Management Is Permitted—Humiliation Is Not: Three “Necessary and Reasonable” Boundaries Managers Most Commonly Cross

“Now that the new workplace bullying legislation has taken effect, are managers no longer allowed to demand proper performance from employees? Will a manager be accused of workplace bullying merely for imposing strict standards?”

The chairman of a publicly listed corporate group recently asked me this question.

I told him that this was not the case and asked him to communicate the correct principle throughout the organization:

Requiring employees to meet performance standards, correcting mistakes, and adjusting job duties are essential elements of an employer’s legitimate managerial authority.

However, since Taiwan’s new workplace bullying prevention regime took effect on July 1, 2026, business owners and HR leaders must understand one fundamental principle: even when a management action serves a legitimate business purpose, it may cross the line from reasonable management into workplace bullying if its method, severity, or frequency exceeds what is necessary and reasonable for business operations.

Under Article 22-1 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, one of the most important factors in determining whether conduct constitutes workplace bullying is whether the manager’s instructions or actions have exceeded the scope necessary and reasonable for business purposes.

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1. Work Requirements Must Be Achievable—Impossible Assignments Must Not Be Used to Force Employees Out

One of the most common corporate risks is disguising unreasonable targets as performance management.

For example, a manager may know that a task normally requires one week to complete but assign it shortly before the end of the workday, demand completion by the following morning, and threaten the employee with disciplinary action, demotion, or dismissal. Similarly, a manager may require an engineer who has no German-language ability to immediately negotiate a contract in German with an overseas client.

This is no longer merely strict management. It may constitute an abuse of authority.

Conversely, a manager must not deliberately assign a senior engineer to spend an extended period making photocopies, running errands, or handling meaningless administrative tasks.

Excessively demanding work may cause an employee to break down. Unreasonably undemanding work may likewise violate the employee’s dignity through humiliation, deliberate underutilization, and marginalization.

The legal question is not whether the employee likes or accepts the assignment. The key issue is whether the company can provide objective reasons demonstrating a reasonable relationship among the job objective, deadline, available resources, and the employee’s abilities.

2. A Manager Cannot Demand Results While Deliberately Removing the Employee’s Means of Achieving Them

When a company requires an employee to complete a task, it must also provide the information, authority, and resources reasonably necessary to perform it.

For example, a manager may require an accountant to submit financial statements on time while blocking the accountant’s access to the accounting system. A sales employee may be required to meet a revenue target while being deliberately denied customer lists, product-pricing information, or necessary authorization.

This pattern of “assign first, obstruct second, and punish last” may constitute improper interference with an employee’s work.

In practice, many disputes do not arise merely because a manager made one harsh statement. They arise because the company created a series of contradictory records: the employee had no authority, no information, and no training, yet was ultimately disciplined for failing to achieve the assigned objective.

For companies, the safest approach is to ensure that management decisions comply with the principle of proportionality. The managerial objective must be legitimate, the chosen measure must be capable of advancing that objective, and the measure must not exceed what is necessary.

3. Freezing Out, Excluding, and Withholding Information May Also Constitute Unlawful Treatment

Workplace bullying does not always take the form of shouting, insults, or slamming a hand on the table. Sometimes the most damaging method is the quiet and gradual removal of a person from the organization.

A manager may, based on personal preference or hostility, deliberately exclude a particular employee from essential work-related messaging groups, fail to notify the employee of necessary meetings, or withhold information required to perform the employee’s duties. The manager may then criticize or dismiss the employee for poor performance resulting from that exclusion.

Such conduct may constitute social exclusion.

Companies must not dismiss this behavior as merely a manager’s “leadership style” or an ordinary interpersonal conflict. Once exclusion affects an employee’s ability to perform work, performance evaluation, promotion opportunities, or physical and psychological health, it is no longer a simple workplace disagreement. It becomes a legal risk that must be addressed through the company’s formal workplace bullying complaint, investigation, and corrective-action procedures.

At that stage, the responsible unit and investigation committee will assess the conduct by considering the circumstances of the incident, its frequency and location, the perpetrator’s motivation and purpose, the power imbalance between the parties, whether the conduct occurred publicly, its humiliating nature, and its physical and psychological effects on the affected employee. These factors will be examined collectively to determine whether the managerial conduct crossed the boundary of what was necessary and reasonable.

Attorney Chen Yeh-Hsin’s Reminder

The new workplace bullying legislation does not require companies to abandon management. Nor does it give employees a special privilege to avoid correction or to refuse legitimate performance requirements merely because they are unwilling to comply.

The real focus of labor-law compliance is to place managerial authority within a proper institutional framework: there must be a clear business purpose, reasonable work standards, sufficient resources and support, objective documentation, and effective complaint and review mechanisms.

For chairpersons, chief executive officers, and HR leaders, this is no longer merely an isolated labor dispute. It is an enterprise-management issue involving corporate governance, employer branding, and the company’s responsibility to direct and supervise its managers.

Do your company’s current systems for assigning work, implementing performance improvement plans, adjusting job duties, and conducting performance review meetings reflect lawful management—or are they gradually and unknowingly turning into workplace bullying?