The State of Misconduct at Work in 2023

Workplace misconduct is behavior that violates company policy or breaks the law and negatively impacts an organization. Behaviors range from minor acts like tardiness to extreme, gross misconduct like threats and violence. Anyone in or even around the organization can commit misconduct – from junior-level workers, to senior managers, executives, board members, and even investors.¹ This behavior makes a candidate a poor fit and should be recognized during the candidate and background screening processes.²

It can be easy to dismiss the thought of misconduct. However, it only takes 1 out of 20 workers engaging in toxic misconduct to significantly impact the productivity, engagement, and retention of a team.³ This is known as the 5% rule – and is the foundational benchmark for this research.

2023 Findings

After screening hundreds of thousands of candidates and uncovering tens of thousands of instances of misconduct last year, Fama’s 2023 data found 1 in 10 candidates engaging in misconduct. This is double the 5% threshold. And, this is consistent with data from 2022.

What changed, however, was an increase in the content flagged with misconduct. Specifically, the same 1 in 10 candidates already engaging in misconduct published 40% more content with misconduct year over year. This is a significant increase.

The most commonly found types of misconduct were harassment, sexual misconduct, and intolerance.

Additionally, in 2023 we saw one more industry fail to keep misconduct below the 5% threshold. This now makes 8 out of 9 industries failing for 2023. Seven of nine industries failed in 2022.⁴ In 2023, the top industries for misconduct were consumer services, media and entertainment, and education. Healthcare reported the lowest levels of misconduct. Government and nonprofits saw significant increases. Technology saw major decreases, but failed to fall beneath the 5% threshold.

Despite misconduct being a long-time problem, several socio- political economic factors likely played a role in 2023’s increases.⁵ Nearly 75% of Americans are stressed about their finances,⁶ and 1 in 3 were worried about losing their job in 2023.⁷ People are feeling enhanced social struggles due to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.⁸ That combined with the fact that 2024 is one of the largest election years on the planet,⁹ people are struggling to cope. It’s impacting how they show up at work, and online – hence the 40% increase in content with misconduct.

Organizational factors also play a key role in misconduct levels. Harvard Business Review research shows misconduct is contagious,¹⁰ and it’s more visible now that people are working in an office.¹¹Return to office pressures likely exacerbated misconduct issues across several industries.

The Cost of Misconduct at Work

Toxic workplace cultures cost companies $223 billion from turnover over the last 5 years alone.¹² In addition:

Over $4.6 trillion globally lost due to occupational fraud¹³
$50 billion per year lost from employee theft¹⁴
Between $300 and $1,000 lost per employee per year on harassment¹⁵
$3.5 billion lost in general costs and lost productivity due to sexual harassment at work each year¹⁶
$250 to $330 billion lost due to workplace violence annually¹⁷
And, $172 billion lost due to racial discrimination and intolerance over a 5-year period¹⁸

Misconduct creates a significant impact and costs employers trillions of dollars per year.¹⁹ This is why companies cannot take a back seat.

With 2x more candidates engaging in misconduct above the minimum threshold, organizations need to take steps to protect their workers, customers, and shareholders. Ensuring Human Resources and Talent Acquisition teams have set up the right people, processes, and technological solutions in place can help. Here is how your HR and Talent Acquisition can make an impact:

Processes Recommendations for 2024 (Policies, Procedures, and Benefits)

‍Policies: Every organization should have an Employee Handbook. This handbook outlines the company mission, vision, values, and culture and details what behaviors are acceptable at work and which ones are to be avoided in an Employee Code of Conduct. These Code of Conducts usually detail specific inappropriate behaviors and consequences for non-compliance. As more organizations get in trouble for employee behavior online,²⁰ many now include a Social Media Policy in the Employee Code of Conduct to safeguard the organization from these liabilities. For 2024, this is a must have. With the increased volume in posts by those engaging in misconduct organizations need to be sure they are equipped to mitigate these issues.

Another policy that can help is remote work. While organizations argue about the efficacy of remote work, working from home limits exposure to misconduct. Reinstating this policy could substantially reduce instances of misconduct and improve employee morale and productivity.²¹ For 2024, we are strongly urging companies to add reductions in misconduct to their factors for considering remote or hybrid employees and workforce.

Procedures: Training business stakeholders on behavioral signs that may indicate misconduct can help. As an example, undergoing a significant amount of family or personal stress can lead to misconduct, just as being the first one in the office and last out the door can indicate misconduct.²² Training and vigilance is key.

