Written by Alicja Myśluk-Landowska, Attorney (radca prawny), Partner and Head of Employment and Labor Law
Reviewed by Joanna Stankiewicz, Barrister (adwokat), Senior Counsel
First published: 29 September 2026
Last updated: 29 September 2026
In short
Mobbing, workplace bullying and harassment in Poland
Mobbing is the Polish legal term for workplace bullying. Poland rewrote its mobbing rules with effect from 5 November 2026. The amending act is the Act of 19 June 2026 amending the Labour Code and the Code of Civil Procedure, published in the Journal of Laws as Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1046.
Three conditions that used to defeat most claims are gone. Mobbing no longer has to be long-lasting, it no longer has to cause a health disorder, and the perpetrator no longer has to have intended to humiliate anyone. What remains is persistent harassment, judged case by case.
Every employer, whatever its headcount, now has a statutory duty to counteract mobbing and discrimination systematically. An employer with at least 10 employees must also write down the rules, the procedure and how often it will act – in the work regulations or in a separate set of rules, agreed with the trade union or employee representatives.
Compensation for mobbing now starts at six times the statutory minimum wage, which is PLN 28,836 in 2026 and PLN 29,700 from 1 January 2027, and the employee no longer has to prove ill health to claim it.
Two dates matter. The law applies from 5 November 2026. The internal rules must be in place by 5 May 2027.
Anti-mobbing compliance for employers in Poland
Dudkowiak & Putyra advises foreign-owned employers in Poland on anti-mobbing and anti-discrimination compliance: auditing what you already have, drafting the regulations the Labour Code now requires, running the consultation with the union or employee representatives, training managers, and conducting internal investigations when a report comes in.
The work is done by an eight-lawyer Employment and Labor Law team that practises employment law only.
We reply within 24 hours with a scope and a timeline.
10
employees – the threshold above which written rules become mandatory
28,836
PLN – the minimum award for mobbing in 2026
Jump to
What changes | The new definition | What it costs | Employer duties | Investigations | Checklist | Experience | FAQ
MOBBING, BULLYING, HARASSMENT – THE TERMS USED ON THIS PAGE
Mobbing (mobbing) – The Labour Code term (art. 943) for persistent harassment of an employee – what English speakers call workplace bullying.
Workplace bullying – The everyday English word for the same conduct. Polish law has no separate category of bullying; a bullying complaint in Poland is a mobbing complaint.
Harassment (molestowanie) – Conduct that violates an employee’s dignity or creates a hostile, humiliating or degrading atmosphere. Treated as a form of discrimination; one incident can be enough.
Sexual harassment (molestowanie seksualne) – Unwanted conduct of a sexual nature or relating to the employee’s sex. A form of sex discrimination, not a variant of mobbing.
Discrimination (dyskryminacja) – Less favourable treatment tied to a protected ground, a ground wrongly assumed, or a connection to someone who has one.
What changes in Poland’s mobbing and bullying rules on 5 November 2026
The Act of 19 June 2026 was published in the Journal of Laws on 4 August 2026 and takes effect three months later, on 5 November 2026. It rewrites art. 943 of the Labour Code, amends the rules on equal treatment, and changes the Code of Civil Procedure so that the evidential rules follow. For a foreign-owned employer already operating in Poland, six things are different from that date.
01
The definition is shorter and easier to meet
Mobbing is now persistent harassment of an employee, meaning conduct that is repeated, recurrent or continuous. The statute lists what it can look like: humiliating or insulting the employee, intimidating them, understating their professional suitability, criticising them without justification, obstructing their work, isolating them, or eliminating them from the team. It can be physical, verbal or non-verbal – a gesture or a pointed silence counts. A single isolated incident does not.
02
Intent no longer matters
Under the old test a claimant had to show the conduct was aimed at humiliating or ridiculing them. That element is gone. A manager who did not mean to harm anyone can still be found to have committed mobbing, so training the management layer on the new standard therefore forms part of the employer’s preventive duty.
03
Duration and ill health are no longer thresholds
The requirement that harassment be long-lasting has been removed, and a claim for compensation for harm no longer depends on proving a health disorder. Complaints that previously failed the statutory test at an early stage can now be pleaded and tried.
04
Almost anyone can be the perpetrator
Mobbing can come from the employer, a supervisor, a peer, a subordinate, another employee, or a person engaged on a basis other than an employment contract – a B2B contractor, an agency worker, a temp. It can come from one person or from a group, and ordering or encouraging such conduct counts as committing it.
05
The burden of proof shifts to the employer
The employee alleging mobbing has to make the breach probable. Once they do, it falls to the employer to show that no breach occurred. An employer with no record of what it did to prevent mobbing has to prove a negative without contemporaneous evidence.
