On August 4, 2026, Poland published in the Dziennik Ustaw the Act of 19 June 2026 amending the Labour Code and the Code of Civil Procedure (Dz.U. 2026 poz. 1046), overhauling the statutory regime for workplace mobbing and discrimination. The National Labour Inspectorate (Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy, PIP) issued guidance on the changes on August 6, 2026. The amendment enters into force on November 5, 2026, and every Polish employer with 10 or more employees must adopt or update an anti-mobbing and anti-discrimination policy by May 5, 2027.
The reform redefines mobbing, expands the discrimination grounds, raises compensation floors, and imposes a structured preventive duty on employers. It also applies to conduct that began before November 5, 2026 and continues afterward, so ongoing harassment is not grandfathered.
What changes in the definition of mobbing?
Mobbing is now defined as persistent harassment of an employee, replacing the prior test that required proof of a diminished professional appraisal or a specified psychological effect. The amendment explicitly excludes incidental conduct: the behaviour must be recurring, repetitive, or constant. It can originate from the employer, a superior, a peer, a subordinate, another employee, a worker on a non-employment basis, or an individual or group, and it may be physical, verbal, or non-verbal. The definition is decoupled from the perpetrator's intent and from the occurrence of a defined consequence, and instructing or encouraging mobbing itself constitutes mobbing.
The statute lists illustrative behaviours: humiliation, demeaning, intimidation, unfounded criticism, ridiculing, hindering the performance of duties, and isolating or eliminating the employee from the team. It also shields employers against false accusations: justified, properly expressed actions, in particular accountability for assigned work and work criticism, do not constitute mobbing.
Who must adopt a policy, and by when?
Every employer with at least 10 employees must establish the rules, procedures, and frequency of actions in a work regulation, unless these are already set in a collective bargaining agreement or existing work regulations. The policy must cover four areas: counteracting violations of dignity and other personal rights, upholding equal treatment in employment, counteracting discrimination, and counteracting mobbing. The deadline is six months from entry into force, i.e. May 5, 2027.
All employers, regardless of size, must systematically counteract mobbing and unequal treatment through a three-stage model: prevention, detection, and remediation, including support for affected persons.
How does compensation exposure rise?
The minimum compensation for mobbing rises to six times the statutory minimum monthly wage. Discrimination compensation is now tiered: an incidental violation carries a minimum of one times the minimum wage, while repeated discrimination carries a minimum of three times. "Repeated discrimination" covers repeated violations from the same or multiple grounds, or a single violation involving multiple grounds simultaneously.
| Obligation | Who is bound | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Entry into force of the amendment | All employers | November 5, 2026 |
| Adopt or update work regulations (rules, procedures, frequency) | Employers with 10+ employees | May 5, 2027 |
| Systematic anti-mobbing and anti-discrimination duty (3-stage model) | All employers | From November 5, 2026 |
| Minimum mobbing compensation | All employers | 6x minimum wage, from November 5, 2026 |
| Minimum repeated-discrimination compensation | All employers | 3x minimum wage, from November 5, 2026 |
What is new on discrimination grounds?
The amendment adds two concepts to the discrimination definition. Discrimination by association covers unfavourable treatment motivated by a characteristic of a person linked to the employee, for example a family member, such as treating a parent of a child with a disability less favourably. Discrimination by perception covers unequal treatment based on a characteristic wrongly attributed to the employee, for instance creating a hostile atmosphere around someone presumed to hold a particular sexual orientation or political sympathy.
Obsidian's continuous, per-jurisdiction real-time monitoring surfaces this kind of labour-law change the moment it publishes in the official journal, letting compliance teams brief HR before the entry-into-force clock starts.
Take advantage of this real-time watch
Next steps for Polish employers and international groups operating in Poland: confirm whether the 10-employee threshold applies to each entity; audit existing work regulations and collective agreements against the four required policy areas; map compensation exposure against the new six-fold and three-fold floors; and brief HR and line managers on the revised mobbing definition and the protection against false accusations before November 5, 2026.
