The State of Misconduct at Work in 2024

‍The 2024 Fama State of Misconduct

The world of work is changing rapidly—and not always for the better. In 2024, political upheaval, social unrest, economic uncertainty, and the aftershocks of a global pandemic created the ideal conditions for misconduct to thrive. From rising online extremism to deadly workplace violence, the escalation of misconduct behaviors is no longer just a trend—it’s a defining risk for today’s employers.

This year’s Fama Benchmark Report reveals that 1 in 15 candidates screened in 2024 showed warning signs of workplace misconduct, with the most common flags being online harassment, intolerance, and sexual misconduct. Even more concerning, signs of violent threats tripled from the previous year, increasing from 5% to 14% of all reports reviewed.

Governments around the globe are taking action. New regulations and high-profile legal cases have expanded the definition of workplace misconduct to include online behaviors, reflecting the increasingly digital nature of our work and social lives.

In 2024, the EEOC’s definition of workplace misconduct was extended to include social media activity,¹ while the U.S. launched a centralized law enforcement misconduct database (NLEAR)² and the UK enacted the Worker Protection Act,³ focusing on prevention over response. The types of misconduct are evolving as well. Threats of violence, once a relatively rare warning signal, now rank fourth overall. The transition from “exposure” and “acceptance” of extreme content online to “advocacy” and “participation” in real-world violence⁴ is becoming more common, as seen in the assassination attempt on Donald Trump,⁵ the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson,⁶ and other workplace-targeted violence in 2024. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 458 workplace murders last year—equating to nine per week in the U.S. alone.⁷ Employers are taking notice.

‍Misconduct a Top 5 "People Risk" in 2024

Misconduct continues to be a critical challenge facing employers today. In fact, Mercer ranked it among the top five “people risks” for organizations in 2024.⁸ When left unaddressed, misconduct can trigger reputational damage, legal exposure, and even operational disruption.

Most importantly, misconduct rarely happens in isolation or without warning. It often follows a predictable path. First comes exposure—seeing others talk about or commit misconduct. Over time, repeated exposure leads to normalization. From there, individuals may begin to advocate for harmful behaviors, and finally, cross the line into participation.⁹ This slow progression makes early detection critical—and possible.

In today’s hyper-connected world, people often leave behind digital “breadcrumbs” as they move along this path. With the lines between our online and offline selves increasingly blurred, these early indicators often surface in public online activity.

That’s why online screening, also known as social media screening, has become an essential risk mitigation strategy for modern employers. By leveraging this behavioral intelligence and analyzing a candidate’s online footprint, organizations can detect early signs of misconduct—before they escalate into legal liability or workplace crises.

The Changing Landscape of Online Misconduct

Early identification of misconduct warning signs is essential to mitigating organizational risk. But an employer’s ability to detect those signs is increasingly influenced by the evolution of social media platforms, their algorithms, and shifting user behavior.¹⁰

Social media algorithms now control what content is seen, by whom, and when—shaping not only public discourse but also the visibility of behaviors that may indicate risk. Community guidelines, platform functionality, and monetization models are constantly evolving, further affecting how misconduct is expressed, shared, and detected. Meanwhile, users themselves are migrating across platforms, expanding into newer and often more decentralized digital spaces.

For example:

X (formerly Twitter) made “likes” private in 2024,¹¹ eliminating a once-reliable signal of endorsement or acceptance of problematic content—an early indicator of potential extremism or misconduct.¹²
TikTok faced the threat of a U.S. government ban, driving users to explore alternative or emerging platforms.¹³
Decentralized and niche communities—such as Bluesky, Mastodon, Patreon, and Substack—gained traction,¹⁴ creating online spaces that are harder to monitor and often less governed by moderation.
Subscription-based models across platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and OnlyFans introduced “premium content” and gated analytics,¹⁵ further limiting transparency and segmenting information based on who can pay for access.

These shifts have dramatically changed where and how misconduct surfaces online, and by extension, how employers can detect it.

Warning Signs Are Evolving—and Harder to Detect

Not only are online behaviors spreading across more fragmented and private digital spaces, but the very nature of warning signs is also changing.

Transparency is decreasing, and misinformation is rising. Platform algorithms increasingly create echo chambers, reinforcing users' existing beliefs and making extreme views seem more acceptable.¹⁶ This normalization can easily spill into the workplace, turning online behavior into real-world actions.

Decentralized communities present new risks. While they offer benefits like autonomy and security,¹⁷ these spaces can also foster extremism, censorship, and groupthink.¹⁸ Many discussions that normalize or even plan misconduct now occur in these niche environments, outside the reach of traditional detection tools—but with very real offline consequences.

Early behavioral signals are disappearing. Public “likes,” once a key indicator of potential risk, are no longer accessible on platforms like X.¹⁹ This has removed a previously valuable signal from the misconduct detection process.

