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/

Whistleblowing complaints and retaliation

There has been an increase in retaliation complaints and the existence of retaliation against whistle blowers in particular is one of the main challenges of creating more ethical organizations.  What is going on and how can we improve our outcomes?

I was recently asked about this in relation to current events, but because this is a common problem for all organizations, I'm sharing my answer here.

I come at this from a behavioral perspective I provide federal No FEAR Act training – which is the law protecting employees from retaliation - and refresher training for EEO counselors and investigators.

The increase in retaliation complaints – can be viewed as a good thing. It means – people are willing to report retaliation instead of be silenced by it.  The problem was always there – the increase in complaints mean – people aren’t tolerating it any more.  This is a necessary step to creating more ethical cultures.  We have to behaviorally extinguish the unethical behavior.

Behavioral extinction is very predictable. If someone is doing something that works, and suddenly it doesn’t work. They don’t stop. They do that thing more.  In bullying, harassment or other criminal activity – what has always worked is intimidation, so when someone blows the whistle – they bully and intimidate more. With bullying and harassment, we call this predicted escalation of behavior – retaliation, but it’s really – just an escalation of existing behavior.  This escalation is predicted ONLY IF the behavior is established, meaning – it’s a behavioral habit of the individual. If the person does not have a habit of bullying, they will not respond to a whistleblower complaint this way at all because – there is no behavioral habit to extinguish.    This behavioral escalation is so predictable with established behaviors that escalation of bullying behavior is one of the best ways to verify that something inappropriate was indeed happening.

Retaliation is a form of bullying. But you can only do that if you know the identity of the person who blew the whistle. With the current federal situation, the accused don’t know who blew the whistle,  which makes putting pressure on the whistleblower impossible. This is probably why they are so desperate to know the identity of the whistleblower.  And again, for people with experience in behavioral extinction, this searching for the whistleblower is quite telling.  People who aren’t in the habit of doing unethical things, don’t increase their unethical behavior when accused of crimes because that is not their habit. Only people who are in the habit of intimidating people increase their unethical behavior.  And intimidating people – is unethical.  If the person has anxiety issues but doesn’t bully, then they would respond to being accused with more anxiety behavior. Whatever the behavior habit is - you will expect to see more of it and it will be more obvious it is happening and less hidden and more overt – which is exactly what we are seeing now.

This instinctual dynamic of someone for whom intimidation has always worked to use more intimidation to stop the accusations against them, is exactly why whistleblower identities should be held secret if possible (it’s not always possible).  But they should be kept secret at least through the investigation period.  It’s also why reporting of retaliation efforts is so important. They provide evidence to the investigators that something unethical is indeed happening and help build the case.

In the federal system, whistle blowers are only protected if they use a very specific process – usually involving the Inspector general.  The laws against retaliation don’t prevent retaliation from happening.  What they do is provide remedies for people who were materially or mentally harmed by retaliation.  They aren’t set up to stop it. Just to provide economic remedies for people who were harmed by it.  This distinction matters because to create more ethical workplaces and eliminate the bullying and harassment and intimidation that comes from unethical people trying to protect their power within an organization, we have to use a behavioral extinction process, which is NOT what the whistle blower system and the No FEAR Act do.


To be honest, the entire complaint system is a bit onerous and lengthy. It is necessarily that way, but it is not the sort of system a behaviorist would have set up.  The system is NOT set up to stop bullying/harassment and retaliation. The whistle blower system is design for employees to report criminal and unethical activity. Which may be a discreet single instance of something or – at least – it can be reported that way and handled that way. Bullying/harassment and retaliation, by contrast, are patterns of behavior and to document it, you have to document a pattern of behavior. Not a single report – multiple reports over time.  The No FEAR Act and EEO system and whistle blower system, aren’t set up to handle that. They are bureaucracies set up to handle – individual complaints.  We should be creating parallel systems to handle and document ongoing behavioral problems and assist with the behavioral extinction process so that we can eliminate the problem entirely.  But that is just my humble opinion.

Want to learn more - take one of my courses:

I provide federal No FEAR Act training – which is the law protecting employees from retaliation - and refresher training for EEO counselors and investigators.

