will face significantly greater difficulty in proving that it exercised reasonable supervisory care.

In particular, enterprises with 30 or more employees are generally required to establish reporting channels, complaint-handling mechanisms, and appropriate categories of education and training.

As workplace bullying increasingly involves the intersection of occupational safety and health law, civil tort liability, corporate governance, ESG responsibilities, and RBA 8.0 requirements, HR leaders must elevate manager training from an “annual course” to a genuine corporate compliance and risk-control firewall.

Attorney Chen Yeh-Hsin’s Reminder

The greatest weakness of manager training is presenting slogans without real cases, discussing respect without explaining legal red lines, and retaining attendance records without preserving the actual course content.

HR leaders should therefore return to their organizations and ask: Have the key elements necessary to support the company’s legal defense and potential exemption from liability truly been incorporated into the workplace bullying prevention training provided to managers?