06
Discrimination changes in the same act
Two new forms are recognised: discrimination by assumption, where the ground is wrongly attributed to the employee, and discrimination by association, where the employee is treated differently because of a connection to someone else. Compensation minimums are now fixed by statute. The wider subject is covered on our page on employment discrimination in Poland.
One more rule sits alongside them: the ban on retaliation. An employer may not treat an employee adversely for exercising their labour rights, which expressly includes reporting mobbing or discrimination. The protection reaches further than the person who complains – it covers anyone who supports them. The amended equal-treatment rules also cover harassment, meaning conduct that violates an employee’s dignity or creates a hostile, humiliating or degrading atmosphere, whether or not it meets the test for mobbing. In practice this means the internal procedure has to say, in writing, that neither the person reporting nor a witness will suffer for it, and the employer has to be able to show that nothing happened to them afterwards.
Mobbing, harassment or discrimination? They are not the same claim
Employers routinely use the two words interchangeably. The Labour Code does not, and the difference decides what has to be proved and what it costs.
| Mobbing | Discrimination | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Persistent harassment – repeated, recurrent or continuous conduct | Less favourable treatment tied to a protected characteristic |
| Does a reason have to be shown? | No. It can happen regardless of any characteristic of the employee | Yes – a protected ground, a ground wrongly assumed, or a connection to someone who has one |
| Is one incident enough? | No – persistence is the core of it | Yes – a single act can breach the equal treatment principle |
| Minimum award | 6 × the minimum wage | 1 ×, or 3 × where the breach is repeated |
A claimant can, and often does, plead both.
Sexual harassment is a separate claim – and one incident is enough
Sexual harassment at work in Poland is not a form of mobbing. The Labour Code treats it as discrimination on grounds of sex: any unwanted conduct of a sexual nature or relating to the employee’s sex, physical, verbal or non-verbal, which violates their dignity. Unlike mobbing it needs no persistence – a single remark, message or gesture can breach the law – and the discrimination minimums apply. The internal rules should name sexual harassment expressly and route it through the same reporting channel. Discrimination and harassment are covered in full on our page on employment discrimination in Poland.
The old test and the new test, side by side
The practical significance of the amendment is best seen by comparing what a claimant used to have to establish with what they have to establish now.
| Element | Until 4 November 2026 | From 5 November 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Core conduct | Persistent and long-lasting harassment or intimidation | Persistent harassment – repeated, recurrent or continuous |
| Purpose of the perpetrator | Had to be shown – conduct aimed at humiliating or ridiculing | Irrelevant |
| Health damage | Required for a claim for compensation for harm | Not required |
| Who can be the perpetrator | Not listed in the statute; claims were usually brought over the conduct of supervisors | Anyone in the workplace, including peers, subordinates and non-employees; one person or a group |
| Proof | On the employee throughout | Employee makes it probable; employer must then disprove it |
| Minimum award | No statutory floor | Six times the minimum wage – PLN 28,836 in 2026 |
Source: art. 943 of the Labour Code as amended by the Act of 19 June 2026 (Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1046).
Where performance management ends and bullying (mobbing) begins
The line between performance management and mobbing moved in 2026, but it did not disappear.
Legitimate management is expressly protected. The amendment expressly provides that justified conduct towards an employee, expressed in a proper manner – in particular holding the employee to account for assigned tasks and appraising their performance constructively – does not constitute mobbing. The carve-out is in the Act itself, not in commentary. Setting demanding targets, giving critical feedback, refusing a pay rise, putting an underperformer on a plan, reorganising a team and making someone redundant are all lawful, and none of them becomes mobbing because the employee found them unpleasant. What the amendment removes is the argument that conduct cannot be mobbing because it was not meant unkindly.
Three factors decide cases in practice. Is the criticism justified and tied to the work? Documented, specific, verifiable feedback about output is management. Repeated commentary about the person, delivered in front of others, is not. Is it proportionate and consistent? Applying a standard to one employee that is not applied to others is what a court examines first. Does it accumulate? A single harsh conversation is not mobbing. The same conversation every week for three months, after the employee asked for it to stop, is a pattern – and under the new wording the pattern no longer has to be long-lasting to qualify.
Because the burden shifts once the claimant makes the breach probable, the employer’s written record is what the case turns on. Performance decisions documented against objective criteria can be produced and explained. Undocumented ones are defended from memory.
What mobbing and harassment claims cost an employer in Poland
| Claim | Statutory minimum | In 2026 | From 1 January 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobbing – compensation for harm | 6 × the statutory minimum wage | PLN 28,836 | PLN 29,700 |
| Unequal treatment – a single breach | 1 × the statutory minimum wage | PLN 4,806 | PLN 4,950 |
| Unequal treatment – a repeated breach | 3 × the statutory minimum wage | PLN 14,418 | PLN 14,850 |
| Retaliation for exercising labour rights, including reporting | 1 × the statutory minimum wage | PLN 4,806 | PLN 4,950 |
| Damages for financial loss | No cap and no floor – proved loss | Claimed in addition to the above | Claimed in addition to the above |
The statutory minimum wage in Poland is PLN 4,806 gross in 2026 and PLN 4,950 gross from 1 January 2027. The floors move with it every year, so the amounts above are the equivalents of a multiplier, not fixed sums.
