Workplace harassment – employer duties under

A foreign-owned manufacturing subsidiary in Silesia receives a formal complaint from three employees alleging systematic harassment by a shift supervisor. HR has no anti-harassment policy in place. The parent company's compliance team, based in Frankfurt, asks a simple question: what exactly does Polish law require the employer to do, and how quickly? The answer is less obvious than it first appears.

Polish employment law imposes direct obligations on every employer to prevent and respond to workplace harassment. The Kodeks pracy (Labour Code, KC) requires employers to maintain a workplace free from both mobbing (sustained psychological harassment) and discrimination-based harassment. Employers must adopt written anti-harassment procedures, investigate complaints within a reasonable timeframe, and protect complainants from retaliation. Failure to comply exposes the company – and potentially its management board – to personal liability claims, compensation awards, and regulatory scrutiny by the Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy (State Labour Inspectorate, PIP).

This page sets out the full employer compliance framework: the legal instruments that apply, the internal procedures you must build, the pitfalls that generate liability, and the cross-border considerations relevant to multinational employers operating in Poland. A practical self-assessment checklist closes the analysis.

What does Polish law actually require from employers on harassment?

Polish labour law distinguishes two separate concepts that employers must address. Mobbing means persistent, systematic conduct directed at an employee that intimidates, humiliates, or isolates them over time. Harassment based on a protected characteristic – sex, age, disability, religion, nationality – is treated as a form of discrimination. Both fall under the Labour Code, but the procedural obligations and remedies differ. Employers who conflate the two risk building procedures that fail in court.

The State Labour Inspectorate (PIP) is the primary enforcement body. It can audit employers, issue binding orders, and impose fines. The Sąd Pracy (Labour Court) handles individual claims. An employee who suffers mobbing may claim compensation for health damage – with no statutory cap – and a severance-equivalent payment if they resign as a direct result of the harassment. Discrimination-based harassment claims carry a minimum compensation floor of one month's salary. These figures are not symbolic. Awards in Warsaw-region cases regularly reach PLN 50,000 to PLN 150,000.

The core employer duty is preventive, not merely reactive. The Labour Code places a positive obligation on employers to counteract mobbing. Courts have held that the absence of a written anti-harassment policy is itself evidence of a failure to fulfil this duty. A company cannot argue it was unaware of harassment if it had no mechanism to receive complaints in the first place. This is the compliance gap that most frequently generates liability in PIP audits.

Adopt a written anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy
Designate a complaints channel independent of the direct line manager
Establish an internal investigation committee with defined timelines
Protect complainants from any adverse employment consequence
Train managers annually on recognition and response obligations

The whistleblower framework adds another layer. Poland's Ustawa o ochronie sygnalistów (Whistleblower Protection Act) came into force in September 2024. Employers with 50 or more employees must operate an internal reporting channel. Harassment complaints frequently qualify as whistleblower reports if they involve a breach of employment law. Failing to maintain the channel – or retaliating against a reporter – triggers separate liability under the whistleblower regime. Multinational employers should note that this requirement is distinct from, and cumulative with, the EU Whistleblowing Directive obligations already in place in their home jurisdictions.

How should employers build an internal anti-harassment procedure?

An effective internal procedure has three functional layers: prevention, complaint intake, and investigation. Each layer must be documented, communicated to all employees, and reviewed at least once every two years. A procedure that exists only as a PDF on the intranet – never translated, never trained, never tested – will not satisfy a Labour Court that the employer took its prevention duty seriously. The PIP has made internal procedure quality a standard audit item since 2023.

Prevention starts with a written policy that defines prohibited conduct in plain language. The policy must cover both mobbing and harassment based on protected characteristics. It should name the complaints channel clearly – typically an HR officer, an ombudsperson, or an external hotline. For employers with fewer than 50 employees, the internal channel is not legally mandated under the Whistleblower Protection Act, but the Labour Code obligation to counteract harassment applies regardless of company size. A sole-employee micro-business is technically subject to this duty.

We secured a formal dismissal of a PIP enforcement order for a retail employer in the Mazowieckie region (autumn 2025). The key issue was that the employer's procedure named a complaints recipient who had left the company 18 months earlier. The channel existed on paper but was functionally dead. Updating the policy and retraining staff resolved the audit within 30 days of our engagement.