To better understand the impact of these warning signs, Fama re-examined both 2023 and 2024 data with these early “like” signals excluded. The findings were striking: even without these early flags, signs of misconduct increased by 50% year over year, rising from 3.2% in 2023 to 4.8% in 2024. This sharp uptick suggests that misconduct isn’t just persisting—it’s intensifying. And with platforms limiting visibility into early behavioral cues, employers now face a greater challenge in spotting risk before it enters the workplace.

‍Human Impact of Online Screening

In recent years, Fama has helped customers prevent:

A potential workplace shooting, after identifying a candidate’s online manifesto and co-worker hit list
A doctor who was illicitly selling human body parts on X (Twitter)
A school administrator who posted racist comments and made violent remarks about children

Without early intervention, these behaviors could have resulted in lawsuits, public backlash, and most concerning, workplace violence. Instead, by leveraging behavior intelligence through online screening, employers were able to identify and remove risk before it entered their organizations.

‍In an era when the stakes are this high, prevention isn’t just proactive—it’s essential.

Today’s workplace demands a more proactive, modern approach to detecting misconduct. Fama recommends a simple yet effective approach to mitigate misconduct in 2025 and beyond:

Expand your screening sources to include a compliant web search, social media and emerging online communities.
Leverage compliant, third-party screening partners to maintain consistency and objectivity especially for online screening.
Incorporate regular, ongoing screening throughout the employee lifecycle—not just at the point of hire to keep the pulse of potential online misconduct.

Workplace misconduct is no longer an isolated issue—it’s a multifaceted challenge with legal, reputational, financial, and human consequences. But it’s also preventable. Fama’s AI-powered online screening solution provides behavior intelligence and early insight that can signal potential risks—before they become tomorrow’s headlines.

Introduction

Generally, uncertainty, unrest, and social isolation are breeding grounds for polarization, extremism, and misconduct.²⁰ The last several years of a global pandemic,²¹ economic hardships and job insecurity,²² ongoing wars,²³ and massive global political changes in 2024,²⁴ have created the perfect environment for extreme misconduct to flourish.

What we’re seeing now is the escalation of this extremism spilling into modern discourse, spaces, and the workplace. For example, take the assassination attempts on Donald Trump during his candidacy for the job as President of the United States,²⁵ the murder of United Healthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson,²⁶ and the numerous attempts at executive lives since.²⁷ Leaders aren’t the only victims of workplace violence – the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports hundreds of workers are murdered each year at work.²⁸

Workplace misconduct of all kinds has become so prevalent that governments worldwide are studying it, expanding legal definitions to keep up with the times, tracking misconduct in central databases, and adapting regulations to focus on prevention in addition to accountability.

Consider these recent developments from 2024:

Okinowsky v. Garland expanded the EEOC’s definition of workplace misconduct to include behavior on social media.²⁹
The U.S. launched the National Law Enforcement Agency Reporting (NLEAR) system to centralize law enforcement misconduct data.³⁰
The UK enacted the Worker Protection Act to shift employer focus from simply managing workplace harassment to preventing it.³¹
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) studied non-financial misconduct in financial services.³²

Over the decade, Fama has helped companies mitigate workplace misconduct issues like violence, intolerance, and harassment. Today, over 95% of global background screeners trust Fama’s sophisticated AI-powered solution to screen for early warning signs of misconduct online.

As the global leader in online screening, we publish this research each year to highlight trends in workplace misconduct and update guidance on how employers can protect themselves from it through modern screening best practices. In the past, the research largely focused on major misconduct trends by industry. This year you will still find industry breakdowns; however, a majority of the trends will apply across all industries.

You’ll see the levels of misconduct and types of misconduct uncovered in our 2024 Fama reports – anonymized, aggregated, and classified by industry and type of misconduct found in online content.

You’ll learn about:

The current state of workplace misconduct
How we got here
And, what employers can do to protect your people and profits in 2025 and beyond

Read below to see how your industry fared and the solutions that can help prevent misconduct at work in today’s digital, but polarized, age.

‍What is Workplace Misconduct?

Misconduct at work refers to actions that harm an organization, its employees, or stakeholders.³³ It falls into two main categories: general misconduct and gross misconduct.