Accountability is also critical when misconduct is uncovered. Because misconduct is contagious, when people see misconduct going unchecked and offenders not being held accountable, they are more likely to engage in misconduct themselves or lose faith in the organization. A 2023 survey found that “40% of employees have little confidence in their employer’s approach to addressing [misconduct] concerns.”²³ These workers don’t seem to be wrong considering the same study found “resolutions from investigations have declined from 70% in 2019 to 63% in 2023.”²⁴ In 2024, we strongly encourage organizations to review their procedures for employees reporting misconduct and the accountability mechanisms.

Benefits: Benefits that help ensure safety, security, and accountability can make a big difference. Studies have shown that requiring workers to take paid time off work is known to reduce stress as well as prevent financial crimes like embezzlement.²⁵ In 2024, mandatory time off should be a requirement. It is the easiest way to uncover fraud in an organization.

People

Cross-functional Stakeholders: Engaging in misconduct and mitigating it isn’t a one-person job. Contractors, freelancers, junior-level workers, management, leadership, board members, and even investors can engage in misconduct.²⁶ An organization's ability to effectively prevent, identify, and mitigate misconduct needs to be comprehensive, and that requires a team of several stakeholders throughout the company – including in HR and Talent Acquisition, procurement, legal, IT and more all working together to mitigate misconduct and hold people accountable when misconduct is uncovered.²⁷ In 2024, we are encouraging organizations to create a plan to prevent misconduct in the hiring process to reduce the impact of misconduct on their organization.

Diversity: Diverse and inclusive workplaces are also more likely to effectively mitigate misconduct. Diverse groups of interviewers during a hiring process are more likely to spot intolerant or bigoted candidates,²⁸ making diversity an important factor in preventing and mitigating misconduct. In 2024, we are encouraging organizations to not get on the bandwagon of reducing or eliminating their DE&I teams and instead add to their benefit the reduction of misconduct.

Technology

Ensuring your Work, HR, and TA tech stacks is comprehensive enough to prevent, identify, and effectively mitigate misconduct. That means incorporating Background checks, Reference checks, Online screening for misconduct, Whistleblower hotlines and reporting tools, and employee listening or feedback solutions.²⁹ Leveraging third-party providers is important to ensuring proper security, safety, and compliance measures are in place.

‍Next Steps

In this report, you will learn more about workplace misconduct and its impact. Fama has also aggregated and anatomized workplace misconduct data collected in 2023 and segmented it

by industry. The misconduct by industry data is a benchmark to help you understand how much misconduct typically exists within your industry and how your industry compares to others. This data will also help provide a baseline of the behaviors that may exist within your organization. You will also learn strategies organizations can take to mitigate misconduct in the workplace.

What is Misconduct at Work?

It’s important to understand what workplace misconduct is, the difference between mild and extreme misconduct behaviors, and the impact of that misconduct on organizations. Find out below before diving into industry benchmarks.

What is Workplace Misconduct?

At its core, workplace misconduct is a violation of the law or an employer’s code of conduct.⁴⁰ It’s behavior that is harmful to an organization, its workforce, and other business stakeholders. There are multiple kinds of workplace misconduct, ranging from mild or benign instances of general misconduct to severe acts of gross misconduct.

General Misconduct

General misconduct is behavior that may be unintentional or minor infractions such as chronic absenteeism or tardiness, misrepresenting information on a job application, insubordination, or inappropriate comments to coworkers or customers. Usually, general misconduct results in written or verbal warnings, and not immediate significant adverse action or termination.⁴¹

‍Gross Misconduct

Gross misconduct, on the other hand, is intentional and significantly damaging behavior in or around the workplace like theft, embezzlement, fraud, threatening coworkers or customers, or acts of violence.⁴² These acts often result in immediate dismissal or even legal action.

Whether general or gross misconduct, workplace misconduct happens every day and causes great harm to your organization’s ability to effectively and compliantly operate.

