Employee wellbeing refers to employees' evaluation of the overall quality of their career and work experience (25). Zheng et al. divide wellbeing into three dimensions (10): work, psychological, and life wellbeing, which more comprehensively reflect the wellbeing status of individuals.

As a common social phenomenon, workplace ostracism behaviors include silent treatment, neglection, and avoidance of contact (18). Workplace ostracism is a specific form of ostracism, a phenomenon in which individuals perceive that they are neglected or rejected by others in the workplace, a kind of emotional office abuse (3, 26). When employees suffer from ostracism, it will cause them to suffer from self-esteem, generate negative emotions, reduce work efficiency (27, 28), and hinder the generation of wellbeing (29). First, when employees perceive ostracism or isolation in the team, interpersonal stress will be generated, which will affect employees' engagement and satisfaction with their work and reduce their wellbeing at work. Second, ostracism will cause employees' anger, anxiety, and even negative psychological feelings, such as self-doubt and self-denial, leading to excessive consumption of their psychological resources and ultimately reducing their psychological wellbeing (30). Third, as producers of “emotional office abuse,” ostracized employees are perceived as “outsiders” and have certain prejudices (31). On the one hand, ostracized employees have the feeling of “not fitting in,” which increases the burden of getting along with colleagues. On the other hand, it is difficult for the ostracized employees to obtain care and help from the organization members in their work and life, which reduces their wellbeing in work, psychology, and life and negatively affects employees' sense of happiness. Finally, workplace ostracism is often associated with punitive measures, implying employees have done something wrong, thus, reducing employees' organizational commitment, causing the ostracized individuals to be less engaged in their work (32, 33), undermining employees' good experiences at work, in life, etc., and ultimately inhibiting employee wellbeing (18, 34). At the same time, according to the belongingness theory, workplace ostracism makes it difficult for employees to belong to the work team, which affects employees' psychology, behavior, and work-related effects (18, 35, 36) and also affects employees' sense of wellbeing (37, 38). Therefore, Hypothesis 1 is proposed:

Emotional exhaustion refers to an individual's loss of interest and enthusiasm for people, things, and objects around, and a feeling of physical and psychological exhaustion and energy depletion, reflecting the individual's negative emotional experience and state, and is often regarded as a resource shortage (39, 40). According to the conservation of resource theory, the loss of resources puts more pressure on the individual and the individual has to invest more resources to offset further resource losses (41). Once a loss of resources has occurred, it may lead to a continuous loss, resulting in a spiral of negative effects (42, 43).

Workplace ostracism will cause the depletion of employees' emotional and psychological resources, which will lead to emotional exhaustion (44, 45). First, according to the conservation of resource theory, individuals have the motivation to protect, maintain, and obtain their own resources and become stressed and exhausted when their resources are reduced or threatened. If an individual's depleted resources are not replenished in a timely manner, it can easily lead to emotional exhaustion (46). Second, when employees suffer from workplace ostracism, they are cut off from their emotional connections with other employees. Individuals need social interactions as a way to communicate emotionally to strengthen their emotional resources and maintain physical and psychological health (47). When the need for shared emotions is not met, emotional resources are lost and, thus, suffer emotional exhaustion (35). Third, ostracism is a major challenge for individuals to hold resources and can reduce the resources held by individuals (48). On the one hand, individuals will consume their psychological resources in the process of handling and coping with ostracism. On the other hand, in their daily work, employees need to contact each other in order to obtain external resources, and it is difficult for individuals who suffer from ostracism to replenish their resources from others, so they can only deplete their own resources. Subsequently, their own resources become less, and they may become stressed, anxious, and exhausted. Finally, being ostracized means that individuals lack reliable interpersonal networks, making it difficult for employees to trust members of the organization and lack a sense of security. In this low trust and insecure workplace environment, individuals who suffer from ostracism will take a more cautious stance to maintain relationships with surrounding employees, which will consume more of their own resources and increase the self-depletion of resources, leading to emotional exhaustion in the long run.

