Misbehavior of Employees and its Impact on Organizational Productivity

This report delves into the critical issue of employee misbehavior and its detrimental effects on organizational productivity. It begins by defining organizational behavior and misconduct, followed by an analysis of the problems associated with employee misbehavior, including ethical violations, absenteeism, and disruptive conduct. The report then examines a real-world case at York University, where an employee's social media posts led to significant repercussions. As a consultant, the author offers detailed recommendations for superiors, including the implementation of a comprehensive code of conduct, social media policies, and psychological contracts to foster a positive work environment. The report also includes a visual representation of different types of misconduct. The conclusion emphasizes the necessity of proactive measures to address employee misbehavior and promote ethical practices, ultimately aiming to enhance productivity and maintain a positive organizational culture. The report highlights the importance of strong leadership, clear communication, and well-defined policies in preventing and managing employee misconduct effectively.

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Letter of transmittal
University of Regina
I have submitted a report according to my research, to explore about the topic of “misbehavior if
the employees which threaten the productivity of an organization”. I thank my professors and
friends for helping me successfully complete this project.

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Executive Summary
The report will consist of various sections, which will determine the concept of organizational
behavior and misconduct, and the further analysis has been done in regards to a visual
representation, which will represent statistics related to this topic. The report will explain the
importance of various organizational misconduct, and as a consultant hired in an educational
university, there will be demonstration of a similar example of a person performing misconduct
and ignorant behavior. Nevertheless, as a consultant, the recommendations will be given with
prior explanation about decreasing misconduct and increasing productivity.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................5
Discussion........................................................................................................................................5
Problems with misbehavior of employees.......................................................................................5
Recommendations to superior in effectively handle misbehavior...................................................8
Immediate steps to solve the problem.............................................................................................8
Visual Representation of various types of misconduct in organizational context...........................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Introduction
Organizational Behavior (OB) is an important attribute in maintaining the interactivity
and collaboration within enterprise be it corporate, business or retail sectors. Although, there are
cases where organizational misconduct happens as every employee have different perspective
and way of situation handling, which results in some employees to violate the rules of
organizational conduct resulting in misbehavior. It has been estimated that, organizations has to
cover huge loss due to employee misconduct, as it becomes a potential threat to the legacy of
company. United States have depicted that employee theft, approximately 10 years ago; can
cover charges of $200 billion, whereas, workplace drinking can lead to charges of $170 million
(Vardi & Weitz, 2016). Therefore, OB has become an important factor in maintaining the
productivity and legacy of an organization.
In this report, there will description of the organization, which have faced employee
misconduct, which acted as a potential threat to the company. The organization chosen here is
the York University (york.ac.uk, 2020), and as an appointed consultant, there will be enunciation
of strategies that must be applied by the company to adhere to good and ethically upright
organizational behavior.
Discussion
Problems with misbehavior of employees
The process of disciplining employees is a struggle and a much difficult thing to do for
the employers. According to the Code of Conduct in Canadian Companies, it depicts that
extreme case of misconduct or misbehavior will be taken into consideration especially if it harms
the reputation of the company, otherwise employer are not allowed to interfere in the employee’s
personal life.

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According to Street and Inc, (2020), 42% of employees, working in both public and
private sectors in Canada, which could be been approximate of 7.1 million employees have
reported that there is ethical misconduct and violation of laws in their working premises.
Remaining 48% have reported that the misconduct are unrecorded or uninformed especially
sexual misconduct(bbc.com, 2020). In a survey, it was also observed that 28% have witnesses
tampering with company property, 25% of employees have seen harm caused to an employee
within the working premises, 17% of employees have witnessed privacy policy is not followed.
On the other hand, 17% witnesses considerable fraud cases, and having misbalanced financial
reports, 9% witnessed bribery and corruption, 12% involving in creating environmental hazards
(Danaeefard & Boustani, 2016). This all situations go unnoticed and uninformed, which results
in later threatening situation that are faced by company authorities.
Another report by forbes.com (2020), mentions a survey where 55% of employees are
recorded to be late on a regular basis, 53% of employees have taken a sick day when they were
actually not sick, and another 51% have telltale situations where they have seen an employee
yelling at another person. It has been specifically observed that people, who are engaged in
educational services, are consistently late in reaching in their working premise, compared to
other professions. Therefore, it summarizes that disciplining employees by the employer is
necessary, as unorganized working environment impact on company production and efficiency,
it also hampers individual productivity and there is lack of career opportunities. In case of
educational sectors, employee slagging to reach working premises, puts negative impact on the
student and degrade the educational standards. In this case, it has been represented that the
disorganized habits and behaviors of the employees can put the company employers in dilemma
and the misconduct by employees can affect the company acquiring enough competitive