‍Misconduct at Work Impacts an Organization

Misconduct takes a widespread toll. Victims and survivors of misconduct may experience emotional, mental, physical, or financial impacts,⁴³ depending on the type of misconduct and their proximity to it. Organizations, on the other hand, often feel the consequences to their corporate and employer brand reputation, legal status and ability to remain compliant, as well as any business stakeholders like other workers or customers, and ultimately the organization’s financial status.‍

Talent Acquisition and Management Impacts

People want to work for an ethical company that aligns with their mission and values – not one embroiled in ongoing scandals. In fact, 82% of workers would prefer to be paid less and work for a company with ethical business practices rather than receive higher pay at a company with questionable ethics.⁴⁴ Even more, 84% of job seekers say the reputation of a company as an employer is important to them when they are applying to jobs.⁴⁵ Having misconduct issues limits the talent pool.

Looking specifically at employee and company performance, witnessing or experiencing misconduct at work impacts workers’ ability and desire to perform, continue to work in an ethical manner, and even remain in the organization. Research shows that just 1 in 20 workers on a team engaging in misconduct lowers productivity by 30 to 40 percent and makes employees on the team 54 percent more likely to leave.⁴⁶

Those that do remain are likely to engage in misconduct themselves. Harvard Business Review found that misconduct has a social multiplier and that every instance of misconduct leads to more of it.⁴⁷ In Financial Services, for example, “financial advisors are 37% more likely to commit misconduct if they encounter a new co-worker with a history of misconduct.”⁴⁸ This makes identifying misconduct, holding offenders accountable, and removing the misconduct behaviors from the organization before others take note and begin acting is critical.

The bottom line – misconduct lowers productivity and misconduct breads more misconduct.

‍Brand and Corporate Reputation Damages

Internally, as great employees see ongoing misconduct and begin to leave,⁴⁹ organizations are then stuck with poor-quality workers making, selling, and promoting products and engaging with clients and customers.

The poor employer brand and bad customer experiences⁵⁰ make it harder for companies to maintain a positive corporate and employer brand, which impacts how potential consumers are willing to engage with an organization. Research from UCLA and the University of Amsterdam found that a company’s brand reputation impacts consumer behavior as much as price and quality.⁵¹ The study showed that just a single sexual harassment instance can tank a brand’s reputation.⁵² Considering sexual misconduct is one of the most common types of misconduct we found in 2023, this finding is significant.

The study went on to discuss the brand and consumer impact of other types of misconduct, like fraud. What’s interesting, claims of sexual misconduct impact an organization’s reputation more than fraud.⁵³ Though, there are still certainly brand and financial repercussions for fraud.

As the lines between people’s work, home, and even digital lives collide, employee conduct both on- and off-duty alike can make an impact on the business reputation. As an example, the now infamous bar and restaurant in Los Angeles, Schwartz and Sandy’s, is a prime example of how off-duty executive conduct can tarnish an entire organization’s reputation, increase instances of misconduct, and impact the bottom line.⁵⁴ Regulators are noticing the blurred lines between on-duty, off-duty, and even online conduct, and are even beginning to regulate employee behavior online – more on this to follow.

‍Legal and Compliance Issues

As mentioned above, regulators are beginning to address the need for organizations to act on both on- and off-duty misconduct as the lines blur between our work, personal lives, and online activity. In 2023, the EEOC issued guidance that notes employers may be liable for online harassment committed by their employees, even if that harassment occurs only over the employee’s private social media accounts.⁵⁵ An example of this might be if a worker is sexually harassing someone in the office as well as online after work hours, no matter where the misconduct is going on, organizations need to take proactive and preventative measures to ensure worker and customer safety.

It’s also notable that the EEOC is getting involved in more misconduct cases year over year. In their September 2023 update, the EEOC reported that they are representing 50% more cases than they did in their 2022 fiscal year.⁵⁶ And EEOC examples only represent legal matters that make it to the federal level.

Outside of the organization at large, organizational stakeholders are also being increasingly held liable for failing to prevent, identify, and hold people properly accountable for misconduct. It isn’t just the offenders, but board members⁵⁷ and even corporate executive officers⁵⁸ face legal implications for ongoing employee misconduct.‍

Financial Impacts

Eventually, the workforce, reputational, and legal issues take a financial toll on an employer. The cultural impact of misconduct translates to hard lost dollars. When a company avoids hiring or terminates a toxic employee, even if they are rainmakers, they experience twice the value to the company than hiring a superstar performer with misconduct.⁵⁹ In total, toxic workplace cultures cost companies $223 billion from turnover over the last 5 years.⁶⁰ That alongside legal bills, fines, settlements, replacing new team members, and other costs, organizations spending due to workplace misconduct is huge.