These are minimums. A court may award more, and the claim for compensation for harm sits alongside a claim for financial loss – lost earnings, the cost of treatment, the difference in pay after a forced move.
Suing costs the employee little. Under the amended Code of Civil Procedure, mobbing and equal-treatment claims are heard by a district (rejonowy) labour court whatever the amount claimed, and the employee bringing them pays no court fee. Low cost of entry for the claimant is one reason employers should expect more of these claims after 5 November 2026, not fewer.
One provision runs the other way. An employer who pays compensation for mobbing may recover from the person whose conduct caused it, in an amount corresponding to that person’s degree of fault relative to the employer’s own. The provision is new. It gives the manager responsible a direct financial exposure alongside the employer’s.
How Polish courts decided mobbing claims before the reform
Dudkowiak & Putyra analysed 120 judgments of Polish common courts issued between January 2024 and September 2026; in 28 of them an employee brought a mobbing claim. All were decided under the definition in force until 4 November 2026.
24.0%
of mobbing claims decided on the merits were won by the employee (6 of 25)
36 months
median time from filing to the first-instance judgment (16 cases)
PLN 19,750
median compensation awarded (6 cases), against PLN 40,000 claimed
5 of 6
awards were below the new statutory minimum of PLN 28,836
Source: Dudkowiak & Putyra analysis of court judgments, 2024–2026, DP-Stats 2026.4.
The most common reason for dismissing a claim was lack of evidence, cited in 16 of the 19 dismissed claims (84.2%). In 9 of the 19 the court also relied on the absence of a health disorder – an argument that is no longer available from 5 November 2026. The full analysis, with the reasons for dismissal, the role of expert evidence, the amounts and the conduct alleged, is published as Mobbing claims in Polish courts: analysis of 120 judgments.
Anti-mobbing and anti-bullying duties of every employer in Poland
The amendment splits the obligations in two, and the split runs at ten employees.
EVERY EMPLOYER
Whatever your headcount
Systematically counteract unequal treatment, discrimination and mobbing, and prevent breaches of the employee’s dignity and other personal rights. The statute names the areas: health, private life and reputation, communication at work, the employee’s position in the team, work results and how they are assessed, and professional status and qualifications. The statute requires the employer to act systematically: prevention, detection, timely response, corrective action and support for the person affected, together with how often each of those happens.
AT LEAST 10 EMPLOYEES
Everything above, in writing
Set out the rules, the procedures and the frequency of your actions – by updating the work regulations under art. 1041 or by adopting the separate regulations the new art. 943a provides for, unless the subject is already in a collective agreement. Either way the content must be agreed with the company trade union, or with employee representatives where no union operates. If no agreement is reached with the unions within 30 days, the employer may settle the content itself, taking the consultation so far into account – so the unions can slow the process but cannot block the deadline.
In our experience with foreign-owned employers, the separate set of rules is usually the better option. It lets the reporting procedure, the composition and working method of the panel, the deadlines and the protection against retaliation be described properly, without inflating the work regulations. It can also be issued in Polish and English side by side, which most foreign-owned employers need.
What about a conflict that is already running? The new rules reach it. They apply to repeated breaches of equal treatment and to persistent harassment that began before 5 November 2026 and continue after that date – so an unresolved situation in a team does not stay under the old, friendlier test simply because it started earlier. Court proceedings already on foot when the Act takes effect keep the procedural rules that applied when they were filed.
5 November 2026
The rules apply. From this day a claim is judged under the new definition, the new burden of proof and the new minimum awards, and the duty to counteract mobbing systematically is in force.
5 May 2027
The paperwork deadline. The work regulations updated, or the separate rules adopted, with the consultation completed.
The six months in between are not transitional relief. From 5 November 2026 the new definition applies to an employer that has not yet adopted the rules; only the document deadline falls in May 2027.
What happens if the anti-mobbing rules are not in place by 5 May 2027
Missing the document deadline has three consequences, and the fine is the smallest of them.
The Labour Inspectorate. The National Labour Inspectorate (PIP) checks compliance with the Labour Code. An inspector who finds no rules can order the employer to adopt them, and failure to comply is a petty offence against employee rights under art. 281 of the Labour Code, punishable by a fine. An inspection often follows a complaint from an employee who is already in dispute with the employer.
The court. Once the burden of proof shifts, the employer has to show that it counteracted mobbing systematically. With no rules, no procedure and no record of how often it acted, it has nothing to show. That is the real cost of the missed date: every claim becomes harder to defend.