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
advantage and remain sustainable in the competitive market (Kelkar & Emilus, 2016). It is
mandatory that company should have ethical practice, which must be included in the company
long-term career goals. Employer should also train the employees separately in practicing ethics
in working premises so that , employees can take accountability of their activities, as
transparency among employees is necessary for the employees to work coherently, and operating
the company successfully.
Therefore, this issues are important and should be taken into consideration by Senior
managers, leaders and the hierarchy of every organizations, and should find solutions regarding
maintaining an ethical and morally upright environment, where employees work coherently by
respecting and valuing every person’s beliefs and values as well as ideas. The mandatory factor
that also should be adhered by the employer is signing a well-drafted “Code of Conduct”, where
every policy must be preached and clearly defined by the leader or the Human Resource
Manager(Effing & Spil, 2016).
A case in York University, in the year 2019, an employee was terminated because of his
Facebook’s posts which violated the terms and conditions of the employer. The employee was an
old employee working from year 1993 as a Laboratory Technologist, but his Facebook posts
were reflecting racism comments about Jews Community and creating a political conflict, which
were directly violating the policies of employer(mondaq.com, 2020). Although, his posts were
not directly pointed at the University, but his racism comments and posts were open to 1.71
million users of Facebook, and he connected his Facebook in case of work related works. This
created an impression that the company hired a person beholding racism mentality for such
prolonged years, which creates a bad impression and threats the sustainability and legacy of the

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
University. The case was brought in front of an arbitrator of “Ontario Labor Arbitration”, and he
denied the case and told the employer that, he cannot terminate the employee.
Recommendations to superior in effectively handle misbehavior
In this situation, as a consultant hired by the company, the flaw of the employer was
initially pointed out, as he did not have any social media policy instigated in the “Code of
Conduct” as well a “Psychological Contract”( AL-Abrrow et al.,2019). There should be also
inclusion of policy where they cannot use or connect their employment links for doing anything
offensive. The offensive activities should be clearly mentioned in the social media policy, so that
employees are unaware of the implication this off duty activities will embark on their
employment status. Therefore, immediate steps were taken to draft a social media policy, which
can prevent the employer to face adverse consequences by inappropriate socializing of his
employees. Drafting a new policy also necessarily compels the employer to let his employees
aware of the new policies, so that they can follow and practice the required policy, so there is no
negative implications on their employment as well as that it does not affect the organizational
activities. Another factor that must be aligned to the new policy is the effectiveness of the policy
and the specific situation where the policy is appropriate to implement. In any case, the employer
is still finding it difficult to handle a certain employee, and then there should be punishment
categories mentioned by which the employee will be punished according to the grounds an
employee has violated the rules. In case of “Psychological contract”, there is exchange of
favorable behavior, within both employers and employers, certain negative behaviors exchanged
by the employer’s impact on performance of employees, tending them in behaving negatively in
working premises. A need of psychological contract therefore also becomes mandatory in
implementing in an organization.

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Immediate steps to solve the problem
According to AL-Abrrow et al., (2019), Psychological contract is the unwritten contract
between an employer and employee, so that both exchange profits in terms of some promises and
agreements. This will compel the employees to target in achieving goals and objectives of the
company, and the company will exchange this will part profit sharing or reward and
accomplishments like salary hikes or promotion. As a consultant to the company, the
recommendations will be creating, a well-drafted “Code of Conduct” must be introduced, and
accordingly the employer itself should initiate training and awareness functionalities. Both
employers and employees should maintain good behavior and ethics as it has been reported by
forbes.com (2020), 37% of Canadian people working in public and their bosses yell on their
employees. Misbehavior by the employers is another factor, which affects the employee’s self-
esteem, resulting in unproductive performance or involving with other competitors in degrading
the brand name of the company they are working. In case of protecting intellectual properties,
hampering of property by employees is seen in case of informal working structure, this should
also be added in the Code of Conduct of a company. As it has been observed that, there have
been many employees who tamper with intellectual property, when they are given the autonomy.

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Visual Representation of various types of misconduct in organizational context
31%
27%
25%
16%
Number of respondents
Tampering company
property
Bodily harm to an employee
while working
Privacy policy violated
Fraudulent, bribery ,
corruption
Figure 1: The types of misconduct in organizational context
(Source: Created by the author)
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it has been observed that organizational misconduct is so
prevalent in many organizations, including corporate sectors, government sectors, public
companies as well in educational institutions. The report has portrayed the various reasons;
organizational misconduct should be checked, reported and solved immediately by creating
strong regulations and policies. The outcome of the report is that as a consultant hired in York
University, it is observed that organizational misconduct due to the lack of interaction and
communication between the employer and employees. Thus, the inclusion of well-drafted Code
of Conduct and Psychological contract is necessary for every organization to achieve
productivity and decrease organizational misconduct by employees.

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
References
AL-Abrrow, H., Alnoor, A., Ismail, E., Eneizan, B., & Makhamreh, H. Z. (2019). Psychological
contract and organizational misbehavior: Exploring the moderating and mediating effects
of organizational health and psychological contract breach in Iraqi oil tanks
company. Cogent Business & Management, 6(1),
1683123(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311975.2019.1683123)
bbc.com. (2020). Uni's staff-student relationship ban welcomed. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51586150
Danaeefard, H., & Boustani, H. R. (2016). Injustice perceptions and employees misbehavior in
the public organization: exploration of mediating role of employee’s cynicism to
organization. International Journal of Human Capital in Urban Management, 1(1), 9-18.
Effing, R., & Spil, T. A. (2016). The social strategy cone: Towards a framework for evaluating
social media strategies. International journal of information management, 36(1), 1-
8(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2015.07.009).
forbes.com (2020). Bad Employee Behaviors -- Are You Guilty?. Retrieved 18 March 2020,
from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2016/08/04/bad-employee-behaviors-are-
you-guilty/#63e7bb6e872f
Kelkar, M. M., & Emilus, Y. (2016). Applying the theory of planned behavior to the problem of
employee theft in the retail
industry(https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1128&context=ama_proceedings)