Moral harassment (harcèlement moral) may result from management methods, not only from conduct aimed at one individual. Since 2009, the Court of Cassation has accepted that a manager’s methods – constant pressure, incessant reproaches, contradictory orders – can amount to harassment where they degrade working conditions and are liable to harm employees’health. The question in this case was whether an employee must show that those methods were directed at him or her personally.
In this case, a human resources director was dismissed for gross misconduct after reporting the general manager’s methods to the chief executive. She claimed compensation for moral harassment. The Court of Appeal found there had been « deviant management” towards the staff of her department, but rejected her claim on the ground that none of it was aimed at her in particular.
The Court of Cassation quashed that ruling. Once deviant management methods towards the staff of the department she headed were established, the HR director herself suffered from the degraded working environment to which the department was exposed ; it did not matter that she was not directly targeted. The Court had used the same formula in January 2026, and this ruling confirms it.