The investigation layer is where most employers make costly errors. Once a complaint is received, the employer must act promptly. There is no single statutory deadline, but Labour Courts assess reasonableness. A two-week preliminary assessment and a four-to-six-week full investigation is the working standard in Warsaw-region case law. The investigation committee should include at least one member with no reporting line to either party. Minutes must be kept. The outcome – whether the complaint is upheld, partially upheld, or dismissed – must be communicated in writing to the complainant.

Written acknowledgment of the complaint within 5 business days
Appointment of an investigation committee within 10 business days
Committee report issued within 30–45 calendar days of complaint receipt
Written outcome communicated to complainant and respondent
Protective measures (e.g., temporary role separation) documented throughout

Protective measures during the investigation deserve particular attention. The employer must ensure the complainant is not disadvantaged while the process runs. Moving the complainant to a less desirable role, reducing their hours, or excluding them from team meetings during an investigation can itself constitute retaliation – and that is a separate Labour Code violation carrying its own compensation exposure. The safest approach is to separate the parties physically or operationally, while maintaining the complainant's existing conditions in full.

What are the pitfalls that generate personal liability for management?

Personal liability of board members and senior managers is the aspect of this framework that most surprises foreign clients. Polish corporate law does not automatically shield individuals behind the corporate veil in employment matters. A manager who personally engages in harassment can be held directly liable by the employee in civil proceedings, separately from any claim against the employer entity. The employer company and the individual manager can be joint defendants. This is not a theoretical risk: the Sąd Najwyższy (Supreme Court of Poland) has confirmed this position in several rulings.

The more common scenario, however, is liability arising from inaction. A department head who receives a complaint, takes no steps, and the harassment continues faces personal exposure. The Labour Court will examine what each individual in the management chain knew and when. Email trails, calendar records, and HR system logs are all discoverable. A manager who forwarded a complaint to HR and then did nothing further for six weeks is in a materially worse position than one who escalated, documented, and followed up.

Our team obtained interim measures protecting a complainant's employment status for a logistics company in Lower Silesia (spring 2026). The employer had delayed investigation by over eight weeks with no documented reason. The Labour Court found that the delay itself was evidence of insufficient preventive action, and ordered interim reinstatement pending the full hearing. The employer's total exposure – including legal costs and interim-period salary continuation – exceeded PLN 80,000 before the merits were even decided.

Three specific triggers generate the most severe liability outcomes:

Terminating the complainant's employment during or shortly after an investigation
Disclosing the complainant's identity to the alleged harasser without consent
Failing to document any step of the investigation process

The employment lawyer Warsaw market sees a consistent pattern: employers who document everything – even decisions that turn out to be wrong – fare significantly better in litigation than those who acted reasonably but left no paper trail. Documentation is not bureaucracy. It is the primary defence in a Labour Court proceeding.

To receive an expert assessment of your company's anti-harassment exposure, contact info@kordeckipartners.com.

How do cross-border and mobility factors affect harassment compliance?

Multinational employers face a layered compliance problem. Polish law applies to all employees working in Poland, regardless of the employer's country of incorporation. A German GmbH with a Polish branch, a Dutch holding with a Polish subsidiary, and a Ukrainian company with employees posted to Poland under posted worker rules all owe the same Labour Code obligations. The parent company's home-jurisdiction policy does not substitute for a Polish-law-compliant procedure.

Posted workers present a specific complication. A worker posted to Poland retains their home-country employment contract but acquires the full protection of Polish employment law for the duration of the posting. If harassment occurs during a posting, the host employer (the Polish entity) bears the primary duty to investigate and respond. The sending employer may have concurrent obligations under its own national law. Coordinating two parallel investigation processes across jurisdictions requires careful sequencing to avoid conflicting outcomes.

Work permit holders and EU Blue Card holders are a second vulnerability area. Employees on a work permit Poland may be reluctant to complain for fear that their immigration status depends on maintaining their employment relationship. This creates a structural power imbalance that courts recognise. Employers with significant numbers of permit-holding employees – common in IT, construction, and logistics – should consider anonymous complaint channels and regular third-party climate surveys as additional safeguards. The Whistleblower Protection Act explicitly extends protection to non-citizen employees.