The consultation still has to happen. A late employer does not skip the agreement with the trade union or the employee representatives. It runs the same process, only later, while already exposed.
An employer with fewer than ten employees has no document deadline, but the duty to counteract mobbing applies to it from 5 November 2026 all the same.
How to investigate a mobbing or bullying complaint in Poland
The Labour Code does not prescribe an investigation procedure. It requires the employer to respond to reports in good time and to set the procedure out in its own rules. In practice a defensible investigation follows six steps.
- Receive and acknowledge the report. Record the date, confirm receipt to the person reporting, and log the report in the register.
- Protect the people involved. Decide on interim measures – a change of reporting line, separate schedules, remote work – that do not disadvantage the person reporting. Remind everyone involved of the ban on retaliation.
- Appoint an impartial panel. No one who reports to the accused, and no one involved in the facts. Where the internal panel cannot be impartial – for example when the accused is a board member – use an external investigator.
- Hear both sides and the witnesses. The accused has the right to respond to each allegation. Keep minutes signed by the person heard, and collect the documents: e-mails, chat messages, performance records.
- Assess the facts against the new test. Was the conduct persistent? Was it justified management expressed in a proper manner? Could it be discrimination or harassment instead of, or as well as, mobbing?
- Decide, act and follow up. A written report with findings and recommendations, a decision by the employer, sanctions and remedial measures, support for the person affected, and a check some weeks later that the situation has not returned.
Two deadlines that catch employers out. An order penalty such as a reprimand must be imposed within two weeks of the employer learning of the breach and no later than three months after it was committed (art. 109 of the Labour Code). A summary dismissal for a serious breach must follow within one month of the employer learning of it (art. 52 § 2). An investigation that runs longer than that can leave the employer with findings and no sanction available, so the rules should fix deadlines that fit these limits. In the 2024–2026 judgments analysed by Dudkowiak & Putyra, 6 concerned an employee dismissed for committing mobbing; in 3 of them the dismissed employee obtained compensation or reinstatement because the employer had not specified the allegations, had not proved them, or had missed the deadline.
Can one channel handle whistleblowing and mobbing reports?
Many foreign-owned employers already run a whistleblowing channel under the Polish Act of 14 June 2024 on the protection of whistleblowers, mandatory for employers with at least 50 workers. The obvious question is whether mobbing reports can go through it.
They can, but the two regimes are not the same, and the rules have to say which applies to what. The statutory whistleblowing scope is a closed list of areas of law, and labour law is not on it, although an employer may extend its internal procedure to breaches of its own internal rules. The whistleblowing act sets its own deadlines – acknowledgement within 7 days and feedback within 3 months – and its own protection. Mobbing and discrimination reports fall under the Labour Code: the employer’s anti-mobbing rules, the panel, and the Labour Code ban on retaliation.
The practical answer is one intake, two tracks. A single reporting channel, a first triage that decides whether a report is a whistleblowing matter, a mobbing or discrimination matter, or both, and two procedures that refer to each other. Both documents need their own consultation with the workforce. Dudkowiak & Putyra has drafted ten whistleblowing procedures for employers since 2022, and most of them will now need to be read together with the new anti-mobbing rules.
When the alleged bully is a manager abroad or in another group company
In international groups the person accused often is not employed by the Polish company at all: a regional head in Berlin, a project lead in London, a colleague seconded from another group entity. Four points decide how such a case is handled.
Polish law protects the employee. An employee who habitually works in Poland keeps the protection of Polish employment law whatever law the contract names. The Polish employer is liable for the mobbing its employee suffers, whoever the perpetrator is.
The perpetrator does not have to be a Polish employee. The amended definition covers supervisors and people engaged on a basis other than an employment contract, which is wide enough to reach a manager who directs the Polish team from abroad.
The Polish employer cannot discipline someone it does not employ. Sanctions against a manager employed by the parent company need the parent’s cooperation. The group’s arrangements should say in advance who investigates, who provides witnesses and documents, and who decides on sanctions.
A global policy is not enough. A group code of conduct written for the head office rarely meets art. 943a: it has not been agreed with the Polish workforce and does not set out the procedure and frequency the statute requires. It can sit alongside the Polish rules, not replace them. In 2025 Dudkowiak & Putyra advised an international group on how disciplinary powers over Polish staff can be exercised within a matrix reporting structure – the question every group with cross-border reporting lines will face when a report comes in.
Online bullying, remote teams and time limits
Chat messages count. Mobbing can be verbal or non-verbal, and the channel does not matter: e-mails, Teams or Slack messages, a WhatsApp group, comments in a shared document, or being left out of the channels and meetings where the team works. Messages sent after working hours are part of the pattern too. For remote and hybrid teams the chat log is often the only evidence, for both sides – the internal rules should say how it is preserved once a report is made, within the limits of the Labour Code rules on monitoring employee e-mail.
