If a company does not do anything to appropriately investigate and follow through on complaints of bullying and harassment at the workplace, then it is creating a negative work environment that can be harmful to the company in many different ways.
If an employee complains about one or more incidents of workplace bullying and harassment, and the company does not do any kind of honest investigation or follow through, then they will have an unhappy employee, and that is how a negative work environment starts to develop. With one or more unhappy employees productivity eventually suffers and that can impact the company negatively.
The company can of course choose to terminate the employee who had put in the complaint. But then again, a sudden departure of an employee is not a morale booster. Also, word will be out that the employee was fired because of the complaints he or she had made regarding bullying and harassment in the workplace. That can also tarnish the reputation of the company.
In addition the company may have to face a wrongful termination lawsuit, which could be expensive for the company. It is true that companies can terminate any employees at will, without having to give any reasons for why the employee was terminated. But if there is documentation available showing the history of complaints followed by lack of any reasonable actions by the company, then there is a reasonable chance that the company might lose the lawsuit. That is exactly what happened in my case that I describe in my book “How to stand up to workplace bullying and take on an unjust employer.” I fought back against the company after being terminated and won my case.