These costs can add up to and surpass:

$4.6 trillion globally due to occupational fraud⁶¹
$50 billion a year from employee theft⁶²
Between $300 and $1000 per employee per year on harassment⁶³
$3.5 billion in general costs and lost productivity due to sexual harassment at work each year⁶⁴
$250 to $330 billion due to workplace violence annually⁶⁵
And, $172 billion due to racial discrimination and intolerance over a 5-year period⁶⁶

Misconduct creates a significant impact and costs employers trillions of dollars per year.⁶⁷ This is why companies cannot take a back seat when it comes to workplace misconduct. It’s simply not worth it.

With a basic understanding of what workplace misconduct is and how it impacts the organization, there are relatively low cost high reward opportunities to impact misconduct in your workplace that we will highlight throughout this report. One of the best ways to use this report is to first review total misconduct for 2023 then go to your industry to understand how it compares to the overall average. Now, let's dive into the methodologies and data driving this report.

‍Research Objectives & Methodology

Now that we understand what misconduct is and its impact on organizations, let’s dive into the objectives and methodologies behind the research and benchmarks. ‍

Why Fama?

Since our founding in 2015, Fama has been on a mission to protect organizations from bad hires. The passion sparked after Mones hired a VP of Sales that had all the right qualifications to lead a sales team, but sexually harassed the top sales rep shortly after joining. She left and the company crumbled. A post-mortem showed the VP had a history of harassing women online. “Had we known, we never would have hired him,” Mones said. He realized online screening for workplace misconduct would have prevented the situation, and founded Fama shortly after. Keep this point in mind as you continue through the report and findings for 2023.

Today, Fama is a market leader in online background and candidate screening. Our award-winning solutions identify the 1 in 10 candidates who engage in online misconduct to help Talent Acquisition teams improve quality of hire, avoid costly legal action from misconduct, and create safe and inclusive workplaces that make great employees want to stay.

Our solution compliantly and ethically searches thousands of online public sources for misconduct our customers detail in their Employee Handbooks. We remove protected class information from reports and require candidate consent – aligning with FCRA, EEOC, GDPR, and SOC 2 compliance. Over 3,600 companies trust Fama to screen over 45 million candidates.

Research Objective

This research is designed to identify major trends in workplace misconduct across the most prevalent industries to increase awareness of this issue, and offer insight into how companies can prevent, identify, and resolve misconduct within their own industries and organizations. ‍

Methodologies

In 2023, Fama ran hundreds of thousands of reports and found even more instances of misconduct. The reports were created with the help of our proprietary machine learning algorithms, which use artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, and enhanced by natural language processing and image recognition to analyze thousands of sources of online public data, content, and profiles. We analyzed, anonymized, and aggregated these data points to identify, classify, and quantify the prevalence of eight types of misconduct.

The generally accepted rule for analyzing the commonality and impact of misconduct is through the 5% rule. If more than 5% of an organization’s workforce is engaging in misconduct, then the company fails the 5% test. Likewise, companies with less than 5% of the workforce engaging in misconduct pass the test.⁶⁸

Here are the numbers behind the data points you’ll see below. ‍

Overview:

1 year of data
8 types of misconduct
9 industries reported on
Hundreds of thousands reports reviewed ‍‍

‍‍

Timeline:

All of these reports were run in 2023
The data in Fama reports is limited to the last 7 years, in compliance with the FCRA.

‍Compliance Metrics

The Fama solution is FCRA, EEOC, GDPR, and SOC2 compliant. This means the information we capture and report on at the candidate level and in aggregate in this report are compliant, and follow the regulations and guidance that govern reporting, employment, security, and data privacy and protection.

Here is some information on each:

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) guides consumer reporting agencies, including background checks, credit bureaus, and more, on how to operate in a way that protects consumers. One protection limits the “look-back period” or timeframe that data can be reviewed. Fama’s solution abides by the compliant 7 year limitation.⁶⁹
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces “federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee.”⁷⁰ In compliance with these regulations and protections, Fama only reports on job-relevant information and removes protected information from reports.⁷¹
SOC2 was developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) to guide organizations on the best ways to manage customer data with criteria around security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, privacy.⁷² Fama’s SOC2 Type 1 achievement shows our commitment to compliance and protecting clients.⁷³
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union law that governs data protection, privacy, and human rights law in the EU.⁷⁴ Fama processes data in compliance with GDPR.⁷⁵

‍Types of Misconduct Analyzed

Posts and images shared by the candidate or articles posted about or by the candidate indicating:

Crime – Involvement in or support for a crime committed by someone else.
Violence – Advocacy, support, incitement, plans, or acts of violence.
Threats – threats of physical harm to people, property damage, or controlling or intimidating content.
Harassment – that the candidate ostracizes, shames, name-calls, or spews patronizing insults at others.
Intolerance – Content within a post containing racism, sexism, homophobia, racial slurs, xenophobia, antisemitism, stereotypes, or other forms of intolerance and hate speech.
Illicit Drugs – the candidate is speaking about, referring to, or using illicit drugs.
Cannabis – the candidate is speaking about, referring to, or using cannabis.
Sexual Content – shares content containing or referring to sex or nudity

‍

‍Industries included in the report:

Business Services
Consumer Services
Education
Financial Services
Government & Non-Profit
Health, Pharma And Biotech
Manufacturing
Media And Entertainment
Technology

Now that we understand the objective of this report, the context the data was collected under, and the methodologies used in the analysis, let’s take a look at our findings.

Our Findings

Similar to 2022, 10% of candidates Fama screened had at least one misconduct flag – 2x higher than the 5% threshold indicating safe levels of misconduct. However, when misconduct was flagged in a candidate’s content, candidates had on average nearly 12 misconduct flags, an increase from an average of 10 flags in 2022.⁷⁶ This shows that the same people engaging in bad behavior are engaging in more misconduct than ever before. Considering this increase, it’s important to identify candidates engaging in misconduct early before they are hired and begin engaging in misconduct within your organization.

Most Common Type of Misconduct

The most common types of misconduct found in candidate reports were harassment, intolerance, and sex. The types of misconduct were also the most common in 2022, as well. The chart breaks down the levels of misconduct flagged in content by type.

With a good understanding of the overall findings, we can now look at misconduct by industry.

Misconduct by Industry

In 2023, 8 out of 9 industries failed the 5% rule. The industries with the highest levels of misconduct were Consumer Services,

Media and Entertainment, and Education. All of those industries ranked in the highest levels of misconduct in 2022, as well. What’s different, however, is the drop in misconduct in Technology. The only industry that passed this year was Healthcare, which also passed in 2022. See the industry breakdowns below for more details.

Now let’s take a look at misconduct by industry.

Conclusion

Workplace misconduct is still a big problem, and it continues to have a wide-spread impact on victims, business stakeholders, and organizations around the world.

The good news is that overall misconduct levels have dropped ever so slightly over the last several years. In 2021, we reported overall levels of misconduct at 11.4%. In 2022, misconduct decreased to 10.7%.¹³⁶ Misconduct fell again to 10.4% in 2023. The industry leading the decline was the Technology industry – even with a 9 percent drop in misconduct still saw levels more than doubling the 5% threshold.

Both good and bad – the one industry that successfully mitigated employee misconduct to safe levels in 2023 was Healthcare. The industry also successfully kept employee misconduct levels below the 5% threshold in 2022. However, one would have to view the industry through rose colored glasses to not look at external data that shows the industry is, unfortunately, plagued with patient and visitor misconduct. Considering the enhanced background screening processes that healthcare professionals undergo during the hiring process, it’s hopeful to see that workers aren’t the main perpetrators.¹³⁷

The unfortunate news, on the other hand, is that all eight other industries benchmarked misconduct levels above the 5%

threshold – one more than last year. All of the industries pushing return to office initiatives including business services, financial services, as well as government and nonprofits saw increases. Similar to 2022, consumer services also topped the charts this year with misconduct increasing yet again by another 10 percent. Misconduct in Consumer Services has seen dramatic increases over the years – jumping 10% between 2022 and 2023 after increasing more than 16% between 2021 and 2022.¹³⁸

Clearly, there’s still work to do.

With a better understanding of the misconduct going on across industries and the major factors contributing to those results, we can draw actionable conclusions to help businesses like yours reduce and mitigate workplace misconduct. That includes: ensuring the organization has the right processes and policies in place, the right people safeguarding the organization, and the right technology to prevent, identify, and navigate these critical issues.

‍How to Mitigate Misconduct in the Workplace

Understanding the types of misconduct and their implications can help employers proactively combat misconduct at work. Strategic planning, thoughtful implementation, and continuous monitoring ensure long-term success. In practice, that means developing and maintaining processes including the policies, procedures, and benefits that set workers up for success, ensuring the right internal and external stakeholders are on the lookout and can remain vigilant, and providing the proper technological resources to support prevention, identification, and accountability.