Emotional exhaustion, a typical manifestation of psychological overwork, can further lead to a lack of emotional and psychological resources and reduce employees' sense of wellbeing. On the one hand, according to the affective event theory, negative emotional events will affect individuals' emotional responses, and at the same time, individuals' emotional responses will further influence their attitudes and behaviors (49, 50). On the other hand, emotionally depleted employees are more likely to show dissatisfaction and aversion to their jobs and lives, resulting in turnover intention and lower life satisfaction (45). Emotional exhaustion reflects individual psychological feelings and health status and is a negative indicator of employee wellbeing (51). When employees perceive workplace ostracism, as a negative emotional event, based on the social exchange theory, it triggers a depletion of their emotional resources and ultimately leads to a decrease in wellbeing (26, 36). Therefore, this study infers that the higher the level of workplace ostracism an individual suffers, the higher degree of emotional exhaustion, which in turn will affect the individual's wellbeing and inhibit employee wellbeing. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 is put forward as follows:

Forgiveness is an individual's conscious effort to relieve resentment and abandon potential retaliation in the face of offense or aggression (52). With the intensification of social competition, various conflicts burst out (53). In the workplace, employees have conflicts over job resources and promotion opportunities. At this point, if the organization fails to develop an effective forgiveness climate, employees will inevitably waste resources and time in responding to conflict, failing to engage in their work and affecting the output of work performance. Team forgiveness climate refers to the perception of team support when employees show kindness and altruism in the face of conflict and failure, which is mainly reflected in the team's tolerance of fault or negligent behavior (24).

Team climate serves as an important situational variable when working in the workplace. When employees suffer from ostracism, their psychological resources will be lost. At this time, the team's forgiveness climate can alleviate the loss of psychological resources when employees cope with ostracism. According to the resource conservation theory (54), the forgiveness climate of the team, as a resource supplement, helps to reduce the generation of emotional exhaustion (55). First, after a forgiveness climate is formed in the team, team members are more likely to maintain optimistic and positive emotions (56), instead of complaining or blaming others. At this point, even if the employee suffers from workplace ostracism, it will counteract the negative emotions and thus will not easily cause emotional exhaustion. In addition, the forgiveness climate of the team can improve the interpersonal relationship between team members, making them friendly and trusting, which is conducive to cooperation and mutual assistance among the team members (57). At this time, even if employees suffer from rejection and emotional resources are destroyed, the existence of such a trust-friendly climate will alleviate or offset the generation of negative emotions (58). Finally, in view of the social exchange theory, when a forgiveness climate releases a signal similar to the failure of tolerance, team members show more communication and cooperation in return for the team's tolerance, resulting in more active behaviors and positive expressions (59). Even when employees suffer from ostracism, they will try to minimize the generation of negative emotions in order to repay the team's tolerance so as not to affect their work engagement. Therefore, this study infers that when individuals feel a climate of forgiveness, those who suffer from workplace ostracism will suppress the generation of emotional exhaustion. Thus, Hypothesis 3 is supported:

Integrating Hypotheses 2 and 3, this study proposes a mediated model with moderation. It can alleviate the emotional exhaustion caused by workplace ostracism and restrain the decrease in employee wellbeing, that is, a forgiveness climate will suppress the negative effects of workplace ostracism on employee wellbeing through emotional exhaustion. In view of this, Hypothesis 4 is proposed:

Thus, emotional exhaustion is introduced as the mediating variable and forgiveness climate as the moderating variable. According to the logical relationship, four hypotheses are put forward to build a theoretical model to study the impact of workplace ostracism on employee wellbeing. The research framework of this article is shown in Figure 1.

Before the survey, the participating employees were communicated and informed that there were no right or wrong answers for all respondents, and the anonymity and confidentiality of the questionnaire were promised. To reduce common method bias, the paired sample of employees and leaders was adopted in this study. Also, to avoid common method bias, the same group of participants was given questionnaires at three time points. Each time interval was 1 month with the entire survey lasting 3 months (June–August 2021). First, the HR department randomly selects the department supervisors who participate in the survey, and the supervisors randomly select 3–6 direct subordinates; then, the supervisors' questionnaires are matched and numbered with the employees' questionnaires. At the first time point, the supervisor questionnaire for forgiveness climate and employee questionnaire 1 for workplace ostracism were distributed; employee questionnaire 2 about employee emotional exhaustion was distributed at the second time point, and employee questionnaire 3 was distributed at the third time point about employee wellbeing.

After the investigation is completed, the last four digits of the phone number of “leader-employee” will be used as the matching basis. In this research, a total of 80 supervisor questionnaires and 350 employee questionnaires were distributed, of which 68 and 282 were collected, respectively, after eliminating invalid and unmatched ones with an effective recovery rate of 80.57%. Employee sample characteristics are as follows: There were 139 male employees (49.3%), 143 female employees (50.7%), 62 unmarried employees (22%), and 220 married employees (78%). The average education level is college, the average age is 38.83 years old, the average working years is 4.97 years, and the average working hours per week is 49.83 h.

To ensure the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, established scales were used for reference in this study. The English scales were accurately translated into Chinese in terms of the standard translation and back-translation procedure (60) before investigation and research and were repeatedly checked before distribution. A 5-point Likert scale (1–5 in the questionnaire indicates “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) was used throughout the study.

