Workplace Bullying in Germany and the US: Two Studies Compared

Two National Surveys, Two Different Perspectives

Two recent national studies document workplace bullying in very different settings. In Germany, the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS) commissioned a representative study from the University of Leipzig, which forms the empirical basis of the Mobbing-Report 2024 (BMAS, 2025; Löbner et al., 2025a). In the United States, the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) commissioned Zogby Analytics to run the 2024 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey (Namie, 2024). Both examine workplace mistreatment, its consequences for employees, and the organizational conditions that sustain it. They differ, however, in definition, reference period, frequency threshold, sample and survey mode. Their headline prevalence figures therefore measure different things, and this article reads the two studies as complementary rather than directly comparable evidence.

The German study draws on 5,015 computer-assisted telephone interviews with dependent employees, conducted between 31 August 2023 and 23 January 2024, along with 37 qualitative interviews with people affected by bullying (14), experts (13), and managers (10) (Löbner et al., 2025a, 2025b). Participants had to be at least 18, speak sufficient German, and work at least one paid hour per week; we excluded the self-employed, freelancers, students, and people not currently working. The data were weighted by age, gender, household size, place of residence, and form of employment, and the sample's mean age was 42.7 years (Löbner et al., 2025b). The estimates therefore describe dependent employees in Germany, not retired, unemployed or self-employed people.

The US survey interviewed 1,024 adults online on 23–25 September 2024, with a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points for the full sample (Namie, 2024, p. 27). Unlike the German study, it includes people outside the workforce: 69% were working or looking for work, 21% were retired, 7% were unemployed, at home, or students, and 3% were not working; 22% were aged 65 or older (p. 27). These percentages describe the whole sample, not only the respondents who reported bullying. Respondents reported on their current workplace or, if retired or temporarily unemployed, their last workplace, and considered only the most serious forms of bullying (pp. 4–5). WBI is an advocacy organization that has campaigned for anti-bullying legislation in US states for more than two decades; it writes the survey, and Zogby conducts the fieldwork (pp. 2, 25).

The two studies also define bullying differently. The Leipzig team derived its definition from a systematic literature review, drawing on Leymann and Einarsen's work. It describes bullying as a process of frequent and persistent negative behavior that the person experiences as unwanted and that leaves them feeling defenseless, and it recognizes that bullying can run top-down, horizontally, or bottom-up regardless of any formal power relationship (Welzel et al., 2025, p. 37). Prevalence was measured by asking whether respondents had felt unjustly criticized, harassed, or humiliated in front of others by colleagues and/or supervisors, daily or at least weekly, during the previous six months (p. 36). WBI defines bullying as repeated mistreatment, such as threatening, intimidating, or humiliating abusive conduct, work sabotage, or verbal abuse (Namie, 2024, pp. 4–5).

What Do the Prevalence Figures Tell Us?

The German study found that 6.5% of dependent employees had been bullied by colleagues and/or supervisors at least weekly during the preceding six months, about one in fifteen (Welzel et al., 2025, p. 36). Bullying by colleagues was reported by 4.4% and bullying by supervisors by 3.5%; the two groups overlap because some employees were bullied by both (pp. 36–37). An additional 5.3% reported bullying by others in the workplace, such as customers, patients, pupils, or passengers (p. 37).

The WBI survey reports that 32% of respondents had directly experienced bullying, either currently or at some point in their working lives. An additional 14% witnessed it, so WBI counts 46% of respondents as affected (Namie, 2024, p. 5).

These figures do not show that bullying is five times as common in the United States as in Germany. The German figure counts a defined, recent, high-frequency pattern among employees. The WBI figure counts any direct experience, current or earlier, among all adults, and the 46% adds witnesses. A like-for-like comparison would require the same behavioral definition, reference period, frequency threshold, target population, and survey method.

Direct and indirect exposure should also be kept apart. Witnessing and experiencing bullying both say something about a workplace, but they are different indicators: employees may witness repeated mistreatment without experiencing it, and those directly affected may not disclose it. A combined figure shows bullying's social reach, but the two components should be reported separately.

Who Is Particularly at Risk?

In the German study, younger employees reported the highest exposure: 11.4% of those aged 18 to 29 had been bullied, compared with 3.2% of those aged 50 to 59 (Welzel et al., 2025, p. 37). Prevalence was also higher among people of low socioeconomic status (8.1%) than among those of high status (3.6%) (p. 37). Apprentices, manual workers, people with a migration background and people in temporary agency work were particularly affected (p. 37); about nine per cent of apprentices reported bullying by colleagues (DGUV, n.d.). Employees who depend heavily on a particular employer or assignment may have little practical freedom to challenge mistreatment.

Some of these figures describe who is among the bullied rather than how likely bullying is within a group. In the Leipzig study, 14.6% of bullied employees worked in temporary agency employment, compared with 1.7% of those not bullied (Löbner et al., 2025b), and 20% of bullied employees had a migration background, compared with 13.5% of those not bullied (Universität Leipzig, 2025). Neither figure is the bullying rate for temporary agency workers or for people with a migration background.

