Workplace misconduct statistics show a broad leadership risk: misconduct is experienced, observed, reported, and sometimes punished unevenly. More than 20% of employed people worldwide have experienced violence or harassment at work, while 65% of employees in the 2023 Global Business Ethics Survey (GBES) said they observed misconduct during the previous 12 months. These figures come from different populations and definitions, so they should be read as complementary indicators rather than combined into one prevalence rate.
Contents
- Global prevalence and ethics culture
- U.S. bullying and power dynamics
- Harassment and sexual-harassment charges
- Discrimination and enforcement outcomes
- Reporting and retaliation
- Violence and nonfinancial misconduct
Global prevalence and ethics culture
The International Labour Organization’s 2024 report found that more than 20% of employed people worldwide had experienced violence or harassment at work. The measure concerns violence and harassment in the world of work and should not be treated as a count of every form of misconduct. International Labour Organization, Preventing and addressing violence and harassment in the world of work through occupational safety and health measures.
The 2023 GBES presents a wider view of ethical conditions. Its global median share of employees who observed workplace misconduct in the previous 12 months was 65%. The global median share who felt pressure to compromise workplace standards or the law was 28%. Among employees who felt that pressure, 84% also observed misconduct. Ethics & Compliance Initiative, 2023 Global Business Ethics Survey: Summary of Findings.
The same survey suggests that formal programs and lived culture do not always align. Just over 10% of employees globally said they worked in a strong ethical workplace culture in 2023, and fewer than 50% said their organization had implemented the most basic elements of a high-quality ethics-and-compliance program. Almost half of employees worldwide who reported misconduct said they experienced retaliation afterward. These are employee-reported survey findings, not administrative counts of confirmed cases.
For leaders, the figures point to several distinct questions: Do employees see misconduct? Do they feel pressure to participate in it? Do they understand the reporting process? And do they believe the organization will protect them after a report? A policy may exist while the practical answers remain unfavorable.
U.S. bullying and power dynamics
The 2024 Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey asked 1,024 U.S. adults about current or last workplace experiences on September 23–25, 2024. In that sample, 32% said they had directly experienced abusive conduct at work, while another 14% had witnessed abusive conduct without being the direct target. Combining direct experience and witnessing, 46% were affected by workplace bullying or abusive conduct, and 72% were aware that workplace bullying occurs. Workplace Bullying Institute, 2024 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey.
The WBI report estimated 52.2 million U.S. workers were directly bullied and 74.8 million were affected directly or as witnesses. Those totals are survey-based extrapolations from the August 2024 U.S. civilian labor force, not a census of workers.
The survey also shows differences across groups and roles:
| WBI comparison | Reported share |
|---|---|
| LGBTQ respondents reporting workplace bullying | 51% |
| Heterosexual respondents reporting workplace bullying | 31% |
| African-American respondents’ direct-bullying rate | 44% |
| Male respondents reporting direct bullying | 34% |
| Female respondents reporting direct bullying | 31% |
In respondents’ worst bullying cases, men were identified as perpetrators in 71% of cases, while women represented 51% of targeted people. The principal perpetrator acted alone in 75% of cases. Non-supervisory workers represented 54% of targeted people, compared with 38% for managers. These role figures describe the WBI sample’s reported worst cases; they do not establish that a particular demographic causes misconduct.
The consequences reported in the survey were also asymmetric. Sixty-two percent of bullied targets said they lost their jobs after the worst-case bullying situation. Perpetrators experienced negative consequences at a 27% rate, compared with 62% for targeted employees. In the same September 2024 survey, 87% of U.S. adults supported a law extending protection beyond existing status-based nondiscrimination laws to repeated harmful workplace mistreatment.
Harassment and sexual-harassment charges
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 88,531 new discrimination charges in fiscal year (FY) 2024, up 9.2% from FY 2023. It resolved 87,219 discrimination charges in FY 2024; 18% of resolved charges had outcomes favorable to the charging party, called merit-factor resolutions. The agency secured more than $469.6 million for individuals through its administrative process. EEOC, 2024 Annual Performance Report.
Harassment was a substantial part of that enforcement workload. Almost 36,000 signed charges alleging harassment were filed with the EEOC in FY 2024, 68% more than in FY 2021. The agency resolved almost 34,000 harassment charges, including more than 6,000 merit-factor resolutions, producing more than $211 million in monetary benefits for charging parties. EEOC, Enforcement and Litigation Statistics.
Sexual-harassment charge counts have varied over recent fiscal years. The EEOC recorded 7,609 in FY 2018, 7,514 in FY 2019, 6,587 in FY 2020, and 5,581 in FY 2021. In FY 2023, it received more than 7,700 sexual-harassment charges, the highest number in 12 years and nearly 25% above FY 2022. EEOC, Sexual Harassment in Our Nation’s Workplaces.
