[Workplace Bullying Legal Elements 4 of 5]Does a Single Remark Constitute Workplace Bullying? Understanding "Continuity": The Legal Line Between Repeated Harm and Single Severe Incidents

"My supervisor only yelled at him once, so it shouldn't count as workplace bullying, right?"

This statement is only half right.

Article 22-1, Paragraph 1 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act stipulates that workplace bullying occurs when a worker, in the course of performing duties in the workplace, suffers physical or mental health harm caused by personnel of the entity who leverage duty or power dynamics beyond the necessary and reasonable scope of business through "continuous" offensive, threatening, cold-shouldering, isolating, insulting, or other improper words or actions.

However, the proviso of the very same statutory clause specifically provides an exception: "Provided that where the circumstances are severe, continuity is not required."

Therefore, this element can be understood through the concept of "continuity." The law is concerned not only with what happened in a single moment, but also with whether improper words or actions recur, establishing a targeted pattern that progressively erodes the worker's sense of security and health over time.

However, "continuity" does not mean a perpetrator must yell three times or persist for three months to meet the threshold. The law does not set such rigid numerical or temporal thresholds. If a single act inflicts a severe degree of infringement, it can directly constitute workplace bullying without waiting for subsequent incidents to occur.

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. Continuity: More than counting occurrences, identifying repeated behavioral patterns.

Evaluating continuity requires looking beyond "how many total times it happened" to observe whether behaviors recur over a period, forming an identifiable pattern of targeted harm.

For example:

• A manager publicly ridiculing the same employee during every meeting.

  
  

• A senior colleague persistently failing to respond to essential messages or withholding crucial work data from a specific newcomer.

  
  

• Team members repeatedly excluding a targeted peer from meetings, group chats, and joint activities.

  
  

Viewed in isolation, an event may seem like a mere cold remark or a missed notification. However, when analyzed in the context of time, targets, frequency, and sequence, these incidents may reveal a pattern of continuous cold-shouldering or isolation.

The Regulations Governing Measures for Preventing Workplace Bullying mandate that investigations holistically consider background, frequency, location, motivation, and purpose—rather than dissecting every statement in isolation. The regulations explicitly list intentional exclusion, ignoring, job obstruction, information withholding, setting unreasonable targets, and spreading rumors as typical behavioral patterns.

Therefore, HR investigations must look beyond asking "on what date was what phrase said?" to probe deeper: "How long has this been occurring, is it always directed at the same individual, and did the perpetrator deliberately persist after being warned?" True bullying risks often hide within the broader context where individual incidents connect.

Keywords: [Workplace Bullying] [Continuity] [Cold-shouldering] [Isolation]

2. Improper Behavior Patterns: Not limited to verbal abuse; silence, exclusion, and obstruction can also inflict harm.

Many supervisors believe that only shouting or cursing constitutes bullying. In reality, improper words and actions listed in the statute include offense, threats, cold-shouldering, isolation, insult, and other improper conduct—covering a far broader scope than public verbal abuse.

Offense may involve mocking appearance, capability, family, or health; threats may involve coercing compliance through performance ratings, transfers, shift scheduling, halting promotions, demotion, or termination; cold-shouldering and isolation may manifest as deliberate non-responsiveness, exclusion from essential meetings, withholding information, or inciting team members to refuse collaboration.

"Other improper behavior" reminds organizations not to evaluate incidents at surface value. Intentionally sabotaging work outcomes, repeatedly assigning impossible tasks, spreading rumors, disclosing private matters, or keeping an employee in a long-term state of "cold storage" without meaningful duties all represent typical patterns enumerated under Article 2 of the Regulations Governing Measures for Preventing Workplace Bullying.

However, it must be emphasized that not all management actions that make employees uncomfortable, disagreeing, or stressed constitute bullying. Identifying errors, issuing negative appraisals, and requiring improvement within a deadline remain lawful and necessary management actions—provided they do not exceed necessary and reasonable business scope. The key focus is whether the behavior addresses objective performance issues, serves a legitimate purpose, and whether the means have devolved into personal attacks rather than task-oriented feedback.

Keywords: [Offense] [Threats] [Insult]

3. Severe Circumstances: A single incident can cross the red line where waiting for a second offense is unacceptable.

While workplace bullying generally requires continuity, the statute provides an explicit proviso exception: if the circumstances are severe, continuity is not required.

This means organizations cannot dismiss a grievance outright simply because an incident occurred only once. Investigators must evaluate the methods used, degree of publicity, power imbalance, scope of impact, and severity of physical or mental harm inflicted on the victim.

For instance:

• Using extremely derogatory language to publicly humiliate an employee during a large meeting.

  
  

• Making severe personal threats backed by official authority.

  
  

• Maliciously disclosing highly sensitive private information.

  
  

• Causing severe psychological impact and job safety risks in a single instance.

  
  

All of these may satisfy the threshold of severe circumstances. Determination still depends on case-specific evidence rather than subjective feelings alone.

When determining disciplinary severity, regulations require considering the extent of physical or mental harm, frequency, methods, repeated violations, interpersonal relationships, post-incident attitude, and impact on the organization. These factors likewise assist companies in identifying whether a single infringing event reaches a severe threshold.

Therefore, proper investigative logic is not "a single incident never constitutes bullying," but rather "evaluate continuity for general cases, and inspect for severe circumstances in single-incident cases."

Keywords: [Severe Circumstances] [Physical or Mental Health Harm] [Procedural Justice]

Advice from Attorney Chen Ye-xin

The concept of "continuity" in workplace bullying is not a cold tallying of dates, hours, count of occurrences, or number of messages. It is an examination of whether improper words and actions accumulate over time into an unsafe environment that prevents an employee from working safely.

When assessing the fourth element of workplace bullying, three questions should be answered:

1. Are these incidents connected by continuity and directed at a common target?

   
   

2. Does the conduct constitute lawful management, or does it amount to offense, threats, cold-shouldering, isolation, or insults?

   
   

3. Even if it occurred only once, is the degree of harm severe enough that waiting for a second incident is unacceptable?

   
   

Supervisors should understand that a single improper remark may not immediately constitute bullying, but it can serve as the first entry in an ongoing pattern of behavior. HR departments must not refuse to accept complaints simply because "it only happened once"; instead, they must clarify facts and evaluate severity in accordance with the law.

When an employee reports long-term social exclusion or presents a single case of severe humiliation, will your company merely count the occurrences, or will it truly understand how the harm continues and accumulates into workplace bullying?