Current and former employees of Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group have come forward to allege a climate of fear, bullying and harassment at the company and dismiss the mogul’s claims that his behaviour was merely “banter”.

In interviews carried out by the Guardian since Green rejected claims of abusive behaviour and insisted “there was never any intent to be offensive”, Arcadia workers claimed his conduct amounted to “bullying” and said its offices were subject to “a culture of secrecy”.

Claims that Green acted inappropriately first emerged last week, but after the mogul insisted his behaviour was just banter, the former and current employees came forward to dispute that.

One person who said they had been repeatedly verbally abused and screamed at said in their view the idea that Green’s management style was good-humoured was untrue. “‘Banter’ suggests some kind of exchange, or jocular language, but it isn’t,” they claimed. “It’s one-way, it’s intense, you have to keep your mouth shut.”

In the interviews, the former and current employees alleged there was a workplace culture that ranged from the verbally abusive to the surreal, claiming that Green:

• Harangued and threatened people in meetings with expletive-filled diatribes that left his staff feeling humiliated.

• Benefited from an atmosphere where employees were expected to “grin and bear” his treatment without complaint.

• Flew off the handle in an unpredictable fashion, on one occasion using homophobic language to describe a marketing display involving male models that he then tore down.

• Repeatedly grabbed the bottoms of senior female members of staff.

One worker said Green was seen as immune to normal workplace rules. “The large part of why he’s never held to account – he’s seen as the owner, that’s the beginning and end of it,” they said. “If you don’t like it you know where to go.”

“Yes there is a grievance procedure,” they added, “but it’s for everyone else.”

Green’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment.

Last week, the Guardian reported that Green had made a number of seven-figure payouts to employees who alleged the tycoon had sexually harassed or bullied them. His alleged behaviour was reported after Green was identified as the businessman who obtained an injunction against the Daily Telegraph, preventing the reporting of allegations of harassment that had been the subject of non-disclosure agreements.

He has denied claims of “unlawful sexual or racist behaviour” and, in an interview with the Mail on Sunday, said: “I’ve been in business for more than 40 years. There has obviously from time to time been some banter and a bit of humour, but as far as I’m concerned there was never any intent to be offensive.”

He added: “I’m being used as target practice when there is zero [evidence] that anyone has turned up with.”

But one person who spoke to the Guardian suggested the reality of working for Green was very different. “I saw so much bullying behaviour,” the employee claimed.

They said they had seen him repeatedly slapping employees’ bottoms. They also said Green had been known to throw money at staff in meetings.

They said the atmosphere in the Arcadia head office “changed as soon as [Green] stepped on the floor – everyone was silent, scared to speak. Nobody wanted to be the person where he finds something on the desk and makes a big thing of it.”

Another worker said Green’s behaviour had remained the same for many years. On one occasion more than a decade ago, they alleged, Green said that he would throw the worker out of the window during a meeting. “He asked me if I could fly. I said no, and he said that’s a pity because I’m going to throw you out,” the worker said.

Green still flew into expletive-ridden tirades repeatedly, the worker said. In one recent meeting, they said, Green stormed in and flew into a rage at a senior employee: “He was shouting, ‘What the fuck are you thinking? Why didn’t you tell me? What a waste of time.’” The behaviour was seen as so extreme that eventually another senior employee intervened. On another occasion, a different source said, one senior employee was sent out of a meeting on to a balcony in the pouring rain because their results were considered disappointing.

But they suggested Green did not appear to be concerned about the consequences of his management style. “You hear a lot about people crying,” they said. “I think he takes delight in it, he likes to be seen to have an effect.”

He has also sometimes appeared to become angry about anything he perceives as a negative brand association. Earlier this year, Topshop was forced to apologise and make a donation to charity after an in-store pop-up promotion for a feminist book was cancelled, allegedly after Green saw it and objected vigorously.

On another occasion, a source was present when Green saw an advertising campaign featuring young male models during a presentation in head office and reacted badly. He is alleged to have said: “Take down this gay shit, this isn’t the gay shit I want in the building.” He then started to rip the posters down from the display, the source claimed, before telling others to help because some were out of his reach.

Green has felt at liberty to pinch the cheeks of men and women who work for him, the worker said, and regularly used patronising language when speaking to women. “When he swears in meetings he says, ‘Please excuse my French, girls,’” a source said. “It’s language from the 1970s.”

The source said that on one occasion, Green refused to stop calling a female employee “love” and “darling” and use her name instead, as she had asked.

They added that senior members of staff were also to blame for failing to stop Green’s behaviour. “I wouldn’t say they condone it, but they don’t do anything to prevent it, they don’t stop anything,” they said.

They said one employee was recently told to “put on your game face” when under attack from Green, which they added was a common phrase used in feedback. The employee summarised the message as: “Just grin and bear it like you enjoy it. What a ridiculous thing to ask.”

Asked why the claims against Green had not previously been exposed or questions raised over his behaviour, the former workers said people’s concern for their jobs and a climate of deference and fear were to blame.

People were unwilling to be named, one source said, “because no one is willing to lose their jobs. You can’t take a stand.”

“There’s a culture of secrecy,” another said. “People who worked closely with him turned blind eyes.”

An insider speaks

Working for Sir Philip Green felt like being in an “abusive relationship,” a former senior insider at Arcadia Group told the Guardian.

“He’s been like this forever but none of us talk about it. There was all this development support and training and on that side the company was amazing. All the systems were in place to have a decent career. But I felt he was constantly abusive to me.

“I would get calls early in the morning and late at night and when I was on holiday. It was, “What the fucking hell are you doing you fuckwit?” It was a constant barrage of effing as if there was no other way of communicating. You just tried to avoid it.

“He would [shout abuse] in front of everyone. He would stand in front of my team shouting down the phone [at me], it all seemed like bravado and show. It was like we were in an abusive, weird relationship because we were well paid and loved our jobs. We didn’t want someone like that to take what we loved to do away from us. He is greedy and he doesn’t really appear to understand fashion. He’s a trader. He would make you deal with suppliers that we felt didn’t have the right quality or infrastructure.

“I didn’t see anything to do with racial abuse or sexual harassment. I didn’t think that of him. Verbal abuse, yes, bullying, absolutely; but the rest of it was way beyond me. It felt like he didn’t care as long as you were making him money. You could have been yellow with blue stripes.

“I left because I couldn’t bear it any more. I didn’t want to be whipped any more. In my view he should never have been given that knighthood. This feels [like] it is about rich people getting away with stuff. It made him feel better to rant and shout and swear. That’s his language.”

As told to Sarah Butler