Workplace misconduct is at an historic low, having steadily and significantly declined since 2007. That's the encouraging news from a new survey released by the Ethics Resource Center.

The center's National Business Ethics Survey, conducted every two years, found that 41 percent of more than 6,400 workers surveyed said they have observed misconduct on the job, down from 55 percent in 2007. The report also found that fewer employees felt pressure to compromise their standards, down to nine percent from 13 percent in 2011.

Extremely serious forms of misconduct were observed less frequently in 2013. Just three percent of employees surveyed said they were aware of misleading information on financial reports; two percent said they observed somebody in their company who had offered bribes to public officials.

                                  

“Companies are working harder to build strong cultures and implement increasingly sophisticated ethics and compliance programs,” said Michael Oxley, ERC's chairman of the board and a former Congressman who co-sponsored the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in a statement. “The results of the survey are encouraging and show that companies are doing a better job of holding workers accountable, imposing discipline for misconduct, and letting it be known publicly that bad behavior will be punished.”

Misconduct by Managers

Managers, although expected to act as role models and enforce discipline, are responsible for a large share of workplace misconduct (60 percent) and senior managers are more likely than lower-level managers to break rules, the survey says. Employees claimed that members of management are responsible for six of every ten instances of misconduct and pointed the finger at senior managers in 24 percent of broken rules. Middle managers were identified as the culprit 19 percent of the time; first-line supervisors were identified as bad actors 17 percent of the time.

Reporting and Retaliation

More than one in five workers who reported misconduct said they suffered from retribution as a result of doing so, nearly identical to the rate in the 2011 survey and up from 12 percent in 2007. Asked why they kept quiet about misconduct, more than one-third of those who answered feared payback from senior leadership; 24 percent feared that co-workers might retaliate.

Other findings:

The percentage of companies viewed as having “strong” ethics cultures climbed to 66 percent in 2013, compared to 60 percent in the last survey.

The percentage of companies providing ethics training rose from 74 percent to 81 percent between 2011 and 2013.

Two-thirds of companies included ethical conduct as a performance measure in employee evaluations, up from 60 percent in 2011.

The study surveyed 6,400 American workers ages 18 and older who work at least 20 hours a week in companies of two or more employees. It was conducted from Sept. 30 to Nov. 15, 2013. Live webinars will be held by the Ethics Resource Center on Feb. 21 and Feb. 25 to offer an extended briefing on NBES findings.

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