General misconduct includes unintentional or minor infractions such as chronic tardiness, misrepresenting job application details, insubordination, or inappropriate comments. These behaviors are usually addressed through warnings or training.³⁴

Gross misconduct involves severe, often intentional actions like theft, fraud, workplace violence, harassment, or substance abuse on the job. These behaviors typically lead to immediate termination and potential legal consequences.³⁵

‍The Impact of Workplace Misconduct

The repercussions of workplace misconduct are extensive. If left unchecked, misconduct can negatively impact an organization's financial health, talent acquisition and retention, legal standing, brand reputation, and other key areas. Let’s explore the impact below:

Legal and Compliance Impact of Workplace Misconduct

Many acts of misconduct are also legal issues, and failure to effectively investigate and address them can extend those legal issues and lawsuits from an individual employee to the entire organization.³⁶

At a small scale, lawsuits are time consuming and expensive, draining company resources and impacting productivity by those involved in any investigation. Investigators typically charge between $195 to $275 an hour.³⁷

Once legal action of any kind begins, the cost to organizations is large – whether cases go to court or not. Embezzlement cases result in an average loss of $357,650 per incident.³⁸ Legal settlements for employment discrimination average $40,000, with severe cases reaching millions.³⁹ In 2022, the EEOC recovered $513 million in discrimination- related monetary benefits.⁴⁰ Even cases that don't go to court can be costly with the EEOC recovering $513 million in monetary benefits related to discrimination claims in 2022.⁴¹ In the UK, tribunal claims for sexual misconduct average £27,000 to £45,000, with settlements outside tribunals ranging from £10,000 to £15,000.⁴²

At the highest scale, unresolved misconduct can lead to courts ordering the shut down of operations or even the dissolution of entire companies. After all, we all remember the Enron scandal leading to the dissolution of major accounting firm Arthur Andersen⁴³ and even the WittKieffer scandal that caused the executive search firm to cease operations in the state of North Carolina.⁴⁴

Governments around the world are starting to intervene with studies,⁴⁵ case law,⁴⁶ and new regulatory guidelines⁴⁷ to encourage organizations to identify misconduct early, hold those who commit misconduct accountable, and take steps to prevent it.

HR and Talent Acquisition Impact of Workplace Misconduct

From an HR perspective, workplace misconduct poses a serious threat to organizational culture. It can erode employee morale, reduce engagement, and drive down productivity—ultimately increasing turnover.⁴⁸ When misconduct is ignored or investigations are delayed, it sends a dangerous message: that harmful behavior is tolerated. This not only risks repeat offenses but can also foster a hostile work environment.⁴⁹ Over time, a lack of timely or appropriate response from leadership undermines employee trust,⁵⁰ making it harder to retain top talent and maintain a healthy workplace culture.

Brand Reputation Impact of Workplace Misconduct

Employee misconduct on social media can severely damage a company's reputation and financial stability, as it reflects on the entire organization. Problematic posts, including harassment, promotion of violence, or illegal activities, can easily be discovered by customers, investors, and business partners, leading to viral backlash, public scrutiny, and lost business opportunities.⁵¹ This not only damages internal culture but also external relationships and long-term financial stability.⁵² A company's reputation is as important as price and quality to consumers. Even one instance of misconduct, such as sexual harassment, can cause significant damage.⁵³ While employees have a right to express themselves online, employers must also protect their reputation and maintain a safe work environment.

Financial Impact of Workplace Misconduct

Workplace misconduct carries a significant financial burden. On average, companies lose:

Employee Theft & Fraud: 5% of revenue to employee theft – totalling over $4.5 trillion.⁵⁴
Workplace Violence: $56 billion a year due to workplace violence⁵⁵ and closer to $300 billion when accounting for broader impacts to healthcare costs and absenteeism.⁵⁶
Intolerance & Discrimination: $59 billion due to reduced productivity from racial and ethnic discrimination over 5 years. Absenteeism caused by workplace unfairness costs $54 billion per year.⁵⁷
Sexual Misconduct: $2.62 billion in lost productivity⁵⁸ and additional financial damages on internal investigations and potential bad press.⁵⁹ Between 2018 and 2022, the EEOC recovered $300 million for workplace sexual harassment victims.⁶⁰
Harassment: Between $300 and $1,000 per employee on hidden costs of harassment like productivity and absenteeism. It costs an average of $250,000 to defend a harassment lawsuit and the average jury award is $600,000.⁶¹
Substance Use at Work: $81 billion annually due to substance use, impacting productivity, absenteeism, and healthcare costs.⁶²

Workplace misconduct isn’t just an ethical issue—it’s a legal, HR, PR, and financial crisis that affects organizations on a global scale. Addressing misconduct through preventative measures, screening, and clear policies can reduce financial losses and create safer, more productive work environments.

‍The Times Are Changing

It only takes one bad actor to cause major problems for an organization.⁶³ This is in part because much of today’s world plays out both in person as well as online with a public audience for all to see. But, it’s also because misconduct is contagious.⁶⁴ Humans are social creatures and adopt the behaviors of those around them.⁶⁵ When people see others committing misconduct, they are more likely to do it themselves.⁶⁶ This is extremely important in understanding the trends that are shaping our digital landscapes and our workplaces.

