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The whistleblowing channel in companies, as the name suggests, is a means created to receive complaints from employees. It is a great alternative for promoting ethical culture and value within the organization.
After all, whenever an employee feels threatened or suffers an injustice, they can turn to the company to help solve their problem in the best possible way.
Shall we learn more about it? Stay with us!
Here's why you should invest in a reporting channel
The whistleblowing channel is an important tool for promoting ethics in the workplace. This is because in the rush of everyday life, managers are not always able to keep an eye on all employees throughout the day. This way, there is no way of knowing if any injustice is happening orharassment within the company.
Therefore, the whistleblowing channel is the most effective way to make sure that if an employee has a problem, they will try to resolve it with the company before damaging their mental and physical health, their job and also the company's image.
Even termination interviews can be used as a whistleblowing channel. However, it's worth pointing out that it's much more interesting for employees to talk about their problems and try to resolve them before resigning.
Like this, you have the opportunity to intervene before it turns into a lawsuit or if something happens that damages your company's image, trust and credibility in the market.
Check out how to create a whistleblowing channel in your company
Now that you've learned what a whistleblowing hotline is and why it's important, let's take a look at some tips for setting one up in your company. Stay with us!
Create and share a code of conduct
Before having and publicizing a whistleblowing channel in companies, it is essential to have an excellentcode of ethics and conduct. It is a document that guides employees on what is (or is not) accepted by the organization.
After all, we need to consider that each person has their own individuality and also their own perception of the facts. That's why it's essential to provide employees with guidance on how the entire workflow should take place (talking about values, ethics, transparency and so on). It is also important toethics training for employees.
In addition, we need to stress the importance of working withcomplianceecorporate integrity. After all, they make the organizational environment more ethical and ensure compliance with anti-corruption, fraud and other measures within the company.
Choose a channel
The whistleblowing channel in companies must be well organized. After all, the process can't be messy, nor can it work properly. Therefore, establish a policy on how it will be carried out, for example:
- receive the complaint;
- have it evaluated by the committee within x working days;
- Promote a response to the employee within x days;
- provide the actions to be carried out in x days.
Likewise, it is essential to determine:
- reporting categories: such as harassment, bribery, fraud, corruption and others;
- reception methods: as a telephone, e-mail, WhatsApp, chat, form no sitecustom field in the system or physical form.
Create a committee
A committee needs to be set up to assess employee complaints. It is important that these people are neutral and not directly involved in the day-to-day work of employees.
After all, if you were to include a manager on the committee, employees would certainly be wary of making a complaint against him, wouldn't they?
That's why, choose some people who are impartialThe most important of these could be legal professionals, an external audit team or even someone from Human Resources (HR).
It is also important to emphasize that employees need to be sure that they can make a complaint anonymously.
Promote campaigns
Awareness campaigns are also essential to show employees that they have an interesting resource at their disposal to report cases they consider inappropriate within the organization.
Humanized campaigns, such as "a hard finger for good", are smart ideas to show that abusive situations cannot happen within the company. It's also important to create talks and discuss this subject at meetings, showing the importance of avoiding abusive situations. ethical dilemmas in the organizational environment.
Therefore, invest in constant good publicity:
- on internal communication bulletin boards;
- in WhatsApp groups;
- in site of the company;
- in software internal communication and much more.
Work with tests
Promote tests for check out the best way to work with the whistleblowing channel in companies. For example, imagine that you thought of investing in a form in the site to collect complaints. However, employees are not filling them in.
So perhaps employees don't feel comfortable promoting this type of complaint in the digital world, because they don't think it can be done anonymously. In this case, try implementing the campaign inside the company, inserting a ballot box with the forms and in an environment without security cameras.
The key here is to carry out tests to see what the best reporting channel format is for your company.
Measure the results of the whistleblowing channel in companies
Create indicators to track and monitor whether the channel is being used in the way your company planned. Check that complaints are happening and that the organization is dealing with them. It should also be noted that it is always necessary to provide feedback to employees.
Otherwise, the team may think that the channel doesn't work, because they report it and nothing happens! When you receive a complaint, you need to carry out an internal investigation to confirm that it is real. After that, have a good action plan for when something goes wrong.
The whistleblowing channel in companies is essential for employees to have a resource for disclosing inappropriate acts that are happening within their organization. This improves the organizational climate and is a great opportunity to promote constant improvement actions, promoting ethics and integrity in the workplace.
Did you enjoy learning more about whistleblowing in companies? Then we're sure you'll like read also our 3 tips on the dismissal interview to reduce future risks! Happy reading!
