Unethical behaviour | Staff misconduct going unreported as colleagues fear reprisals

Bad behaviour in UK workplaces is routinely being witnessed - but not reported, according to new research from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

While the British public continues to be surprised time and time again when toxic employees are exposed after years of unethical behaviour, CMI’s survey of over 1,000 British managers finds that nearly one in four (23%) managers claimed that they have personally witnessed unethical behaviour at their organisation in the last year, and one in three (33%) stating that they have knowledge of (but have not personally witnessed) unethical behaviour.

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While two-thirds of managers stated that they reported unethical behaviour, one in three incidents went unreported. Despite holding managerial roles, many respondents pointed to organisational failures as the primary reason for their reluctance to report.

The leading reason managers had for not reporting what they had witnessed was a lack of confidence in leadership to take action (37%), followed by a lack of trust in the reporting process (29%), fear of retaliation (28%) and concerns about the negative impact of reporting on their career (22%).