Ensuring an organization promotes an anti-slavery culture is now more vital than ever. Organisations must therefore ensure their staff feel comfortable bringing up any concerns they have regarding slavery. All staff should be familiar with the organisation’s modern slavery statement and be able to identify a red flag worth raising with their employer. VinciWorks has therefore created a modern slavery whistleblowing policy template that can easily be updated to suit your organisation and staff.
What should the modern slavery whistleblowing policy include?
Your company’s whistle blowing policy should make the procedure for reporting slavery and human trafficking concerns clear and easy, as well as ensuring staff feel comfortable and safe to make a report. Here is a guideline of what should be included in the policy.
Introduction to the Modern Slavery Act
What is the Modern Slavery Act and why is it important? Your staff, particularly newer recruits, may not be fully aware of the Modern Slavery Act and why it is important. Your policy should begin with a short paragraph about the Act and how important diminishing modern slavery is to your organisation.
When to use the whistleblowing
This section should explain that whistle blowing is where you have a concern about a danger or illegality that has a public interest aspect to it (e.g. because it threatens clients, third parties or the public). Staff must understand that they should not refer to this policy when they have personal grievances with the organisation.
Procedure for responding to concerns raised
This section should explain which staff member deals with modern slavery concerns and how the concern will be dealt with. It should also set out the next steps once a concern is raised.
The importance of confidentiality
If a concern is raised against a supplier, it is important to remember that until further investigation is undertaken they are still considered innocent. It is therefore important that the affairs of the supplier are kept confidential. The whistleblower should only divulge relevant information regarding a potential breach of the Act to the appropriate staff member.
Protecting the whistleblower
Any person who victimises a bona fide whistleblower must be liable to disciplinary action. It is important that your policy makes this clear. Whistleblowers should feel comfortable to raise concerns without fearing abuse from their colleagues.
Download and edit our Modern Slavery Whistle Blowing Policy template
VinciWorks has created a free sample whistleblowing policy that can easily be downloaded. Using this template will help you produce an effective whistleblowing policy. It will also help educate you further on what should be included in such a policy.
Fill in your details using the form below to download the document. Feel free to edit the template to make it relevant to your organisation. This could include adding any extra measures your organisation is taking to ensure staff feel comfortable reporting concerns of modern slavery they may have.
More Modern Slavery Act tools and training
VinciWorks offers some great free tools to help organisations of all sizes and industries maintain compliance with the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Our free modern slavery guide will help you understand the steps your organisation should take to mitigate the risk of modern slavery in the supply chain. Further, VinciWorks’ suite of modern slavery training ensures all staff can train according to their needs.
