Effects on Society: In Australia, Toohey (1991) calculated some of the costs for these and other cases of stress-related illnesses. The Australian society's costs for sick leaves due to employees being maltreated in the workplace are dramatic. Toohey´s main criticism is focused on the fact that these employees, following long periods of being subjected to very poor psychosocial work environments, eventually consulted their physicians who diagnosed "stress" (as is usually done in this country). Toohey´s criticism is that the "health industry", by using this procedure, focuses on "being ill", "not being well", or "not being able to take the strain of working life", instead of forcing management, as Toohey claims should be done, to carry out inquiries into the working environments which produced the illnesses. The result of this type of policy does not give management any incentive to reorganize the working procedures or the social environment of their companies.

Highly abused employees also show a tendency towards early retirement, as has been shown by Swedish public statistics. The figures for 1991 show that as much as approximately 25% of the work force above the age of 55 were retired early. The Social Insurance Office estimated that ther were a great many individuals who developed illnesses from poor psychosocial working environments, in other words, mobbing experiences. Between 20% and 40% of the yearly number of early retirements was caused by poor psychosocial environments. Approximately every third to fifth early retiree in this age group had suffered from extensive mobbing (personal discussions with officials from the Swedish National Board of Social Insurance, 1993).

The fact that the Swedish government wanted to protect the national budget from these heavy financial burdens is not surprising. At the turn of the year 1993/1994, the Vocational Rehabilitation Act went into effect. This law states that employers are obliged to present a vocational rehabilitation plan to the Social Insurance Office as soon as an employee has been on sick leave one month, or ten times within a 12-month period. The purpose of this enactment is to transfer costs for rehabilitation to the origin; the workplace where poor environmental conditions triggered costly consequences (AFS, 1994).

Effects on the Organization: Johanson (1987), a Swedish business economist, developed itemized lists in order to calculate company costs for repetitive or long-term sick leaves. He found methods by which to compute different kinds of costs to the company. He was also able to demonstrate that it was less costly for a company to offer these employees professional vocational rehabilitation, even a very expensive one, and to reorganize working environments, than to deal with employees in the manner as shown in the case of Eve.

Extended conflicts of this kind cause further negative development, worsening the psychosocial workplace environment. As the concept of mobbing is new, it is obvious that research results concerning these effects are not yet available. Hypothetically, one can imagine its consequences in the form of higher production costs, higher personnel turnover, lack of personnel motivation and so on.

Effects on the mobbed individual: For the individual, mobbing is highly destructive. We might wonder why the person does not leave the organization. But as a person becomes older, his/her ability to find a new job diminishes. This is probably the reason behind another fact, namely that those who have developed PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) because of mobbing are rarely younger than 40 years of age (Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996). The risk that the subjected person´s occupational position will stagnate or even worsen is elevated (this is well demonstrated in a study by Knorz & Zapf, 1996). Expulsion from employment may easily turn into a situation in which the individual in question is unable to find any job at all, which means that he or she is in effect expelled from the labor market (e. g. Grund, 1995). Seen from this perspective, further negative effects will most likely be detected in future research.

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