The Red Commute Toward Taiwan’s “Sacred Mountain”: Are HR Leaders in the Tech Industry Ready for the New Workplace Bullying Law?

Over the past six years, the use of antidepressants in Hsinchu County has surged by 92%, ranking first nationwide. Anxiety and insomnia have become the hidden costs behind high salaries. Taiwan’s “sacred mountain” supports the nation, but who is supporting the people behind it?

A report by CommonHealth Magazine revealed the harsh data and reality behind the prosperity of Taiwan’s tech industry.

After an earthquake, the red line of cars heading toward Hsinchu carries not only engineers, managers, and production-line workers, but possibly some of the most stressed workers in Taiwan. When “stress tolerance” is misunderstood as unlimited endurance, and when “high standards” are packaged as verbal humiliation, the real risk companies face is no longer just turnover. It is the chain reaction of occupational safety law, occupational disease, workplace bullying, and corporate governance.

With the new workplace bullying chapter under the Occupational Safety and Health Act about to take effect, HR professionals in the tech industry must be fully prepared and should seize this moment to improve unhealthy workplace cultures.

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Keywords: Workplace Bullying / Labor Compliance / Tech HR / Abnormal Workload / Mental Health / Digital Workplace Bullying / After-Hours Messages / Performance Improvement Plan / Abuse of Power / Occupational Safety and Health Act / Complaint Investigation / ESG / RBA Code of Conduct / Employer Brand / Labor Compliance / HR Management

1. Strict Management Is Not a License for Immunity

The tech industry values speed, precision, and results. Supervisors demanding quality is, in principle, part of their managerial authority. However, managerial authority is not the right to humiliate, nor is it the right to exercise psychological control.

If a supervisor uses their position or authority to repeatedly scold, isolate, ignore, publicly demean, or deliberately make things difficult for an employee, and such conduct exceeds the necessary and reasonable scope of work, it may constitute workplace bullying.

HR professionals in the tech industry must remind supervisors: mistakes may be reviewed in meetings, but a person’s dignity must not be destroyed; improvement may be required, but fear must not be used to manage a team.

2. High Pressure Is Not Culture; It May Be an Occupational Safety Risk

Many companies are used to calling long working hours, nighttime messages, holiday follow-ups, and instant reporting part of a “responsibility-based culture.”

However, from the perspective of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, shift work, nighttime work, long working hours, and excessive psychological stress may all constitute abnormal workload. If public humiliation, performance threats, and isolation are added on top of that, employees’ anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and even post-traumatic stress responses are no longer merely personal emotional issues. They become occupational safety and health issues that the company must address.

3. LINE and Teams Groups Are Not Lawless Zones

The most easily overlooked blind spot in workplace bullying prevention is evidence in digital communication groups. Supervisors who assign tasks intensively after working hours, demand immediate replies late at night, tag specific employees in group chats for public reprimand, or use performance rankings to shame those who fall behind may be engaging in improper electronic communication conduct.

In the past, saying “the supervisor was just in a hurry” might have been treated as an explanation. In today’s labor compliance environment, it is no longer enough. Companies should establish clear rules for workplace communication tools, specify that non-urgent matters should not require immediate responses during rest periods, and prohibit personality-degrading management in public groups.

4. Poorly Designed PIPs May Turn Performance Coaching into a Bullying Tool

A Performance Improvement Plan, or PIP, can be a useful system to help employees return to reasonable performance. But if a company designs a PIP as a “forced resignation script,” such as setting obviously impossible goals, failing to provide necessary resources, allowing no reasonable improvement period, or reaching a termination decision first and only later supplementing the process with formal documents, the conduct may be deemed an abuse of power or improper interference with job duties.

HR must check three things: Are the goals specific and measurable? Are sufficient resources provided? Is the improvement period reasonable? Otherwise, a PIP will not protect the company; it will create evidence for future disputes.

5. Once Workplace Bullying Is Written into Law, Companies Can No Longer Dismiss It as “Interpersonal Friction”

The latest amendments to the Occupational Safety and Health Act have clearly placed workplace bullying at the core of occupational safety governance. The key issue is not whether the company has written an impressive policy. The real question is whether, after receiving a complaint, the company takes immediate, effective, and appropriate action.

Adjusting the workplace, preventing continued contact between the parties, initiating an impartial investigation, preserving evidence, and providing psychological support are all basic measures HR must understand. In particular, where the circumstances are serious, the conduct may cross the legal line even if it did not occur repeatedly over a long period of time.

6. Fines Are Only the Surface; the Real Pain Is Damage to Corporate Reputation and Brand Trust

For large tech companies, the amount of administrative fines certainly matters. But what may be even more damaging is the publication by competent authorities of the company’s name, the responsible person’s name, the violated provisions, and the penalty information. This may lead to the company being labeled as a sweatshop or as having violated the RBA Code of Conduct.

When workplace bullying, overwork, depression, waves of resignation, and online whistleblowing become connected, what the company loses is not only money paid in fines. It may suffer serious harm to recruitment capability, investor trust, corporate governance, ESG ratings, and employer brand.

Today, the most expensive compliance cost is not hiring a lawyer after a dispute arises. It is failing to deal with the issue in advance.

7. HR Leaders Must Upgrade from Firefighters to Chief Risk Engineers

HR professionals in the tech industry cannot wait until employees resign, file complaints, or expose problems online before taking action. Truly effective management requires companies to proactively identify high-risk departments, high-working-hour positions, high-pressure supervisors, and teams with high turnover rates.

Companies should regularly review working hours, leave records, exit interview results, complaint records, and the use of mental health resources. They should also incorporate supervisors’ management conduct into performance evaluations. The system companies most need to build is not one that makes employees “more tolerant,” but one that prevents supervisors from acting recklessly.

A Reminder from Attorney Chen Yeh-Hsin

In the age of the AI boom, the tech industry needs production capacity, but it needs talent even more. Companies may pursue high performance, but they must not allow high performance to become synonymous with high oppression.

If HR leaders can connect the Occupational Safety and Health Act, workplace bullying prevention, abnormal workload management, and psychological safety systems at an early stage, they can use this opportunity to improve unhealthy workplace cultures. What they protect is not only employees, but also the company’s most essential competitiveness.