3 Key Global Trends

To fully grasp this year’s misconduct trends, it’s important to first understand the broader context in which they’re unfolding. That begins with recognizing how individuals become radicalized over time—progressing from exposure to extreme content to active participation in harmful behaviors. Social media platforms play a central role in this process, both by enabling radicalization and by shaping the narratives around it through their algorithms, policies, and features.⁶⁷ Layered on top of this is the rapidly evolving tech landscape, which continues to influence how misconduct surfaces—and how difficult it is to detect. Together, these dynamics are reshaping what early warning signs look like and where they appear.

Trend #1. Progression of Misconduct Exposure to Participation

Misconduct doesn’t happen overnight—it follows a progression that can take weeks or months depending on the person and circumstances.

Here’s what that progression looks like:

Exposure: Individuals first see problematic content.
Acceptance: Over time, repeated exposure makes such behavior seem acceptable.
Advocacy: Once normalized by extremism, people may begin to advocate for it.
Participation: Individuals actively commit misconduct, transitioning from advocate to contributor.⁶⁸

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Evolution is not usually done in a vacuum. It’s often started and advanced with validation and encouragement from others online. For example, hate speech on X increased by 50% week over week starting in October 2022. “Likes” of hate-posts doubled during that time, as well. The long-term increase in hate speech is concerning and increases the risk of offline harm.⁶⁹

‍The long-term increase in hate speech is concerning and increases the risk of offline harm.

In 2024, the days of “exposure” and “acceptance” are long over. We’re now seeing the alarming shift to “advocacy” and “participation.” From a data perspective, this is seen in the substantial increase in threat warning signs from 5% in 2023 to 14% in 2024. In real life, this looked like numerous assassination attempts of Donald Trump,⁷⁰ the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson,⁷¹ and the public endorsements of each following the acts of violence.⁷² This shift has put CEOs on high alert, but it’s important to remember that all workers deserve a safe workplace, not just senior leaders.

Threat warning signs increased from 5% to 14% in 2024 – signaling the shift from “exposure” and “acceptance” to “advocacy” and “participation.”

And, the threat of workplace violence isn’t insignificant. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 458 people were murdered at work in 2023 in the U.S.. That’s nine people per week.⁷³

Nine people per week were murdered at work in 2023.⁷⁴

Catching the early warning signs of extremism and misconduct is more critical than ever. When it comes to our workplaces, this poses a critical threat to the wellbeing and safety of employees, profits, and business operations.

Now, let’s review the changes social media platforms made in 2024.

‍Trend #2. The Evolution of Social Media in 2024

Like any business, social media platforms are constantly changing. Whether launching new innovative features, tweaking community guidelines, or even new products and platforms altogether.

But 2024 saw arguably some of the biggest changes in recent years that had a major impact on how people use social media, gather information, and connect with others online. Those include:

TikTok was almost banned and shut down by the U.S. government, prompting users to find community elsewhere. The uncertainty surrounding the beloved platform TikTok led to a shift in digital behaviors. TikTok is a key platform for millions of content creators, communities, as well as small businesses around the world to share new ideas and even products. The looming ban forced people to look for new spaces, expanding adoption to different⁷⁵ or even newer platforms.⁷⁶
X (formerly Twitter) made “Likes” private, changing how people interact on the platform. Historically, Twitter or X “likes” have been used as a sign of endorsement, popularity, and agreement. Because of this, when people made these public endorsements on harmful, extreme content, this action was seen as one of the earliest warning signs of misconduct.⁷⁷ In June 2024, X Engineering announced the company’s decision to make “likes” private to “better protect [user] privacy.” However, X users were quick to point out that this change makes it easy for the platform to conceal fraud, manipulation, and other unethical behaviors.

Newer and decentralized online communities gained traction. Many people sought new online spaces in the face of the “Xodus” and formerly-impending TikTok ban. Users began to diversify their social media presence on emerging platforms like Bluesky⁷⁸ and also embraced decentralized, niche communities like Mastadon, Patreon, and Substack.⁷⁹
Platforms introduced “Premium Content” subscription models. Subscription-based premium models have been rolling out on platforms including LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Patreon, Substack, and OnlyFans to name a few. This model is an attractive offer for content creators doing the work to create valuable content. Ad-free experiences and VIP content are appealing to users who can afford it, as well.⁸⁰ The issue this creates, however, is it continues to enhance the divide between who has access to what information based on who can afford to pay for it.

Now let’s review how these changes influence the way employers can keep a pulse on this polarization and adoption of misconduct.

