Building Trust - a benefit of a well run whistleblower program

A company that runs whistleblowing software for companies to use - surveys their customers regularly.  One of their findings is that the system builds trust.  Here's how.

First the link:

https://acfeinsights.squarespace.com/acfe-insights/2019/4/22/new-survey-building-trust-the-main-benefit-of-a-whistleblowing-program

From the article

"The key purpose of any whistleblowing system is to enable companies to detect and act on misconduct before it causes too much financial and reputational damage."

The reason companies who take whistleblowing seriously - increase trust in staff is because - people who are unethical are exposed and fired before they can do too much damage. with unethical people not infecting the workplace, the remaining workers are freed up to trust each other because - they can  - because the people they work with are - trust worthy.

The work I do mostly centers on ending bullying and harassment, but according to their survey most of what whistleblowing systems catch is fraud and financial crimes. There are good reasons to put a whistleblowing system in place.  The challenge - is to make it work so that staff do trust the system.

Their advice?  The whistleblower must receive anonymity. This means - staff in charge of investigating the allegations - don't actually need to know who the whistleblower is - to validate whether the allegations being made are true or not. What matters isn't who blew the whistle. What matters is whether or not the allegations are true.

Given the increase awareness we all have about the importance of whistleblowers, we would all do well to remember that.

The second part of the system is to have good people who are empowered to investigate allegations and processes in place to handle reports.

I would add - finally - you need upper management committed to ethical business practices so that when their whistleblowing team tells them they have a problem - they act to get rid of the offender rather than protect them.

What I can help with is training on how to create behavioral training systems to help you better respond to allegations that are made: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

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