How has cyber technology created opportunities for workplace deviance?

There’s a multitude of ways that someone can commit workplace deviance, and cyber technology has enhanced it to newer heights. Cyber technology could allow employees to keep confidential data from the organization on a digital device or a computer. This can motivate employees to expose it or sell it to the general public or competitors that aren’t supposed to know about it. Another example could be ex-employees that may have grudges against the organization and could try to ruin its image by having access to their old accounts due to a lack of cybersecurity when clearing out their information. Another form of workplace deviance due to cyber technology is cyberloafing. Cyberloafing is when employees will misuse an organization’s technology for personal reasons. This can lead to less work getting done, accessing sites that are against the organization’s privacy regulations, and overall degrade the quality of work ethic and flow of revenue.

With the possibility of workplace deviance being a prevalent issue, several actions can be put in place to help reduce the number of occurrences that can happen within an organization. A start can be implementing better workplace policies to help with security. This can involve making employees leave their personal devices outside of the organization itself and utilizing biometrics to account for security. One could argue that taking away mobile devices could cause concern of eliminating the two-factor authentication, in this case however, it could be replaced by biometrics that would meet the same goal. It would also increase overall work ethic by decreasing distractions. Other ways to mitigate workplace deviance are by regulating information security positions and having confirmation of when employee information is cleared from the database. Regulations will decrease the possibility of deviance and confirmation of cleared data will help to seal that hole of leaking information. So, while cyber technology has greatly increased the possibility and frequency of workplace deviance, organizations can put effective strategies in place to just as greatly reduce it.

Shook, T. Cyber Threats. https://fs.wp.odu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/16319/2021/04/CYSE-200T-Analytical-Paper_Travis-Shook.pdf

Shrivastava, S., & Singh, K. (2021). Workplace deviance in the virtual workspace. Strategic HR Review, 20(3), 74-77. https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-09-2020-0083