Why Whistleblowing is Important

World Whistleblowing Day serves as a reminder to raise public awareness about the important role of whistleblowers in combatting corruption and maintaining security. According to the 2021 Global Business Ethics survey report, the global median for reporting misconduct was 81% in 2020, compared with 63% in 2019, so employees are whistleblowing more often. The survey also revealed that 43% of employees globally reported management lying to employees, 58% of employees globally reported abusive behaviour and 59% of employees globally reported health violations.

So, what is whistleblowing and why is it important in organisations?

Whistleblowing is when an employee passes on information concerning a misconduct. The malpractice will typically (although not necessarily) be something they have witnessed at work, and it must be in the public interest – so that means it must affect others. It includes criminal offences such as fraud, failure to comply with an obligation set out in the law, miscarriages of justice, endangering of someone’s health and safety, damage to the environment and covering up any other wrongdoing.

Under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, any employee can disclose information about wrongdoing occurring at their organisation for the attention of their employers or a relevant external organisation. This action is commonly referred to as ‘blowing the whistle’.

The Whistleblower

The employee who does the whistleblowing is often referred to as the whistleblower. Whistleblowers are protected by the Employment Rights Act 1996 (as amended by the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998). It provides the right for a worker to take a case to an employment tribunal if they have been victimised at work or lost their job because they have ‘blown the whistle’.

Importance of whistleblowing

Malpractice at work shouldn’t be treated lightly, but it can be difficult to know what to do in the event of suspecting or even witnessing something wrong taking place. A whistleblower could be a director, manager, or employee and can report wrongdoing such as something they’ve seen at work.

Concerns raised could be about unethical, unsafe, or unlawful practices, e.g. sexual harassment. When an individual wants to make a whistleblowing disclosure to their immediate manager, they will need to be able to decide whether they can take forward the disclosure or whether it will require escalation to HR or another respective party. Organisations must equip managers with the knowledge and confidence to make these judgements and this can be supported with a whistleblowing policy and awareness training.

Whistleblowing training is crucial because it educates employees on how to speak out against malpractice, by understanding what it means and does. It also offers employees with the knowledge on how they are protected by the law and the process of whistleblowing.

If you’re interested in finding out how you can offer your staff whistleblowing training and support, then enquire with us today for more information about our ethics suite and whistleblowing courses.

Whistleblowing is on the Rise

Why is whistleblowing on the rise? And what does it mean for your business?

The increase in whistleblowing cases may be caused by increased awareness of the issues that must be reported to authorities, or because several high-profile cases have kept whistleblowers in the public eye.

Whistleblowing and data breaches

New figures from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) show a huge increase in the number of employees reporting incidents of poor data handling. In the three months to the end of August 2018, there were 82 reports about potentially undisclosed data breaches, compared to 31 reports in the previous reporting period.

One factor that may be driving this increase is the new data protection rules (GDPR) that came into effect in May. This new, more stringent regulation may have drawn attention to the issues of data privacy and encouraged employees to raise their concerns.

Whistleblowing cases in 2018

There were several high-profile whistleblowing cases in 2018. These headline-grabbing stories may have inspired more employees to report bad practices and lost data at their own companies.

Noteworthy cases include:

International Petroleum

Two directors of a Russian oil company, International Petroleum, were fined £2m for sacking a former CEO who raised suspicions of corruption and bribery surrounding the company’s operations in Niger.

Barclays

Barclays was fined $15m for trying to uncover the identity of a whistleblower, rather than responding to the content of the report.

Marine Scotland

A Marine Scotland employee was tied to a chair and gagged by colleagues after she reported the bullying she had experienced at work for many years. A disturbing photograph of the incident, taken by one of the employee’s tormentors, was splashed across national news outlets.

Vodafone

A whistleblower from a Vodafone call centre contacted a BBC radio programme to report that employees were effectively discouraged from refusing access to customers who could not properly verify their identity. So much pressure was placed on meeting customer satisfaction targets that agents felt obliged to do anything to keep people happy – and earn their bonus. This became a security risk as scammers recognised that they just need to behave like a disgruntled customer to improve their odds of gaining illicit access to someone’s phone account.

What is whistleblowing?

In simple terms, whistleblowing is to report criminal, unethical or dangerous behaviours or practices – either to a regulator, police or the press. In some cases, employees report their concerns to managers.

Whistleblowing policies

While some companies are concerned about addressing whistleblowing directly, perhaps because of fears that it will cultivate problems and cause additional work , the reality is that developing a whistleblowing culture can help a business identify problems and address issues before they develop into a crisis.

Organisations that do not facilitate whistleblowing are more likely to find problems emerging in the press or via trade bodies or regulators, which they must then try to explain. If concerns can be raised internally, organisations have a chance to remedy the problem, and can then organise a disclosure to the relevant authorities. By self-disclosing issues and concerns, organisations can prevent the impression that they are out-of-touch or unaware of what’s happening under their watch.

Whistleblowing is likely to increase further in 2019. The question for charities, businesses and public-sector organisations is: do you want to take control of whistleblowing or do you want to be led by it?