Whistleblowing
What is Whistleblowing?
Whistleblowing is about people taking steps to right perceived wrongdoings. In Australia, whistleblowing is often viewed negatively by managers and employees alike.
Some organisations are unwilling to recognise that a thorough, secure and anonymous whistleblowing mechanism enables leaders to correct practices that may harm employees, shareholders, customers or clients. Unchallenged, such wrongdoing can reduce profitability, tarnish your reputation, demoralise employees, and result in substantial fines or costly lawsuits.
That’s why it is important for business leaders and employees to understand what modern whistleblowing is, how it can benefit them and their organisation and how it can be best implemented and managed.
Without the vital information that can be gleaned from employees having a trusted, anonymous and independent channel for voicing their concerns, organisations risk creating long term problems that could have been identified and addressed here and now.
Often whistleblowers expose long term, hidden problems. This reluctance from employees to come forward can be attributed to a variety of factors, but, in Australia particularly, one of the biggest deterrents to whistleblowing is the concept of “mateship”.
Mateship is a defining characteristic of Australian culture, which makes contemplating its negative effects difficult. In a corporate context, mateship is essentially networking and, in some Australian organisations, tightly controlled networks dominate.
Within these networks, secrecy replaces openness, unfairness replaces fairness, and merit gives way to mateship when it comes time for promotion, contracting and acceptance in the workplace.
The power of these networks, and the negative view of whistleblowing they may nurture, makes many employees hesitant to expose problems within their workplace for fear of being ostracised or worse.
In a culture of mateship, Whistleblowing is often perceived as “dobbing”. But whistleblowing is simply reporting injustice and mate or no mate, injustice is a corrosive force that cannot tolerated in any organisation.
Your-Call´s services of Your-Alert and Your-Say enable people to report independently, securely and anonymously, without fear of exposure and the ramifications they imagine could result from their whistleblowing.
Your-Alert allow Directors, Officers and Managers to tap into real-time 24/7, live information on matters of concern in 4 key areas: dishonesty; behavioural issues(including bullying and harassment); regulation; and safety. Your-Say enables employees, customers, vendors and suppliers to provide feedback on a range of matters concerning the way business is done; the organisation´s products and services; the effectiveness or otherwise of policies and procedures, identification of risks and suggestions for improvement.
We are committed to elevating the integrity of whistleblowing in terms of best-practice services and public perception.
Get Started?
If you´re looking to implement a means by which your company can benefit from acting swiftly to combat problems identified by the people who know your organisation best, click here to email us or download our FREE The Ultimate Whistleblower Checklist on how to establish a best-practice whistleblowing program, or simply call 1300 798 101 to discuss how Your-Call can best benefit your organisation.