Here is a reminder of what that entails:

Processes Recommendations for 2024

Policies: Every organization should have an Employee Handbook. The handbook outlines the company mission, vision, values, and culture and details what behaviors are acceptable at work and which ones are to be avoided in an Employee Code of Conduct. These Code of Conducts usually detail specific inappropriate behaviors and consequences for non-compliance. As more organizations get in trouble for employee behavior online,¹³⁹ many now include a Social Media Policy in the Employee Code of Conduct to safeguard the organization from these liabilities. For 2024, this is a must have. With the increased volume in posts by those engaging in misconduct organizations need to be sure they are equipped to mitigate these issues.

Another policy that can help is remote work. While organizations argue about the efficacy of remote work, working from home limits exposure to misconduct. Reinstating this policy could substantially reduce instances of misconduct and improve employee morale and productivity.¹⁴⁰ For 2024, we are strongly urging companies to add reductions in misconduct to their factors for considering remote or hybrid employees and workforce.

Accountability is also critical when misconduct is uncovered. Because misconduct is contagious, when people see misconduct going unchecked and offenders not being held accountable, they are more likely to engage in misconduct themselves or lose faith in the organization. A 2023 survey found that “40% of employees have little confidence in their employer’s approach to addressing [misconduct] concerns.”¹⁴² These workers don’t seem to be wrong considering the same study found “resolutions from investigations have declined from 70% in 2019 to 63% in 2023.”¹⁴³ In 2024, we strongly encourage organizations to review their procedures for employees reporting misconduct and the accountability mechanisms.

Benefits: Benefits that help ensure safety, security, and accountability can make a big difference. Studies have shown that requiring workers to take paid time off work is known to reduce stress as well as prevent financial crimes like embezzlement.¹⁴⁴ In 2024, mandatory time off should be a requirement. It is the easiest way to uncover fraud in an organization.

People

Cross-functional Stakeholders: Engaging in misconduct and mitigating it isn’t a one-person job. Contractors, freelancers, junior-level workers, management, leadership, board members, and even investors can engage in misconduct.¹⁴⁵ An organization's ability to effectively prevent, identify, and mitigate misconduct needs to be comprehensive, and that requires a team of several stakeholders throughout the company – including in HR and Talent Acquisition, procurement, legal, IT and more all working together to mitigate misconduct and hold people accountable when misconduct is uncovered.¹⁴⁶ In 2024, we are encouraging organizations to create a plan to prevent misconduct in the hiring process to reduce the impact of misconduct on their organization.

Diversity: Diverse and inclusive workplaces are also more likely to effectively mitigate misconduct. Diverse groups of interviewers during a hiring process are more likely to spot intolerant or bigoted candidates,¹⁴⁷ making diversity an important factor in preventing and mitigating misconduct. In 2024, we are encouraging organizations not to get on the bandwagon of reducing or eliminating their DE&I teams and instead add to their benefit the reduction of misconduct.

Technology

Ensuring your Work, HR, and TA tech stacks is comprehensive enough to prevent, identify, and effectively mitigate misconduct. That means incorporating Background checks, Reference checks, Online screening for misconduct, Whistleblower hotlines and reporting tools, and employee listening or feedback solutions.¹⁴⁸ Leveraging third-party providers is important to ensuring proper security, safety, and compliance measures are in place.‍

Final thoughts

As we look back at the state of workplace misconduct in 2023 and look ahead into 2024, it’s important to take off the rose colored glasses and take a look at your own HR and Talent Acquisition teams to assess whether you have the right processes, people, and technologies in place to keep your organization and employees safe.

For some companies, that may mean reversing return to office plans – nearly 80% of managers are already regretting.¹⁴⁹ For others, that may mean increasing training for managers on how to identify and hold people accountable, even rainmakers, for misconduct. Others may implement comprehensive wellness programs to improve support for employees, understanding that in stressful and uncertain times like these, “any of us are capable of being the ‘toxic person’ if put under stressful, competitive conditions.”¹⁵⁰And others may want to enhance their tech stack with solutions that can help, like online misconduct screenings.

Wherever your industry is today, wherever your organization is today, taking the steps to protect workers, brands, and profits is always a winning business strategy.

To benchmark misconduct in your industry, take our benchmarking quiz here.¹⁵¹