What can companies actually do about harassment?

Google was in the news this week because - 20,000+ of their employees walked out to demand better treatment of women.  Their demands include not just pay equity, but also - improvements to how the company deals with harassment problems.

Photo by Russell Brandom / The Verge

Their list of demands seems quite reasonable and can be found here: https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers-explain-demands.html

The catalyst for this was that an executive at Alphabet - the parent company of Google - stepped down amid harassment allegations. https://www.upi.com/Google-workers-walking-off-the-job-amid-sexual-harassment-cases/2971541066788/

This was an is a global movement within the company and the company was supportive of the walk out - meaning - they were not planning to retaliate against employees who participated. Which is good.

The basic demands are pay equity, transparent policy regarding harassment, an end to force arbitration, a diversity officer that reports directly to the CEO and employee representation on the board. These all seem like reasonable demands.

But this does bring up the question, what can companies realistically do? Obviously - conducting a harassment training isn't enough. A training won't change behavior and it certainly won't change processes that are in place to protect the company instead of processes to protect the employees.

This last bit is the important part. What the employees want - are processes that protect them. The problem is that even with processes in place, they aren't always used and processes can often protect the accused and cause harm to the victim.

So what should companies that take this seriously do?  Find out what ideally should be happening.  And I don't mean - the basics - have a whistle blower program and polices etc. Though you should have all that.

What I mean is that employees and lawyers advising employers need to know what exactly should be happening to make the unwanted behavior stop. It should be pretty clear to everyone that telling someone who is abusing an employee to stop - doesn't actually work. I get called in when companies have an employee they want to "fix." And if that is your attitude, you aren't going to succeed.

Harassment is a behavior. Unwanted behaviors can be eliminated but you need to know the science of how exactly that happens so you can build your process to accomplish that. Legal concerns are important, but legal processes are almost always after the fact and designed to protect the employer against claims made by an employee. And yes - you need to do that - but again - that leaves your employees vulnerable and tends to protect the abuser and actually increases the harm done.

So let's stop putting the cart before the horse and start focusing on what actually has to happen to help employees protect themselves and their co-workers from the bad apples in your organization.  Learn what works to make unwanted behaviors stop!

I have a lot of courses on this and if you are a labor lawyer and have not yet been taught the behavioral science of how to get unwanted behaviors to stop - I have great news for you - I have courses approved by the FL Bar for CLE credit. So please start learning this and lets start changing how we handle these situations.

Behavioral Science Based Bullying & Harassment Courses: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

CLE: https://humanistlearning.com/category/continuing-education-2/cle/

What makes a speak up or whistle blowing program effective?

According to Wim Vandekerckhove Principal Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the University of Greenwich, the key – is perceived responsiveness. Where people feel like their action made a difference. In behavioral terms – that means – it was positively reinforced. He says that companies should really think about ways they can be responsive without violating legal parameters.

There is a 10 minute interview with him on his research below. Looking at speak up programs – they know what doesn’t work – he looked at what does – and it’s consistent with what I teach in my programs.



He recommends multiple channels through which to speak up – with specific emphasis on casual channels – where you don’t report – but where employees can ask questions about whether something is ethical or not in a confidential way.  What he calls integrity questions. Where people can ask questions, and get counseling on how to proceed without actually reporting someone.   Because the feedback is immediate and usually helpful – people feel like action was taken, they were taken seriously and it reinforces and builds trust – the concern doesn’t go into a black hole where – nothing happens.  One company publishes the Q&A for other employees.  There are no legal restrictions on what you can talk about.

This “reporting without reporting” can also help identify patterns of concern for the organization. This is important because – the unwanted behavior – is often a pattern of behavior and seeing those patterns is crucial to helping stop it.

Always nice when the research in one area validates the findings in another. In this case – what he found was that speak up processes and mechanisms that positively reinforce people for speaking out – works.  Which is exactly what the behavioral science approach predicts. And it's exactly what I teach you should be doing in my online courses on how to stop bullying & harassment in the workplace

Learn more about taking a behavioral approach to the problem of bullying & harassment - here: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/