Time limits. Claims arising from the employment relationship become time-barred three years after they fall due (art. 291 of the Labour Code). With persistent conduct the question of when that period starts is often disputed. An employer should keep the investigation file, the register entry and the training records for at least that long after the employment ends.
Anti-mobbing checklist for employers
Eleven steps, in the order that keeps the consultation from becoming the bottleneck. This is the sequence we run with clients. The steps can be ticked off below as you go.
PHASE 1 · FIND OUT WHERE YOU STAND
PHASE 2 · BUILD AND AGREE THE RULES
PHASE 3 · MAKE IT A SYSTEM – AND KEEP IT ONE
Anti-mobbing checklist for employers in Poland – the eleven steps above, with the evidence to retain at each one, as a two-page PDF prepared by Dudkowiak & Putyra.
What anti-mobbing regulations in Poland contain
The statute requires the rules, the procedures and the frequency of the employer’s actions. Below is the table of contents of the model set of anti-mobbing and anti-discrimination regulations that Dudkowiak & Putyra uses as the starting point for clients, issued in English and Polish side by side and adapted to each workforce before consultation.
ANTI-MOBBING & ANTI-DISCRIMINATION REGULATIONS
Table of contents
Annexes: report form · hearing minutes · panel report · confidentiality undertaking · GDPR notice · anti-retaliation statement
How we help
Dudkowiak & Putyra’s Employment and Labor Law team advises foreign-owned employers in Poland. It is a team of eight lawyers who practise employment law only – the same people draft the rules, run the investigations and defend employers in court. For an employer with ten or more people, one piece of work is not optional – the rules have to exist, in writing, agreed with the workforce, by 5 May 2027. That is where most engagements start.
THE CORE ENGAGEMENT
Drafting and implementing the anti-mobbing rules
We write the set of rules the amended Labour Code now requires and take it through to adoption. That means the definitions and the catalogue of conduct, the boundary of acceptable criticism, the reporting channels, confidentiality, the composition and working method of the panel, the deadlines, the remedial action and the support available – plus the executive documents that make it work in practice: report form, hearing minutes, panel report, register of reports, GDPR clauses, confidentiality undertaking, anti-retaliation statement.
We then run the consultation with the trade union or the employee representatives, and hand over a calendar of what recurs and when – because the statute asks not only what the employer wrote down but how often it acts.
Where internal rules already exist, the same engagement starts with an audit: we test the documents against the new definition, against each element of the systematic duty and against the widened circle of perpetrators, check the formal steps were taken, and score every requirement red, amber or green before drafting the amendments. Documents written before 2026 almost always rest on conditions the amendment repealed.
Training
Two hours for all staff, or four hours for managers with a case-study workshop: classifying real situations, running a conversation with a person making a report, writing the note, and reading the red flags in a team. Materials in Polish and English, attendance list and certificates – which is itself evidence that the preventive duty was met.
Investigations
When a report comes in: a plan of steps, a lawyer present at the hearings, a legal assessment of the conduct under the new definition, a report with recommended sanctions and remedial action, and communication support. We can also run the investigation as an external body where the panel cannot be impartial.
Defence and disputes
We act for employers before the labour courts and in proceedings with the National Labour Inspectorate, and assess litigation risk before a claim is filed. The lawyers who draft the rules are the ones who defend them.
Because one implementation does not protect an employer indefinitely, we also run the cycle on an ongoing basis: anonymous workplace surveys twice a year with a report, training for new joiners and new managers, an annual review of the rules and updates after changes in the law or the case law, and custody of the register of preventive measures – the evidence file for the Labour Inspectorate and for the court.
Under the professional rules that apply to Polish advocates and attorneys-at-law we do not publish fee rates online. Tell us your headcount, whether a union operates and what you already have in place, and we will reply within 24 hours with a scope, a fixed fee and a timeline.
Who you work with
Anti-mobbing work at Dudkowiak & Putyra sits with the Employment and Labor Law team – eight lawyers working exclusively in employment law. The first call is led by the partner heading the team; the audits, the regulations and the internal investigations are run by the lawyers below.
Attorney (radca prawny), Partner and Head of Employment and Labor Law
Author of this guide
Admitted as an attorney-at-law in 2014; graduate in law and in international relations of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Leads the first call with every employer preparing for the amendment. Runs internal investigations into labour law violations, including mobbing and discrimination, trains HR departments and represents employers before the labour courts. Author of the firm’s Employment Law Guide in Poland. Mediator. Works in English and Russian.
Barrister (adwokat), Senior Counsel
Reviewer of this guide
Admitted as an advocate in 2022. Advises foreign investors engaging staff in Poland, drafts internal labour procedures and represents employers before the labour courts and in proceedings with the National Labour Inspectorate. Works in English and Spanish.
