Many of today’s employees across the globe no longer spend every day on-site at work. Instead, they move seamlessly between home and workplace, logging into meetings from spare bedrooms, collaborating through messaging platforms, sharing files in the cloud, and communicating almost entirely through digital technology. This transformation has brought enormous benefits, giving employees greater flexibility while allowing organisations to recruit talent from much wider geographical areas. However, it’s created new opportunities for workplace misconduct behaviours that need to be measured. 

Imagine an employee who appears present throughout a virtual meeting while actually watching television. Another spends hours browsing shopping websites between work emails. Someone repeatedly ignores important online messages from colleagues, slowing projects. Others access confidential digital files out of curiosity rather than necessity, or misuse collaboration software in ways undermining productivity. None of these behaviours fit into traditional patterns of in-person workplace deviance, but still can damage teamwork and reduce performance.

Deviant work behaviours cause organisations to lose efficiencies through reduced productivity, poor morale, employee turnover, and damaged working relationships. While precise global figures remain difficult to calculate, the combined financial impact certainly runs into many billions of dollars annually. As remote and hybrid working continue to expand across industries and countries, understanding these newer forms of workplace deviant behaviour is becoming essential rather than optional. 

Researchers for years have relied on in-person, on-site scales for measuring deviant work behaviour. This approach distinguished between actions directed at organisations, such as deliberately wasting time versus behaviours directed at employees, such as creating interpersonal conflict. It proved successful and remains extremely valuable. 

This challenge developed when work was overwhelmingly performed on-site, face to face. Today’s workplace looks different for many employees. Technology now mediates almost every aspect of professional life. Meetings happen through video calls. Conversations occur through messaging platforms rather than in-person. Documents exist in shared online workspaces instead of filing cabinets. Employees can complete an entire work week without meeting their colleagues in-person.

Fundamental changes have created opportunities for deviant work behaviour which simply did not exist when earlier measurement systems were developed. Rather than abandoning previous research, Dr. Blau and Dr. Stephens sought to build upon it. Their goal was not to replace established measures, but rather to extend them.

The result was technology-based deviant work behaviour. This new framework focuses on situations where employees voluntarily use organisational technology in ways violating important workplace norms. This does not mean honest mistakes or occasional distractions. The focus is on employee behaviour choices which conflict with organisational expectations.

Developing a scientific measurement tool is more demanding than simply writing a list of undesirable behaviours. Researchers must demonstrate that the questions genuinely measure something meaningful; people interpret them consistently; and the results distinguish one type of behaviour from another rather than blending everything into a single score.

Researchers carried out extensive testing using two large independent United States working adult samples. Splitting participants into separate groups allowed them to confirm the same patterns emerged twice, providing stronger evidence the findings were reliable rather than accidental.

Analyses revealed technology based deviant work behaviour could be organised into three distinct but closely related categories.

The first involved time abuse deviance. This reflects situations where technology enables employees to spend paid working time on activities unrelated to their jobs; such as TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, or other social media outlets. The important point is not that every brief distraction represents serious misconduct. However, excessive misuse of social media may reduce work productivity.

The second category focused on communication deviance. Modern organisations depend upon digital communication. Emails, messaging platforms, video meetings, and collaborative software have become the lifeblood of many businesses. Yet these same tools can also be misused. Ignoring important messages, pretending to participate in virtual meetings while disengaged, or communicating inappropriately through digital channels may seem less dramatic than traditional workplace conflict, but they still damage employee teamwork and trust.

The third category captured production deviance. These behaviours directly interfere with productive work through technology. They involve actions that reduce effectiveness, misuse organisational systems, or otherwise compromise the quality or efficiency of work being performed. These behaviours affect organisational abilities to achieve their goals, representing a serious form of technology-based deviance.

One interesting finding emerged when researchers compared three different generations of employees, X, Y and Z. Contrary to popular stereotypes often dominating public discussion about younger workers, the results did not suggest one generation was uniquely responsible for technology-based deviance. Across all three generations sampled, time abuse produced the highest deviance self-reported scores. Digital work distraction temptations are everywhere. News alerts appear instantly. Social media remains only a click away. Personal email, online shopping, and streaming services coexist alongside legitimate work applications on the very same devices. Their attractiveness is universal rather than generational.