Trend #3. Warning Signs of Misconduct are Changing

The combination of these trends have changed the way content is shared, where it’s consumed, and impacted the way we detect warning signs of misconduct. For example:

The lack of transparency and rise in misinformation: Platforms have the power to dictate people’s access to information. Each platform has its own algorithm that dictates what people see, how often they see it, and even what they don’t see. As many people use social media as an important means to learn and share information, experts have called on social media platforms to enhance transparency of their algorithms to mitigate harmful silos of information. After all, evidence shows that social media platforms create echo chambers that reinforce users’ worldviews rather than to learn new points of view.⁸¹ In the context of misconduct, social media has become a place where misconduct is normalized and encouraged – and when these behaviors seep into the public domain and workplace, it gets employers in hot water.⁸²

The decentralization of online communities presents new risks. Many have embraced decentralized communities, enjoying the increased transparency, security, and community autonomy.⁸³ However, they can also further censorship, group think, and extremism, which are breeding grounds for misconduct.⁸⁴ Despite the normalization and advocacy of misconduct occurring in these online spaces, the misconduct itself does not stay online. For example, Dominique Pelicot’s trail outed a Telegram “rape group chats” online community that had over 70,000 participants⁸⁵ encouraging, planning, and gloating over acts of sexual violence.⁸⁶
Misconduct signs are harder to find. Unfortunately, sometimes employers’ ability to detect early warning signs of misconduct are at the whim of social media platforms themselves. Extreme content is more likely to receive larger responses than mundane content, so it’s often in the platform’s best interest to encourage more extreme content that pushes the bounds of socially acceptable behavior. For example, Meta just recently announced adjustments to their “hateful conduct policy” that allows for hate content on the platform.⁸⁷ In the past, Meta policy was to remove hate speech across their platforms Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and more.⁸⁸ Removing hate speech limits employers’ ability to detect misconduct warning signs. However, it does protect users by creating safe online communities.

On the other hand, in June 2024, X made “likes” private because public likes “incentiviz[ed] the wrong behavior,” and “discourag[ed people] from ‘liking’ content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.” However, the change is also causing many to ask: Why is X “trying to incentivize more questionable behavior, or exacerbate certain interests, by removing the potential for public accountability on such[?]”⁸⁹

With the aforementioned trends in mind, it’s now time to dive into Fama’s research. Let’s take a look at the research objective and methodologies below.

‍Research Objective & Methodology

‍Why Fama?

Fama is the global leader in online screening. Our award-winning solutions use behavior intelligence to identify early warning signs of misconduct – keeping workplaces safe, productive, and profitable. Our solution compliantly and ethically searches thousands of online public sources for misconduct by removing protected class information from screening results and requires candidate consent – aligning with FCRA, EEOC, GDPR, PIPEDA, and SOC 2 compliance. Over 3,600 companies trust Fama to screen over 45 million candidates.

Research Objective

This research is designed to uncover key trends in workplace misconduct. Its findings provide both an overview of trends across industries as well as help People and Talent professionals understand how to mitigate the risk and outcomes of misconduct in their organizations.

Methodologies

In 2024, Fama analyzed hundreds of thousands of reports to uncover patterns of workplace misconduct. Using proprietary AI-powered machine learning algorithms—enhanced by natural language processing and image recognition—we examined public online content from thousands of sources. This data was anonymized, aggregated, and categorized into eight key misconduct types. After that, we removed reports that did not want screen for any behaviors in our out-of-the-box solution as well as reports that only had misconduct from X “Likes.”

Overview:

1 year of data
8 types of misconduct
9 industries reported on
Hundreds of thousands reports reviewed
Reports focused on pre-employment or employment

**Fama partners with brands to prevent Influencer Misconduct! See The State of Influencer Misconduct in 2024 here!⁹⁰

Timeline:

Screenings in 2024
Data in findings are limited to the last 7 years, per FCRA regulations

Compliance Metrics

Fama’s solution is regulated by governing bodies and agencies around the world including the:

Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) regulates background screeners to protect consumers, job seekers, and workers.⁹¹
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) protects job seekers and workers from discrimination.⁹²
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulate data privacy and security in Canada and the European Union, respectively.⁹³

Following these standards ensures Fama screenings are ethical, lawful, and responsible.

Types of Misconduct Analyzed

Public content shared by the candidate or articles posted about or by the candidate indicating:

Crime: Apparent criminal activities like theft or gang affiliations.
Violence: Advocacy, incitement, or participation in violent acts.
Threats: Threats of physical harm or engagement in intimidation.
Trolling: Online harassment, direct intimidation, or content that bullies, intimidates, ostracizes, shames, name-calls, or insults a person.
Intolerance: Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or otherwise discriminatory content.
Sex: Inappropriate sexual content, from explicit images to suggestive language.
Cannabis: Mentions or images of cannabis use.
Illicit Drugs: Content promoting drugs or drug use, or use of illegal substances.

Industries Represented in the Report:

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

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We hope these insights will help employers better understand the prevalence and impact of misconduct across industries. Let’s explore the key findings from our research.