In this study, SPSS 21.0 was employed for Harman's one-way test, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis, and Amos 21.0 was used for the confirmatory factor analysis. For testing the mediating effects, the three-step method of Baron and Kenny (63) was used and combined with the Bootstrap technique (using the PROCESS program) (64) to estimate confidence intervals for mediating effects. In testing for mediators with moderation, this study tested the significance of the values and differences of indirect effects under high and low moderating variables relied on Edwards and Lambert's (65) study and integrated with the bootstrap technique.

In this research investigation, the multi-stage fill-in approach, suggested by Podsakoff et al. (66), was followed to control for possible common method bias from the methodological level (66). At the data level, Harman's one-way test of the collected data revealed that the percentage of explained variance by the first factor was 34.38%, which is < 40% criterion (66). In addition, as can be seen in Table 1, the fitting results of the confirmatory factor analysis of the one-factor model also failed the test (χ² = 3,064.72, df=560, RMSEA = 0.13, SRMR = 0.17, CFI = 0.56, and TLI = 0.59). Therefore, there is no serious common method bias among the variables in this study.

In this study, the following fit index was selected to judge the fit of the model, including the chi-square difference must reach a significant level, the root means square error of approximation (RMSEA) must be < 0.08, and the comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) must be > 0.9. A series of competing models were compared in this study, and the results of the analysis are shown in Table 1. As can be seen in Table 1, the model fit of the four-factor model (χ2 = 691.58, df = 554, RMSEA = 0.03, SRMR = 0.04, CFI = 0.98, and TLI = 0.98) was better than other competing models in this study. Moreover, all the fit indicators of the four-factor model passed the test. In the view of above, all the variables in this study were found to be distinguishable.

The results of the correlation analysis between control variables and variables are shown in Table 2. As can be seen in Table 2, there is a significant negative relationship between workplace ostracism and employee wellbeing (r =- 0.36, p < 0.001), which provides preliminary support for exploring the negative prediction of workplace ostracism on employee wellbeing.

First, this study takes the perspective of resource consumption and uses the conservation of resource theory to explain the effects of workplace ostracism. It confirms that emotional exhaustion plays a role in bridging workplace ostracism and employee wellbeing, provides a new theoretical perspective and interpreting path to explain how workplace ostracism affects employee wellbeing, and expands a new angle to study employee wellbeing (68, 69). Meanwhile, workplace ostracism is seen as a stressor that depletes employees' emotional resources and negatively affects their attitudes and behaviors (8).

Second, this study examines the borderline role of workplace ostracism in affecting employee wellbeing. The forgiveness climate acts as a negative moderator between workplace ostracism and emotional exhaustion. The perception of the team forgiveness climate by employees is regarded as a resource supplement, which can alleviate the negative impact caused by ostracism (70). This conclusion has profound implications for understanding workplace ostracism and emotional exhaustion.

Finally, this study focuses on employee wellbeing. The relationship between the role of workplace ostracism on employee wellbeing is examined in terms of three aspects of employees' work, psychology, and life wellbeing. Also, this study verifies that when employees perceive ostracism, there is a loss of psychological resources that causes emotional exhaustion (48, 71), which reveals the mechanism of how negative workplace behaviors affect employee wellbeing (72) and enriches the research on negative workplace behaviors and wellbeing (73).

Since workplace ostracism affects employee wellbeing, managers should minimize or avoid ostracism in the workplace. For example, companies can reduce the incidence of ostracism by encouraging employees to use face-to-face communication, strengthening the care for employees through multiple ways, encouraging employees to participate in social activities, increasing communication opportunities between colleagues, improving emotional communication, promoting mutual understanding, and reduce the possibility of ostracism.

In addition, workplace ostracism consumes employees' emotional resources and causes emotional exhaustion. The organization should provide employees with more organizational support, such as a good communication environment and a cordial organizational atmosphere, which makes employees develop positive emotions toward work and helps them regain resources to overcome the negative effects of ostracism. At the same time, the organization can establish a psychological counseling mechanism for employees to reduce the level of emotional exhaustion and provide opportunities to replenish resources in an attempt to eliminate negative emotions.

Organizational culture has an inhibiting effect on team atmosphere. Therefore, the organization should create a healthy culture, construct a team climate of fairness, forgiveness, tolerance, and understanding, and develop an atmosphere of openness and trust among colleagues or between superiors and subordinates, to curb the occurrence of workplace ostracism at the source (74, 75). Certainly, if workplace ostracism has already occurred in an organization, this climate of forgiveness and trust can serve as a complementary resource to reduce the harmful effects of workplace ostracism.