[Workplace Bullying Legal Elements 3 of 5]Supervisors Have the Right to Manage, But Cannot Cross the Line! Element 3: Understanding Business Necessity and Reasonable Scope

"I'm a supervisor. Is demanding that employees do their jobs well really considered workplace bullying?"

Of course not.

Article 22-1, Paragraph 1 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act does not prohibit managers from demanding performance, correcting mistakes, or conducting evaluations. The true legal boundary lies in whether conduct "exceeds necessary and reasonable business scope." The Ministry of Labor explicitly highlights that requiring employees to complete tasks or achieve targets within a reasonable timeframe generally constitutes legitimate management. Conversely, setting unattainable goals or demanding impossible tasks within unrealistically short periods enters the realm of potential workplace bullying.

This impropriety element can be summarized in one concept: "overstepping." A supervisor inherently possesses legitimate managerial authority; however, when the purpose, means, or intensity of management exceeds what is genuinely required for the job, management crosses the line into coercive workplace bullying.

However, "business-related," "necessary," and "reasonable" are not three isolated checkboxes that independently establish or rule out bullying. Instead, they require a holistic evaluation. Organizations must comprehensively assess the background, frequency, location, motivation, and purpose of incidents, as well as whether behaviors like exclusion, job obstruction, information withholding, or unreasonable target setting are present.

For labor law compliance training, board member continuing education credits, external committee members for workplace harassment/bullying, and litigation mediation representation, please contact Yesin Law Firm (Tel: +886-2-25156822; Website: https://www.yesinlaw.com).

1. Exceeding Business Purpose: Do not use work supervision as a pretext for personal grievances.

To exercise management authority, a supervisor must first possess an authentic, concrete business purpose.

Task delegation, performance evaluation, error correction, shift adjustments, and Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) are inherently legitimate management actions—provided they aim to maintain operations, urge performance improvement, or ensure work quality. However, if a supervisor uses evaluations or scheduling to retaliate against non-compliant employees, intentionally sidelines colleagues due to personal grudges, or masks humiliation, forced resignation, and control under the guise of work assignments, it ceases to be legitimate management.

Assessments cannot rely on a manager's verbal assertion of "business necessity." Instead, one must verify whether the requirement directly links to the employee's role, departmental goals, and actual operational needs.

For example, assigning a key project to a qualified staff member is normal task assignment. However, intentionally assigning tasks completely unrelated to the job or impossible to achieve—such as ordering an employee with zero Japanese language skills to host Japanese-only VIP clients and subsequently disciplining them for failing—constitutes using duties to create deliberate hardship. Excluding an employee from irrelevant meetings is generally fine; forbidding them from attending meetings essential to completing their work constitutes deliberate job obstruction.

The Regulations Governing Measures for Preventing Workplace Bullying explicitly identify intentional exclusion, ignoring, withholding access to necessary activities, disrupting or obstructing work, hiding information, or providing false information as key behavioral patterns to be holistically evaluated.

Keywords: [Workplace Bullying] [Business Purpose] [Management Authority]

2. Necessity: Even with a legitimate purpose, is the instruction indispensable? Does it need to go to this extreme?

Even if a manager adopts management measures with a valid goal of improving performance, the methods used must still satisfy necessity.

"Necessity" is not defined by what a supervisor subjectively feels is necessary. Rather, it requires evaluating whether less intrusive, equally effective alternatives exist to achieve the same management objective.

When an employee makes a minor mistake for the first time, providing specific reminders, guidance, or requesting revisions is appropriate. Publicly humiliating the employee in a general meeting without prior clarification of standards clearly exceeds what is necessary to achieve the objective. When an employee misses targets, providing an improvement timeline and resources is standard; setting impossible KPIs from the start or withholding necessary authorization and information turns a PIP from an improvement tool into a forced-resignation mechanism.

Similarly, companies can adjust job duties due to organizational restructuring. However, if alternative options exist yet an employee is intentionally reassigned to a role with no meaningful tasks, stripped of all responsibilities, or isolated from the team, the company must justify why such extreme action was irreplaceable.

Thus, the principle of proportionality is not an abstract concept reserved for courts; it is a daily management sanity check: To achieve work goals, have I used methods that exceed what is strictly necessary?

Keywords: [Necessity] [Principle of Proportionality] [PIP]

3. Reasonableness: Management standards, methods, and procedures must withstand objective scrutiny.

"Reasonableness" is not measured by a manager's personality, past corporate culture, or an employee's tolerance level. It must pass the test of general societal norms and objective procedural standards.

Reasonable management should exhibit four core characteristics: clear standards communicated in advance, achievable expectations, consistent handling of similar cases, and methods that respect human dignity.

A supervisor may say: "This report is missing three required analyses. Please revise and submit it by Friday." They should not say: "With your skill level, how do you even dare work at our company?" The former targets work product; the latter attacks personal dignity. A manager can intensify supervision for underperforming employees, but cannot impose vastly higher standards on specific individuals simply due to personal dislike.

Reasonableness also encompasses procedural justice. Supervisors must clarify standards, explain performance gaps, allow employees to state their reasons, and offer opportunities for improvement. Companies should maintain complete process records—including job expectations, performance metrics, interview notes, support measures, and evaluation outcomes—to prove that management was consistent, legitimate, and reasonable, rather than predetermining resignation and fabricating records post-facto.

The Regulations Governing Measures for Preventing Workplace Bullying mandate a comprehensive review of background, frequency, location, motivation, and purpose. This underscores that a manager claiming "no malicious intent" or "doing it for their own good" cannot substitute for objective legal scrutiny.

Keywords: [Reasonable Scope] [Performance Management] [Procedural Justice] [Personal Dignity]

Advice from Attorney Chen Ye-xin

The new workplace bullying legislation is not meant to force managers to abandon their management responsibilities; rather, it demands that supervisors build a clear sense of boundaries and legal awareness.

To determine whether a management measure crosses the line, ask three questions:

1. Is this matter genuinely related to business operations?

   
   

2. Is it truly necessary to go to this extreme to achieve the goal?

   
   

3. If re-examined by a labor inspector or labor court judge, would these standards, methods, and procedures be deemed reasonable and necessary?

   
   

Reasonable management solves work problems; workplace bullying often uses work as a pretext to settle personal grudges. Reasonable management adopts necessary and proportionate measures; bullying relies on humiliation, deliberate hardship, and isolation to extract compliance. Reasonable management leaves verifiable records; bullying decides outcomes first and searches for reasons later.

The next time a supervisor says "I'm doing this for the company, and for their own good," does your organization have the capacity to verify whether that management measure remains within legal bounds—or if it has crossed the line that must never be breached?