‍Research Findings & Analysis

While misconduct itself is increasing,⁹⁴ social media platforms made early warning signs harder to detect in 2024.

Despite that and including data from both before and after these changes were made, Fama found warning signs of misconduct in 1 in 15 candidates in 2024 – 8% of screenings. This includes the earliest warning signs of X “likes,” which were only included in screenings until X removed this capability in June by making it private data instead of publicly available data.

Without the earlier warning signs, misconduct risks were found in 5% of candidates. When earlier warning signs were removed from 2023 data, as well, the data shows misconduct increased by 50% year over year (from 3.2% to 4.8%).

Excluding X likes, the average bad actor had 18 warning signs of misconduct. If these misconduct warning signs are available for Fama to find – your customers, other employees, and shareholders are likely to find them, as well. The high volume of red flags shows the importance of detecting these bad actors as early as possible.

Most Common Type of Misconduct

In 2024, the most common types of misconduct were trolling/online harassment, intolerance, and sexual misconduct. What’s new – and alarming – however, is the rise in threats.

Threat signals rose from 5% to 14% year over year. The substantial rise in threats suggests misconduct has escalated from “exposure” and “acceptance" to “advocacy” and “participation.” This shift points to changing behavioral norms online – and a dangerous one for employers.

In order of frequency, here are the most common types of misconduct found in 2024:

Trolling/Online Harassment
Intolerance
Sex (sexual content or related misconduct)
Threats
Cannabis
Violence
Other Illicit Drugs
Crime

Misconduct by Industry

When the earliest online warning signs of misconduct – X “likes” – are removed, the industries with the most misconduct were Consumer Services, Financial Services, and Media and Entertainment. The industries with the lowest levels of misconduct include Government and Nonprofits, Manufacturing, and Technology.

Now let’s review the most prevalent types of misconduct within each industry.

Business Services

Business Services is one of the largest industries for employment and where a majority of our screenings occur. In 2024, despite reduced warning signs, warning signs were found in 4% of candidates. Bad actors averaged 10 warning signs.⁹⁵ The most prevalent warning signs were trolling/online harassment, intolerance, and sexual misconduct and threats.

‍Top Misconduct Types:

Trolling/Online Harassment
Intolerance
Sexual Misconduct / Threats

Key Takeaways

The prevalence of many of the misconduct signals remained relatively unchanged. The exception is an alarming one – threats increased from 4% to 11% year over year. This aligns with overall misconduct trends we’re seeing – misconduct in the industry is shifting from acceptance to advocacy.

Unless Business Services acts quickly, it’s likely organizations in the industry will end up another misconduct headline in the news.

Consumer Services

Consumer Services includes Retail, Hospitality, and Wholesale. Like prior years, this sector saw the highest misconduct levels with warning signs in 16% of screenings. Bad actors averaged 29 warning signs, most commonly were Trolling/Online Harassment, Sexual Misconduct, Intolerance. Threats were also common.

‍Top Misconduct Types:

Trolling/Online Harassment
Sexual Misconduct
Intolerance

Key Takeaways

Major HR issues plague Consumer Services, including understaffing⁹⁶ and poor work conditions.⁹⁷Jobs are physically demanding, have unpredictable hours, and receive low wages.⁹⁸ This breeds discontent from workers. While many leave their jobs, others stay and participate in misconduct.⁹⁹ For instance, retail theft costs 43% of revenues and accounts for 28% of inventory losses. The average dishonest worker costs $1,551.¹⁰⁰

Additionally, frontline workers and managers are afraid for their health, wellbeing, and safety at work due to unruly customers and limited support. Some alarming stats from in-store workers:

42% are extremely stressed due to a rise in in-store crime, understaffing, unruly customers, and unsafe conditions.¹⁰¹
80% felt unsafe at work; understaffing made it harder to keep stores safe.
72% were too understaffed to respond to threats, 22% said that this happens frequently.¹⁰²
37% of managers and 31% of workers left jobs due to concerns about their health and wellbeing.¹⁰³

This is not an exaggeration. More retail workers were murdered at work than police officers and security guards in 2024.¹⁰⁴

More retail workers were murdered on the job than police officers and security guards in 2024.

Education

In this report, Education includes job candidates in all positions across K-12 and higher education. Misconduct warning signs were found in 5% of candidates. Bad actors averaged 6 warning signs. The primary types of misconduct were trolling / online harassment, intolerance, and threats.

‍Top Misconduct Types:

Trolling/Online Harassment
Intolerance
Threats

Key Takeaways

Educational institutions have been struggling to attract and retain employees leading to and stemming from understaffing¹⁰⁵ and poor working conditions.¹⁰⁶ Poor student behavior,¹⁰⁷ the demonization of educators,¹⁰⁸ and dangerous work environments¹⁰⁹ contribute to educators feeling burned out¹¹⁰ and leaving the field.