The WBI survey looks instead at organizational hierarchy. In respondents' worst cases, 55% of perpetrators outranked the person targeted and 29% were peers (Namie, 2024, p. 14). Bullying is therefore not simply a matter of difficult relationships between colleagues of equal standing; it can involve people with authority over assignments, performance evaluations, working conditions, and career progression.

The German and US findings point to workplace power structures through different measures. The German study reports who is affected and how often, while WBI reports the rank of perpetrators in respondents' worst experiences. Both suggest that prevention cannot rely on encouraging employees to manage interpersonal conflict. It must also address supervisory conduct, organizational accountability, and employees’ practical ability to raise concerns without fear of negative consequences.

Health Consequences and Working Conditions

In the German study, employees who reported bullying averaged 22.6 sick days in the preceding twelve months, compared with 11.4 days among those who did not (Welzel et al., 2025, p. 37). They were also more likely to rate their health as less good or poor (23.8% versus 10.1%) and reported more depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress (p. 37). Bullied employees more often reported time pressure and falling behind with their work, less influence over their tasks and workload, and less support from colleagues and supervisors (p. 37).

These findings align with viewing bullying as an occupational health and organizational issue, not just an interpersonal disagreement. Persistent humiliation, exclusion, intimidation or undermining creates sustained psychological strain, and where it coincides with heavy workloads, scarce resources and weak supervisory support, recovery and self-protection become harder. Because the survey was conducted once, the associations do not show that bullying alone caused every difference.

The study also points to gaps in support. Among bullied employees, 45% said their workplace had no official trusted contact person or contact point for bullying, compared with 32% of those not bullied, and 30% (against 6%) said an open conversation about bullying was not possible at work (Welzel et al., 2025, p. 37). A formal reporting channel is not enough: employees must also believe their concerns will receive a fair response and not expose them to further disadvantage.

The US survey points to the same difficulty. Among respondents familiar with how complaints were handled, 56% described the employer's response as negative (Namie, 2024, p. 18). A third of all respondents had neither made nor known of a complaint and is therefore excluded from this figure, so it is not a share of the whole sample. It nonetheless illustrates how a reporting system fails when complaints are dismissed, when responsibility is shifted back to the person targeted, or when speaking up brings negative consequences.

Taken together, the studies link bullying to organizational conditions, employee health, managerial accountability, and access to trustworthy support. They do not establish identical causal pathways in the two countries, but they show why prevalence figures alone cannot describe the problem.

Beyond Prevalence: Cultural, Social and Legal Differences Between Germany and the US

The national context shapes how employees interpret conflict, when they call behavior bullying, whether they disclose it in a survey and what support or redress they expect. Neither survey measures these effects directly, so the factors discussed below are plausible interpretative context, not established explanations for the gap between the headline figures.

a) Cultural expectations and the interpretation of workplace behavior

In the United States, public discussion of work often emphasizes individual rights, personal boundaries, and organizations' responsibility to address harmful behavior, and WBI's advocacy has given employees a vocabulary to describe mistreatment. In Germany, the term Mobbing is widely recognized and has a long history in debates about working life, employment relationships and occupational health.

In both countries, however, one employee may describe the same behavior as bullying and another as poor leadership, interpersonal conflict, or unfair treatment, depending on organization, occupation, and generation. That could affect survey responses even where the underlying behavior is comparable. Neither national culture is homogeneous, and neither survey shows that cultural attitudes explain the difference in the headline figures.

b) Employment protection, social security and the costs of speaking up

In Germany, employers have a duty of care towards their employees' personality rights and health under civil law (§ 241(2) and § 618 Civil Code, BGB), and occupational health and safety law requires them to protect physical and mental health and to include psychological stress in their risk assessments (§§ 3 and 5 Occupational Safety and Health Act, ArbSchG). Statutory social insurance, works councils, trade unions, occupational health services, and internal complaint procedures provide additional avenues for support. How far these protections reach depends on employment status, organizational size and sector. Apprentices, temporary agency workers and employees in precarious positions may have less practical freedom to challenge mistreatment than their formal rights suggest, and the Leipzig study found them over-represented among the bullied.

In the United States, employment arrangements and benefits vary considerably by state, employer and occupation. Where health insurance and income depend on keeping a job, the prospect of losing it can make reporting especially difficult. Similar pressures exist in Germany, but social insurance, health coverage and employment protection are organized differently, which could influence whether employees stay in a harmful situation, seek formal help, leave or disclose their experiences in a survey. A stronger safety net might make some employees more willing to report mistreatment, while formal procedures and hierarchies might deter others. These differences do not show that bullying is more or less common in either country.

c) Workplace institutions and access to support

Under the Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz, BetrVG), employees may complain to the competent bodies in the establishment if they feel unfairly treated or disadvantaged by the employer or by colleagues, may call on a works council member for assistance, and must not suffer prejudice for complaining (§ 84 BetrVG). The works council must hear employees’ grievances and, where they appear justified, press the employer to remedy them (§ 85 BetrVG). The General Act on Equal Treatment (AGG) also provides a right to complain about discrimination or harassment (§ 13 AGG). Works councils exist only where employees have elected them, so access is not universal, and a formal mechanism does not guarantee that employees will trust it or that their complaints will be resolved.