Mobbing cases and internal investigations
Attorney (radca prawny), Counsel
Admitted as an attorney-at-law in 2014. Trains employers and managers on mobbing and works on internal investigations and on mobbing and unequal-treatment claims at Dudkowiak & Putyra.
Attorney (radca prawny), Counsel
Admitted as an attorney-at-law in 2025. Certified Compliance Officer in the Employment and Labor Law team. Drafts internal regulations and whistleblowing procedures for employers at Dudkowiak & Putyra. Works in English.
Next webinar
20 October 2026
10:00 CET · online
Poland’s new mobbing rules: what employers must have in place
Two weeks before the amendment applies. The new definition on real examples, the boundary between management and mobbing, the documents you need by 5 May 2027, and what a defensible evidence file looks like. Run by the Employment and Labor Law team of Dudkowiak & Putyra. Register by e-mail.
Our experience
The obligation that falls due in 2027 is, in substance, work Dudkowiak & Putyra’s Employment and Labor Law team already does for foreign-owned employers: drafting the internal rulebook, agreeing it with the workforce, and answering for the employer when a complaint or a claim arrives. The team is eight lawyers who work in employment law only.
47
mobbing-related assignments handled by Dudkowiak & Putyra between January 2022 and September 2026
28
client companies behind those assignments
18
countries those clients come from
Dudkowiak & Putyra’s own matter records, 1 January 2022 – 26 September 2026: 47 mobbing-related assignments for 28 client companies from 18 countries. Counted by the date each matter was opened. DP-Stats 2026.4, extract of 26 September 2026. See Sources and methodology.
What the last compliance deadline looked like. Poland’s whistleblowing obligation is the closest precedent for what is coming in 2027: a statutory duty on mid-sized employers to adopt an internal reporting procedure, with a fixed date. Of the ten whistleblowing procedures Dudkowiak & Putyra drafted between 2022 and 2026, six were opened in 2024 – the year the obligation took effect, against one in 2023 and two in 2025. The drafting, the translation and the consultation concentrated in the months around the date.
The anti-mobbing deadline has the same shape with one difference that matters. The documents are due on 5 May 2027, but liability under the new definition begins six months earlier, on 5 November 2026. For the six months in between, the new definition applies to employers whose rules are not yet in place.
Dudkowiak & Putyra opened two anti-mobbing compliance engagements in August and September 2026, before the new rules took effect. The same team acts in mobbing, harassment and unequal-treatment claims, so the rules are drafted by lawyers who have seen how they are tested.
CASE · MOBBING CLAIM · 2021
Defending an employer against a mobbing claim built on a single incident
In 2021 Dudkowiak & Putyra acted for a manufacturing company in Poland, part of an international group, against a former production worker who demanded compensation and damages for mobbing through his lawyer.
The claim rested on one hostile exchange between the worker and his team leader. The employer had acted on it at once: the supervisor reviewed what had been said and asked the team leader for an explanation, the team leader apologised, the supervisor held a disciplinary conversation with him, and the worker was moved, with his agreement, to a team under a different leader – all within two days. No further complaint followed before his fixed-term contract ended.
We rejected the claim in full, in principle and in amount: one incident, dealt with by the employer within two days, is not persistent harassment, and the sums demanded were not justified.
What it shows. Under the amended Labour Code this defence would lose one argument – harassment no longer has to be long-lasting. The decisive part does not change. A single isolated incident is still not mobbing in Poland, and the employer could show from its own records what it did and how quickly. That sequence – explanation, apology, disciplinary conversation, transfer – is what the amended art. 943 now calls a timely response and corrective action, and it is the evidence an employer needs once the burden of proof shifts to it.
CASE · HARASSMENT COMPLAINT AGAINST A B2B MANAGER · 2024
A mobbing complaint against a manager engaged on a B2B contract
In 2024 Dudkowiak & Putyra advised the Polish subsidiary of an international technology group after an employee complained of mobbing by the interim head of her department. The manager was not an employee: she was engaged on a B2B services contract, newly promoted into the role and under pressure to rebuild a team with high turnover.
The complaint arrived together with sick leave and conflicting feedback from the rest of the team. We helped the company assess the material its HR team had gathered against the statutory test, and advised on the way out of the situation. The company decided to end the manager’s engagement, and we drafted a bilingual mutual termination agreement with confidentiality, non-disparagement and a mutual waiver of claims, which closed the matter without a dispute.
What it shows. Two features of this matter are now written into the Labour Code. A person engaged on a basis other than an employment contract can expressly be the perpetrator of mobbing, so a B2B manager is inside the employer’s anti-mobbing procedure, not outside it. And intent no longer matters: the company’s own assessment was that the manager meant well, which after 5 November 2026 is not a defence. An internal procedure written before 2026 rarely covers either point.