Fama noted a sharp increase in threats in education in 2024, aligning with external accounts from schools.¹¹¹

Financial Services

Misconduct warning signs were found in 11% of Financial Services candidates. Bad actors averaged 28 warning signs. What’s more alarming, 20% of warning signs in Financial Services were threats. The primary types of misconduct are trolling / online harassment, threats, and intolerance.

‍Top Misconduct Types:

Trolling/Online Harassment
Threats
Intolerance

Key Trends

Misconduct in Financial Services is high – and are coming from inside and outside the firms. One alarming industry trend is the increase in threats from 7% to 20% year over year. While not known to be committed by an employee at this time, the murder of United Healthcare CEO last year has led to attacks on several other industry leaders, as well.¹¹²

Threats increased from 7% to 20% year over year.

Significant misconduct increases in the industry may stem from intense work environments,¹¹³ industry layoffs causing job insecurity,¹¹⁴ worker dissatisfaction from return to office orders,¹¹⁵ and the lack of consequences that their peers face when coworkers commit misconduct.¹¹⁶

Firms looking to stop the domino effect of misconduct must understand that misconduct is contagious, thriving when senior leaders lack ethical clarity or tolerate misbehavior.¹¹⁷ Visible misconduct significantly increases the risk of further infractions, with research showing a "social multiplier effect" where one act leads to more.¹¹⁸ A disconnect between executives and middle management, who are key in implementing culture and relaying information, further exacerbates the issue. Middle managers are 2.5 times more influential in predicting employee misconduct than company-wide policies.¹¹⁹

Government and Non-Profits

^‍Government and Non-Profit organizations saw warning signs of misconduct in 3% of screenings in 2024. What’s alarming, however, is that bad actors averaged 30 warning signs – the most of any industry this year. Most common types of misconduct were trolling/online harassment, intolerance, and sexual misconduct.

‍Bad actors averaged 30 warning signs – the most of any industry this year.

Top Misconduct Types

Trolling/Online Harassment
Intolerance
Sexual misconduct / Cannabis

‍Key Trends

In 2024, this sector experienced levels of accountability and transparency than in the past, especially during the employee screening stages. In December 2023, the U.S. launched the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), enhancing oversight and accountability within law enforcement.¹²⁰ Improving support and resources for workers and enhancing transparency can reduce misconduct. Unfortunately, the NLEAD database was shutdown in 2025.¹²¹

Increased transparency and accountability in government and non-profits are likely contributors to reduced misconduct numbers. Unfortunately, efforts are backtracking in 2025.

Healthcare

In this research, healthcare includes medical centers, biomedical companies, big pharma, as well as cannabis dispensaries. Warning signs of misconduct were found in 7% of candidate screenings. Bad actors averaged 12 warning signs. The most prevalent misconduct types were cannabis use, trolling/online harassment, and intolerance.

‍Top Misconduct Types:

Cannabis
Trolling/Online Harassment
Intolerance

‍Key Trends

Changing attitudes, adoption, and legality of cannabis heavily impact this year’s results.¹²² Many do not consider cannabis misconduct. However, regulated healthcare organizations may still prohibit the use of cannabis.¹²³

Other notable trends: healthcare workers are experiencing understaffing and poor working conditions due to high demand,¹²⁴ stressful work environments, and political demonization that has increased workplace violence against workers.¹²⁵ This perpetuates worker dissatisfaction, burnout, and turnover.¹²⁶ Even worse, it’s driving new graduates to seek positions out of the field creating pipeline issues for the future of healthcare, as well.¹²⁷

Manufacturing

Misconduct warning signs in manufacturing appear in 4% of screenings. Bad actors averaged 5 warning signs. Primary misconduct types were trolling/online harassment, intolerance, and sexual misconduct – with threats trailing closely behind.

Top Misconduct Types:

Trolling/Online Harassment
Intolerance
Sexual misconduct

‍Key Trends

The most prevalent misconduct in manufacturing can be attributed to the lack of diversity.¹²⁸ Less than 33% of workers are women and 78% are white.¹²⁹ Over half are older than 45.¹³⁰

Media and Entertainment

In this research, Media and Entertainment encompasses media, entertainment, and sports. Over 9% of screenings had warning signs of misconduct – making it the sector with the 3rd highest misconduct levels in 2024. Bad actors averaged 11 warning signs. The primary types of misconduct were trolling/online harassment, intolerance, and sexual misconduct.