In the United States, human-resources departments, employee assistance programs, trade unions where present, and external agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) offer routes for raising concerns, and their availability and effectiveness vary substantially. The WBI finding that 56% of relevant respondents rated employer responses negatively shows that reporting does not necessarily provide protection (Namie, 2024, p. 18). In both countries, employees may fear retaliation, reputational damage, disbelief, or exclusion, even though both legal systems prohibit retaliation for complaints within their scope (§ 16 AGG; § 84(3) BetrVG; EEOC, n.d.). Formal procedures should not be confused with their effectiveness, and the number of employees who report bullying does not directly measure how well a workplace protects its staff.

d) Legal protection

Germany has no single federal statute that prohibits every form of workplace bullying simply because it constitutes Mobbing. Remedies depend on the conduct and the facts of the case, drawing on the employer's duty of care and on health and safety law (see above). The AGG prohibits discrimination and harassment connected to race or ethnic origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, defines harassment as unwanted conduct that violates a person's dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment, and requires employers to take preventive and corrective measures (§§ 1, 3(3) and 12 AGG). Where an employer takes no or obviously unsuitable measures against harassment, affected employees may refuse to work without loss of pay (§ 14 AGG). Not every instance of persistent hostility falls within the AGG, and the qualitative interviews in the Leipzig study point to legal hurdles for those affected (Welzel et al., 2025, p. 38).

The United States likewise has no general federal law against workplace bullying. Federal anti-discrimination law prohibits harassment based on protected characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information. Harassment becomes unlawful when enduring it is a condition of continued employment or when it is severe or pervasive enough to create an intimidating, hostile or abusive environment, whereas petty slights, annoyances and isolated incidents, unless extremely serious, do not meet that threshold (EEOC, n.d.). Repeated humiliation, exclusion, intimidation or abusive supervision is therefore not automatically unlawful simply because it is bullying, although state law and other protections may apply. WBI argues that much bullying falls outside existing protections and notes that 59% of the worst cases in its survey involved a perpetrator and a target of the same gender (Namie, 2024, p. 11).

The legal comparison has two implications. First, legal protection against discrimination or harassment does not comprehensively prohibit bullying: in both countries, employees may experience behavior they regard as bullying without a straightforward legal claim. Second, the boundaries of legal protection may shape whether employees label an experience as bullying, discrimination, harassment or unfair treatment, and whether they seek help through legal or organizational channels. This may influence how visible mistreatment is and how often it is reported, but it does not show that either legal system produces a higher prevalence.

e) What the comparison can and cannot show

The two studies were also produced in different research and public-discourse settings. A federal ministry commissioned the German study to estimate a defined pattern of recent, repeated bullying among employees. An advocacy organization wrote the WBI survey, which asks adults about direct and indirect experiences across different periods, including earlier in their working lives (Löbner et al., 2025a; Namie, 2024).

A higher percentage in one survey therefore does not show that bullying is more widespread in that country, that employers behave worse, or that employees are more vulnerable, and cultural, social, or legal explanations cannot be read directly from the figures. A stronger comparison would use the same behavioral definition, reference period, frequency threshold, target population and survey method, with questions designed to capture awareness of bullying, willingness to disclose it, experiences of reporting and access to support. Until such evidence exists, the two studies are best read as complementary evidence about prevalence and consequences in different national contexts.

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Conclusion

The German study and the US WBI survey both show that workplace bullying remains a significant concern, and each illuminates a different part of the problem. The Leipzig study provides a representative estimate of recent, repeated bullying among dependent employees and documents its association with sickness absence, work pressure, and access to support. The WBI survey captures direct and indirect experience across a broader adult sample and highlights organizational hierarchy and employees' experience of employer responses.

The central conclusion is not that one country has more workplace bullying than the other. Instead, it shows that the scale and consequences of bullying can be examined through different research designs and institutional contexts, and that understanding the differences requires attention to what each survey measures, who was included, and how employees experience and report mistreatment. More directly comparable research would show whether observed differences reflect real variation in workplace behavior, differences in recognition and reporting, or both.

For employers, the practical implications apply in both countries. Preventing bullying requires more than policies on paper: it calls for clear standards of conduct that leaders model themselves, accountable leadership, accessible and trusted complaint mechanisms, protection against retaliation, and attention to the organizational conditions that allow repeated mistreatment to continue (Welzel et al., 2025, p. 38; Namie, 2024, p. 18). National context shapes how these measures are implemented, but the need to protect employees' dignity, health, and ability to work without sustained intimidation is shared.

About the Author

Dr. Kerstin Hecker, PhD, is a workplace bullying researcher, depth psychologist, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and holistic counselor. Her work focuses on workplace bullying, covert aggression, abuse of power, relational harm, organizational dynamics, and the effects of chronic stress. She offers online counseling in English and German.

© 2026 Dr. Kerstin Hecker. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any form without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations with proper citation.​

References

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