The interaction with French or other EU-jurisdiction employment frameworks is relevant for holding-company structures. Where a Polish employee has a dual reporting line to a French parent entity, the question of which entity bears the investigation obligation is not always obvious. Employment law frameworks across EU jurisdictions vary significantly on this point. The safest approach is to treat the Polish employing entity as the primary obligated party and involve the parent only as an information recipient, not as the investigation lead.

For employers undergoing restructuring or considering dissolution of a Polish entity, it is worth knowing that harassment claims survive liquidation in certain circumstances. The procedural framework for liquidating a Polish sp. z o.o. requires that known liabilities – including pending employment claims – be provisioned before final distribution to shareholders. An employer that closes a Polish entity while a harassment claim is pending without adequate provisioning exposes the liquidator and potentially the shareholders to personal liability.

Self-assessment checklist for Polish employers

The following checklist reflects the items that the State Labour Inspectorate examines during a standard employment audit. It also maps to the evidentiary questions a Labour Court will ask if a harassment claim is litigated. Employers should complete this review annually – and immediately following any complaint, regardless of outcome.

Written anti-harassment policy in place, dated within the last 24 months, in Polish (and in the working language of any non-Polish employees)
Named complaints channel with a currently employed recipient and a documented backup
Internal reporting channel compliant with the Whistleblower Protection Act (mandatory for employers with 50 or more employees)
Investigation committee procedure documented, with defined timelines and independence requirements
Manager training records for the last 12 months, covering both mobbing and discrimination-based harassment

Beyond the checklist, three business scenarios illustrate where compliance gaps most commonly arise. A manufacturing employer with shift supervisors and a high proportion of work permit Poland holders needs anonymous reporting mechanisms and multilingual policy versions. An IT company where senior developers hold significant informal authority over junior staff needs a complaints channel that bypasses the technical hierarchy entirely. A foreign investor setting up a Polish subsidiary for the first time needs the full procedure in place before the first employee starts – not six months later when the first complaint arrives.

The decision matrix is straightforward. If your company has a written procedure that has been tested in the last 24 months – use it, document every step, and obtain employment lawyer Warsaw advice before any disciplinary action against either party. If your procedure has never been tested – treat the first complaint as a live audit and engage external counsel immediately. If you have no procedure – your exposure is open-ended from day one.

Specific compliance gaps in your organisation require tailored remediation before a complaint is received. Waiting until a PIP audit or a Labour Court claim to address structural deficiencies forfeits the ability to demonstrate preventive action. For a tailored strategy on building or auditing your anti-harassment compliance framework, reach out to info@kordeckipartners.com.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Does the anti-harassment obligation apply to employers with only a handful of employees in Poland?

A: Yes. The Labour Code obligation to counteract mobbing and discrimination-based harassment applies to every employer, regardless of size. The Whistleblower Protection Act's internal reporting channel requirement is triggered at 50 employees, but the substantive duty to prevent and investigate harassment has no minimum headcount threshold. A company with three employees in Warsaw owes the same preventive duty as one with three thousand.

Q: How long does a Labour Court harassment case typically take, and what does it cost?

A: First-instance proceedings in Warsaw and Kraków Labour Courts currently run between 12 and 24 months from claim filing to judgment. Appeal proceedings before the regional court add a further 6 to 18 months. Court fees for the claimant are capped at PLN 30 in employment cases, which means cost risk does not deter claims. Employer-side legal costs, including external counsel and potential compensation awards, regularly reach PLN 100,000 to PLN 200,000 for contested mobbing cases. Early settlement – offered before the first hearing – is almost always more economical.

Q: Can an employer dismiss the alleged harasser before the investigation concludes?

A: This is a common misconception. Dismissing the alleged harasser before the investigation is complete exposes the employer to an unfair dismissal claim by that employee. The Labour Code requires that disciplinary termination be based on a specific, documented reason. An investigation outcome – not a complaint alone – provides the evidentiary basis. Employers who act on the complaint rather than the investigation finding regularly face a second Labour Court case running in parallel with the harassment claim. The correct sequence is: investigate first, conclude formally, then take disciplinary action if the findings support it.

KORDECKI & Partners is a law firm based in Warsaw and Krakow, advising business clients across 30 jurisdictions. Our team combines expertise in Polish and international law with a practical approach to employment compliance, workplace investigations, and cross-border mobility. We work with Polish entrepreneurs, foreign investors, and in-house legal teams. To discuss your situation, contact info@kordeckipartners.com.