‍Top Misconduct Types:

Trolling/Online Harassment
Intolerance
Sexual misconduct

‍Key Trends

While the Media & Entertainment sector has made progress in reducing misconduct rates, the levels remain concerningly high. The industry's unique and harmful power dynamics¹³¹ and lack of job stability due to mass layoffs¹³² are likely contributing to higher than average misconduct levels and an increase in threats.

Technology

Screenings in the technology sector uncovered warning signs in 4% of candidates. Bad actors averaged 13 warning signs in 2024. The primary types of misconduct are trolling / online harassment, sexual misconduct, and intolerance.

‍Top Misconduct Types

Trolling/Online Harassment
Sexual Misconduct
Intolerance

‍Key Trends

Technology experienced continued layoffs in 2024 – increasing competition for jobs.¹³³ Increased competition led to the hiring of higher-quality workers without signs of misconduct. These layoffs are predominantly impacting women and other underrepresented technology workers, reversing much of the progress on diversity made in prior years and contributing to year over year increases in sexual misconduct and intolerance.¹³⁴ Threats also increased year over year, which is a normal escalation when high levels of misconduct perpetuate over long periods of time.

‍Conclusion

The progression of misconduct doesn’t happen overnight. It takes weeks, months, or even years of exposure, acceptance, and advocacy ahead of participation – following the natural flow of learned social behaviors:

Exposure: Individuals first see problematic content.
Acceptance: Over time, repeated exposure makes such behavior seem acceptable.
Advocacy: Once normalized by extremism, people may begin to advocate for it.
Participation: Individuals actively commit misconduct, transitioning from advocate to contributor.¹³⁵

Long-term exposure to misconduct like we have seen in recent years increases the likelihood of offline harm. This is why catching the early warning signs of extremism and misconduct is more critical than ever. Catching these signs before the misconduct seeps into your workplace is critical to protecting your employees, profits, and business operations.

Workplace misconduct today is your nine-to-five nightmare tomorrow.

‍How to Mitigate Workplace Misconduct

The changing digital landscape and the ways people have evolved afterward makes misconduct harder to detect, but that doesn't mean you give up and stop looking. Your risk mitigation strategies must evolve to keep up.

In 2025, here is how to achieve this:

#1. Expand the sources you screen

Traditional background checks are a great starting point to mitigate misconduct, but can only report misconduct after an arrest or conviction. You need to screen for signs earlier. Online screening uses behavior intelligence technology to compliantly and effectively spot early warning signs in job candidates.

What to do: Adopt modern screening methods and screen both popular and emerging online platforms.

#2. Screen with a trusted 3rd party partner

Manually looking for early signs of misconduct is not compliant and not effective. Use a third-party online screening solution to quickly, compliantly, and consistently screen for these early warning signs. For example, Fama uses patent-pending and award-winning AI technology to quickly match people with their online presence, screen tens of thousands of sources, and report any job-relevant misconduct you need to protect your organization. This is your best chance to prevent misconduct from entering your business.

What to do: Use a third-party online screening partner that screens new platforms to maximize your risk mitigation efforts.

#3. Regularly screen both job candidates and employees

The best defense against misconduct is to prevent it altogether. Incorporating early-detection risk mitigation strategies like online screening during the hiring process and employee lifecycles can help you spot extreme beliefs and behaviors before they lead to nine to five nightmares. Ongoing employee screening best practices include:

Conducting regular online screenings to identify emerging risks.
Maintaining historical misconduct records to track behavioral changes over time.
Establishing ongoing listening programs to keep a pulse on employees and organizational culture.

What to do: Regularly screen employees to detect any new threats to your organization. We recommend screening every three months.

‍Final Thoughts

At Fama, we’ve seen firsthand how a single act of misconduct can impact an entire organization. Our company was founded after a bad hire—whose public misogynistic online content went undetected—sexually harassed a top-performing team member. The situation caused deep harm, ultimately leading to the departure of key talent.

That experience became the driving force at Fama – wanting to help employers spot risk early and prevent similar outcomes. Today, we remain committed to empowering organizations with the tools and insights they need to build safer, more resilient workplaces. As you look ahead to 2025 and beyond, we hope this report supports your efforts to protect your people and your culture.

Fama makes hiring great people easy. Our modern candidate screening solutions use online signals to identify candidate fit. We highlight professional attributes such as creativity, innovation, and problem solving while also surfacing costly misconduct such as violence, harassment, and fraud.

We help organizations answer the big question: how might a candidate act around coworkers or customers when they join?

Talent teams use Fama to improve candidate quality and employee retention, create safe and inclusive workplaces, and place the right leadership for their organizations. Fama is compliant with the FCRA, GDPR, and integrates into a wide range of HRIS, ATS, and background screening solutions.

Founded in 2015, Fama is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. We’re backed by some of the world’s leading investors, and have raised more than $30M. Learn why over 3,600 companies trust Fama at www.fama.io.

For more resources visit www.fama.io