The later agency report gives a separate FY 2025 snapshot: 88,201 new discrimination charges, 90,743 resolved charges, and 49,807 pending charges at year-end. The pending total was down 4.4% from 52,080 at the end of FY 2024. The EEOC secured $660 million for 17,680 victims of employment discrimination and recovered $528 million through pre-litigation enforcement, 12% more than in FY 2024. EEOC, FY 2027 Agency Performance Plan and FY 2025 Agency Performance Report.
EEOC charge and resolution counts are administrative enforcement statistics, not prevalence estimates. A charge may allege multiple bases or issues, and FY means the federal fiscal year.
Discrimination and enforcement outcomes
The EEOC filed 111 merits suits in FY 2024: 110 employment-discrimination lawsuits and one conciliation-agreement enforcement suit. Thirteen were systemic cases. The agency resolved 132 merits lawsuits and recovered more than $40 million for 4,304 individuals. Sixteen systemic cases resolved during the year produced just over $23.9 million for 4,074 victims. EEOC, 2024 Annual Performance Report.
The reported outcomes were favorable in 97% of all district-court resolutions and had a 100% success rate in systemic case resolutions in FY 2024. The agency also resolved 6,679 federal-sector hearing requests, securing approximately $181.4 million in relief, and resolved 3,162 federal-sector appeals, securing more than $8.5 million in ordered relief.
Alternative resolution produced additional measurable outcomes. The EEOC successfully resolved 71.2% of 11,998 private-sector mediations in FY 2024, obtaining more than $243.2 million in benefits. It conducted 147 federal-sector mediations and secured almost $4.2 million in benefits.
Harassment litigation was also tracked separately. In FY 2023, the EEOC filed 50 workplace-harassment lawsuits: 29 alleging sex-based hostile work environment, 16 race-based, 5 national-origin, 1 disability, 1 religion, and 6 retaliation claims. In the same fiscal year, it resolved 35 harassment lawsuits for nearly $9.8 million benefiting 184 individuals. The categories can overlap within a case, so they should not be added as a unique-case total.
Reporting and retaliation
In the United States, perceived retaliation after reporting observed misconduct fell from 66% in 2020 to 49% in 2023, according to ECI’s U.S. GBES trends report. The decline is meaningful, but nearly half of reporters still perceived retaliation in 2023. Ethics & Compliance Initiative, The State of Ethics & Compliance in the Workplace — United States Trends.
The 2023 U.S. survey records several specific post-report experiences. Twenty-five percent of reporters said other employees ignored them, and 24% said their supervisor ignored them. Twenty-four percent received unfavorable work assignments, 23% said other employees verbally abused them, and 21% said a supervisor excluded them from decisions or work activity.
Ethical culture was associated with a large difference in reported pressure to compromise standards. Among remote U.S. employees, pressure fell from 26% in weak ethical cultures to 2% in strong ethical cultures. Among on-site employees, it fell from 34% in weak ethical cultures to 10% in strong ethical cultures. These comparisons describe survey associations, not proof that culture alone caused the differences.
Violence and nonfinancial misconduct
Workplace misconduct risk can include physical harm, but fatal-injury statistics measure work injuries rather than all misconduct. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 5,283 fatal work injuries in the United States in 2023, with a fatal-injury rate of 3.5 per 100,000 full-time-equivalent workers. BLS, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries News Release — 2023 A01 Results.
Violent acts caused 740 U.S. workplace fatalities in 2023, including 458 homicides. Homicides represented 61.9% of violent workplace fatalities and 8.7% of all U.S. work-related fatalities. Transportation incidents were the most frequent fatal event, accounting for 36.8% of workplace fatalities, or 1,942 deaths. The total fatality count fell 3.7%, from 5,486 in 2022 to 5,283 in 2023.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority provides a sector-specific view of nonfinancial misconduct. In a survey of more than 1,000 investment banks, brokers, and wholesale insurance firms, bullying and harassment made up 26% of recorded nonfinancial-misconduct concerns during 2021–2023. Discrimination made up 23%, while an “other” category accounted for 41%. Financial Conduct Authority, FCA publishes results of non-financial misconduct survey.
These FCA results cover regulated U.K. financial firms, while the WBI data cover U.S. adult respondents, the ECI data measure employee-reported ethics outcomes, and the ILO summarizes global violence-and-harassment evidence. Keeping those scopes separate helps leaders use workplace misconduct statistics as risk signals without turning unlike measures into a single score.