Researchers also compared employees working in fully remote, hybrid, and traditional in-person settings. This reflected another major strength of the project. Rather than assuming one style of working was becoming dominant, the research recognised today’s workforce operates across multiple arrangements simultaneously.

A significant conclusion from this first study was that the new technology-based measures were clearly distinguishable from established measures of face-to-face workplace deviance.

Beyond statistical achievement, practical implications are substantial. If technology-based behaviours were simply another version of existing workplace deviance, organisations would gain little by measuring them separately. Instead, the evidence suggests newer behaviours capture something different about how employees interact with today’s digitally connected workplaces.

Measuring only traditional forms of workplace deviance risks overlooking an increasingly important part of employee deviant behaviour. Creating a reliable measurement tool, however, is only the beginning.

Knowing how to measure technology-based deviance accurately leads to the following questions. What causes these behaviours? Why do some employees engage in them while others do not? Most importantly for organisations, what can managers do to reduce them?

Those questions became the next stage focus for Dr. Blau and Dr. Stephens’ research, to explore workplace conditions encouraging or discouraging technology-based deviant work behaviour.

Researchers focused on three separate influences: whether employees were subject to return to office policies; the quality of the relationship between employees and their supervisors; and whether employees felt their employer had broken important promises or obligations.

The findings revealed a consistent pattern across all three influences. Employees who were subject to return to office policies, reported poorer supervisor relationships, or who believed their employer had broken a promise were more likely to engage in all three forms of technology-based deviant work behaviour. Rather than suggesting that technology itself is the problem, the research highlights a more fundamental truth. People who feel unsupported, unfairly treated or let down by their organisation will be more likely to misuse the technologies available to them.

This has important practical implications. Organisations may be tempted to respond to digital misconduct by introducing increasingly sophisticated monitoring software. While such tools can detect some behaviours, the research suggests that stronger prevention begins elsewhere. Building positive relationships between managers and employees, communicating honestly, and fulfilling organisational commitments will do far more to reduce technology-based deviant work behaviour than surveillance alone.

The researchers also examined what these behaviours mean for organisations. Among the three technology-based deviance scales, Production Deviance emerged as the most consequential. Employees reporting higher levels of Production Deviance consistently reported lower job satisfaction and stronger turnover intentions. This signals disengagement which could lead to employee voluntary resignations.

The third study focused exclusively on hybrid workers, whose jobs combine both office-based and remote working. This presented an important test of the new measure. Since hybrid employees operate in both physical and digital workplaces, the researchers asked whether technology-based deviant work behaviour would help to further understand job satisfaction and turnover intention beyond traditional workplace deviance. The answer was yes.

Although traditional and technology-based deviance were closely related, they could still be statistically distinguished. More importantly, the technology-based measures explained additional variability in job satisfaction and turnover intention even after traditional workplace deviance had been accounted for. Different forms of technology-based deviance also showed different relationships with these outcomes. Production Deviance was linked with lower job satisfaction, while Communication Deviance was associated with stronger turnover intentions. Time Abuse Deviance showed a positive relationship with job satisfaction, suggesting that not all technology-based behaviours arise from the same motivations. Disciplined social media breaks during work may enhance employee work attitudes.

Finding that employees did not appear more reluctant to report technology-based than traditional deviance strengthened confidence in the new measures providing valid evidence for how employees behave in hybrid workplaces.

The three studies point towards a practical solution for organisations. Rather than replacing traditional workplace deviance measures, Dr. Blau and Dr. Stephens recommend using both approaches together. The long-established 19-item Robinson and Bennett measure continues to capture important in person deviant behaviours, while the new 18-item technology-based scale captures deviant behaviours unique to today’s digital workplace. Combined, the thirty-seven items offer organisations a comprehensive way to establish a behavioural baseline and evaluate whether changes in leadership, workplace policies or organisational culture are genuinely improving employee behaviour.

While, these studies were conducted with United States employees, recent international reviews show rapidly growing research on workplace deviance across North America, Europe, Asia and beyond. Researchers are examining issues such as cyberloafing, hiding information, and digital misconduct, demonstrating that the challenges created by technology enabled work are shared world-wide by organisations.

Remote and hybrid working continue to reshape modern employment, which organisations need to understand. The work of Dr. Gary Blau and Dr. Kyle Stephens represents an important step in further understanding technology-based employee deviant work behavior globally as it affects future work challenges.