CASE · ONE EMPLOYER, THREE OBLIGATIONS
Three compliance waves on one rulebook
A Kraków company of about 150 people, the Polish subsidiary of a foreign holding, has been through three consecutive Polish compliance obligations with us.
In 2023 we updated its work regulations. In 2024 we built its whistleblowing procedure, in the year that obligation took effect, and had it translated for a workforce operating in two languages. In September 2026 it came back for the anti-mobbing rules.
Each obligation landed on the same documents, the same employee representatives and the same management layer. For this employer the third round is a revision of rules that already exist and are already known in the business. An employer starting from nothing in 2027 will be drafting, consulting and training at the same time.
Read more
Mobbing claims in Polish courts | Employment law in Poland | Employment discrimination in Poland | Whistleblowing in Poland | Employment termination in Poland | Trade unions in Poland | Hiring employees in Poland
Sources and methodology
Legal basis
- Act of 26 June 1974 – the Labour Code, art. 943 (mobbing), art. 113 and art. 183a–183e (equal treatment and discrimination), art. 104 and following (work regulations).
- Act of 19 June 2026 amending the Labour Code and the Code of Civil Procedure, Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1046, published on 4 August 2026, in force from 5 November 2026.
- Regulation of the Council of Ministers on the minimum wage for 2026 – PLN 4,806 gross, and the regulation for 2027 – PLN 4,950 gross from 1 January 2027; the multiplier base for the statutory minimum awards.
- Labour Code, art. 52 § 2 (summary dismissal), art. 108–109 (order penalties), art. 291 (limitation of claims).
- Act of 14 June 2024 on the protection of whistleblowers.
Official sources
- Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy – the National Labour Inspectorate, the authority that inspects compliance with these duties.
- Dziennik Ustaw – the Journal of Laws.
How the figures on this page were counted
The figures in Our experience come from Dudkowiak & Putyra’s own matter records and cover matters opened between 1 January 2022 and 26 September 2026. A matter counts as mobbing-related if it concerns a mobbing, harassment or unequal-treatment claim, a workplace-incident investigation, anti-bullying or pay-transparency compliance, or the work regulations, pay regulations, HR policies, disciplinary rules and whistleblowing procedures in which an employer’s anti-mobbing and equal-treatment rules sit. General employment advice, terminations, training and audits are not counted unless the matter is expressly one of these. Matters are dated by when they were opened, not when the work ended, and a matter recorded twice is counted once. The figures describe instructions received, not outcomes. Case studies are anonymised and describe closed matters. The court figures come from Dudkowiak & Putyra’s analysis of 120 judgments of Polish common courts (January 2024 – September 2026), described in full in the methodology of that analysis. Both sets of figures form part of DP-Stats 2026.4, which explains the sources and methods behind all figures in Dudkowiak & Putyra’s guides.
Also published
A shorter version of this guide, Poland’s New Mobbing Rules from 5 November 2026: A Quick Guide for Employers, is also published on Mondaq and Lexology.
Corrections
This page states Polish law as it stands on the date shown at the top. If you believe anything here is out of date or wrong, write to [email protected] and we will check it and correct the page.
FAQ – mobbing, bullying and harassment in Poland
What is mobbing called in English?
Mobbing is the Polish legal term for workplace bullying: persistent harassment of an employee under art. 943 of the Labour Code. Harassment linked to a protected ground (molestowanie) and sexual harassment are separate claims treated as discrimination.
When do the new mobbing rules in Poland enter into force?
On 5 November 2026, three months after the Act of 19 June 2026 was published in the Journal of Laws (Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1046). A separate deadline of 5 May 2027 applies to having the internal rules in place, but liability under the new definition starts in November 2026.
What is the new definition of mobbing in Poland?
Mobbing is persistent harassment of an employee, meaning conduct that is repeated, recurrent or continuous. It may consist of humiliating or insulting the employee, intimidating them, understating their professional suitability, criticising them without justification, obstructing their work, isolating them or eliminating them from the team, and it may be physical, verbal or non-verbal.
Does mobbing still have to be long-lasting in Poland?
No. The requirement that harassment be long-lasting was removed by the 2026 amendment. What matters now is that the conduct is persistent – repeated, recurrent or continuous – and each case is assessed on its own facts.
Does the perpetrator have to intend to humiliate the employee?
No. Intent is expressly irrelevant under the amended provisions. Conduct can amount to mobbing even where the person responsible did not mean to cause harm. Training managers on the new standard therefore forms part of the employer’s preventive duty.
Who can commit mobbing under Polish law?
The employer, a supervisor, a person in an equivalent position, a subordinate, another employee, or a person working on a basis other than an employment contract. It may be a single person or a group, and ordering or encouraging such conduct counts as committing it.
Which employers must adopt written anti-mobbing rules in Poland?
An employer with at least 10 employees must set out the rules, procedures and frequency of its actions, either by amending the work regulations or by adopting separate rules, unless the matter is already covered by a collective agreement. Smaller employers have no document obligation but still have the duty to counteract mobbing systematically.
