With World Whistleblowers Day here (Tuesday, 23 June), the Business Support team at Protect has been reflecting on the work of employers who are commendably continuing to strive to achieve a strong and positive speak-up culture, and how those with best practice policies could use this national focus day to signpost employees to their arrangements.
Originally created by a group of NGOs working as part of the South East Europe Coalition on Whistleblower Protection in 2019, World Whistleblowers Day was created to raise global public awareness in combating corruption.
The day is about the important role of whistleblowers in combating corruption and maintaining national security.
In these times of flux, when expectations and duties of organisations towards all their stakeholders have been constantly shifting, it is more important than ever for employers to demonstrate support for anyone who would raise a concern about wrongdoing or malpractice within their workplace.
New and very different practices and ways of working may lead to problems which employers cannot afford to miss.
Mass remote working could produce opportunities for data breaches, new reporting methods may lead to mis-reporting of finances, and new working environments may create health and safety hazards or safeguarding issues.
We have already seen so many examples of whistleblowers raising life and death issues from a medical point of view – the Wuhan doctor who raised the alarm about the virus, and health and care workers coming forward about PPE shortages.
The Protect Advice Line has been busier than ever, with 40% of our calls being Covid-19 related. Calls to us are usually from individuals who do not know where to turn, or who don’t feel confident following the procedure set out by their workplace. This could be evidence of mistrust, but could also be a sign that organisations are just not communicating their guidelines and attitude towards whistleblowing as well as they could be.
The value of speaking up to stop harm has never been clearer, and it could benefit businesses greatly to demonstrate that their support for staff by talking about World Whistleblowers Day.
Employers regularly ask us how they can talk to employees about whistleblowing without creating alarm, or suggesting problems which may not exist. World Whistleblowers Day is a great opportunity to create a positive conversation around the arrangements they have in place, and why they are so important.
Here are some top tips from our Business Support team on how to use World Whistleblowers Day to increase levels of staff engagement on the subject of speaking up:
- Circulate your policy with a word from your chief executive. Don’t have a policy yet? Contact us and we’ll help you write one
- Appoint a whistleblowing champion who will flag fly for your arrangements and monitor the effectiveness of your whistleblowing arrangements. Remember to communicate their details in your staff newsletter/ on your intranet
- Test employee confidence on whistleblowing by creating a survey, listening exercises or hosting focus groups. Our team can help you with these things if you wanted to explore options that are right for you
- Train your staff – especially department heads and line managers who may be the first point of call for all kinds of queries and concerns
- Create ‘FAQs’ and ‘How to’ guides for staff and people managers which bring your policy to life and clearly show who the best person to contact would be
Please tell us if and how you recognise World Whistleblowers Day so that we might build case studies of employers who are leading the way with making sure that malpractice and wrongdoing is avoided, or resolved quickly, and that whistleblowers are encouraged and protected.
By Stella Sutcliffe, Business Support Manager at Protect