“Do You Have Ethical Agility? Does Your Company?”

Global Business Ethics Survey® Report. This report, The State of Ethics & Compliance in the Workplace: A Look at Global Trends, is the result of a longitudinal research study that explores trends affecting organizations and their ethics & compliance efforts worldwide.

The core of this report focuses on five major trends facing organizations today.

1. Ethical Culture
2. Pressure to Compromise Standards
3. Observed Misconduct
4. Rates of Reporting Misconduct
5. Retaliation

The survey data and report detail several historic findings that illustrate the evolution of successful E&C programs, including key areas where improvement of programs may be needed.

Highlights

• Culture strength is among the highest it has been in the U.S. in over 20 years: Slightly more than one in five U.S. employees (21%) were in workplaces with a strong ethical culture, an indication that more organizations are implementing effective ethics & compliance programs. The global median for strong cultures was 14%.
• Employee pressure reaches the highest level since 2000: U.S. respondents indicated a sharp increase in employee pressure, indicating more employees are experiencing pressure to violate their organization’s ethics standards than in previous years. This is likely due, at least in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic which caused significant organizational changes. ECI research has shown that periods of intense organizational change lead to increased pressure on employees to bend the rules. Employee pressure has also increased globally since ECI began surveying employees worldwide in 2015.
• The rate of observed misconduct has remained relatively steady over the past 20 years: Although the rate of observed misconduct in the U.S. increased very slightly since 2017, it had trended down since its peak in 2007. Global results indicate a slight increase since 2019 as well.
• Employee perceptions of retaliation after reporting misconduct escalates to record high: In the U.S., rates of retaliation have more than tripled since 2013; they have almost doubled globally since 2019.

About this Report

Since 1994, the Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) has conducted a longitudinal, cross-sectional study of workplace conduct from the employee’s perspective. Now in its sixteenth iteration, ECI’s Global Business Ethics Survey® (GBES®) data provide the global benchmark on the state of ethics & compliance (E&C) in business. Since its inception, ECI’s research has provided leaders with reliable data on trends in workplace ethics focusing on the key drivers that improve ethical cultures in the workplace and how changes in culture impact ethics outcomes. The strength of an organization’s ethics culture is measured through multiple indicators of employee behaviors at various levels within an organization, including leaders, supervisors, and coworkers. These behaviors demonstrate and promote a commitment to ethics on a daily basis. A thriving ethics culture involves commitment, modeling, and the right conduct by all employees in an organization. Our research shows that the quality of an organization’s E&C program and the strength of the organization’s ethics culture is key to achieving desired ethics outcomes.

In addition, while a multitude of factors influences ethical behavior, the interplay of four major ethics outcomes is tied to the daily micro-decisions employees make with respect to how they behave in the workplace. These are pressure in the workplace to compromise ethical standards; observations of misconduct; reporting misconduct; and ultimately, the retaliation perceived
by employees, after they reported misconduct.