How much compensation can an employee claim for mobbing in Poland?
At least six times the statutory minimum wage, which is PLN 28,836 in 2026 and PLN 29,700 from 1 January 2027, and the employee no longer has to prove a health disorder to claim it. A court may award more, and a separate claim for proved financial loss can be brought alongside it.
Who has to prove mobbing in a Polish court?
The employee must make the breach probable. Once they do, the burden shifts and the employer has to show that no breach occurred, which in practice means producing the record of what it did to prevent mobbing and how it handled any report.
Can an employer recover compensation from the manager responsible?
Yes. An employer that pays compensation or damages for mobbing may claim reimbursement from the person whose conduct caused it, in an amount corresponding to that person’s degree of fault relative to the employer’s own.
Is critical feedback from a manager mobbing in Poland?
No. Justified, work-related criticism, demanding targets, performance management and lawful restructuring remain legitimate management. The line is crossed where criticism is unjustified, directed at the person rather than the work, applied selectively, or repeated after the employee has asked for it to stop.
Do the new rules cover B2B contractors and agency workers?
Yes, as possible perpetrators: mobbing may come from a person working on a basis other than an employment contract. An employer’s internal procedure should therefore cover everyone working at the site, not only its own employees.
What changes for discrimination claims in Poland in 2026?
The same act recognises discrimination by assumption and discrimination by association, and sets statutory minimum compensation of one times the minimum wage for a single breach and three times for a repeated breach. The subject is covered on our page on employment discrimination in Poland.
Do the new rules apply to a conflict that started before November 2026?
Yes. The new provisions apply to persistent harassment and to repeated breaches of equal treatment that began before 5 November 2026 and continue after that date. Court proceedings already pending when the Act takes effect keep the procedural rules under which they were filed.
Can an employee be punished for reporting mobbing in Poland?
No. The amended Labour Code bars an employer from treating an employee adversely for exercising their labour rights, expressly including reporting mobbing or discrimination, and the same protection covers anyone who supports the person making the report.
What deadline do employers have to update their work regulations?
5 May 2027 – six months after the new rules take effect. The consultation with the trade union or employee representatives has to be completed within that period, so the drafting needs to start well before the deadline.
Is sexual harassment the same as mobbing in Poland?
No. Sexual harassment is a form of discrimination on grounds of sex, not mobbing. It does not have to be persistent – a single incident can be enough – and the statutory minimums for discrimination apply.
Does bullying on Teams, Slack or WhatsApp count as mobbing?
Yes. Mobbing can be verbal or non-verbal and the channel does not matter, so messages, comments and exclusion from team chats or meetings can form part of a pattern of persistent harassment, including messages sent after working hours.
How should an employer investigate a mobbing complaint in Poland?
Acknowledge and register the report, protect the people involved, appoint an impartial panel, hear both sides and the witnesses, assess the facts against the new test, then decide, act and follow up, keeping in mind the two-week limit for order penalties and the one-month limit for summary dismissal.
Can one reporting channel handle whistleblowing and mobbing reports?
Yes, if the rules separate the two tracks: one intake, a triage step, and two procedures that refer to each other, because the whistleblowing act and the Labour Code set different scopes, deadlines and protections.
What if the alleged harasser works for a group company abroad?
The Polish employer remains liable to its employee, and the amended definition is wide enough to reach a manager who directs the Polish team from abroad, but sanctions against someone employed by another group company need that company’s cooperation, so group arrangements should settle this in advance.
How long does a mobbing case take in Poland?
In the 2024–2026 judgments analysed by Dudkowiak & Putyra, the median time from filing a mobbing claim to the first-instance judgment was 36 months across 16 cases, and cases that went through an appeal took between 4.5 and 7 years in total.
How often do employees win mobbing cases in Poland?
In the 2024–2026 judgments analysed by Dudkowiak & Putyra, employees won 6 of the 25 mobbing claims decided on the merits (24.0%), most often losing for lack of evidence, although the burden of proof shifts to the employer from 5 November 2026.
What is the limitation period for mobbing claims in Poland?
Claims arising from the employment relationship become time-barred three years after they fall due under art. 291 of the Labour Code, and with persistent conduct the start of that period is often disputed, so employers should keep investigation records for at least that long.
What happens if an employer has no anti-mobbing rules by 5 May 2027?
The Labour Inspectorate can order the employer to adopt them and can impose a fine, but the larger cost is in court: once the burden of proof shifts, an employer with no rules and no record of preventive action has little to defend itself with.
Does an employee pay court fees in a mobbing case in Poland?
No. Under the amended Code of Civil Procedure an employee bringing a mobbing or equal-treatment claim pays no court fee, and the case is heard by a district labour court whatever the amount claimed.
