Whistleblowing is one of the most effective ways to detect and prevent corruption and other malpractice. It is an occurrence when a worker passes on information concerning wrongdoing. It is considered as one of the primary rights of employees in most of the countries and relevant laws are made to protect the rights of employees during such situations.
A whistleblower should consider and act according to the two main points before disclosing anything about the organization he is working in. The employee should act on public interest. Any disclosure should be in that basis. Any disclosures due to employee’s personal conflicts, issues, grievances are usually not considered as ethical whistleblowing.
And the employee will be protected by the law if he does disclosure in instances like a criminal offence, something related to the health and safety of staffs or general public, issues related to the safety of environment, any injustice things done within the organization, any instances where the laws are broken and in instances where the employee believes that there is a wrong doing. In such instances, employee will be protected by the law in most of the countries which encourage whistleblowing.
In employer’s perspective it is always a pleasant thing to create an open, transparent and safe working environment where workers feel able to speak up. The organization should establish such a working environment for the employees, so that they can speak themselves up. Organizations can establish and publicize a reporting mechanism that fits with the organization and its workers. It should always be possible to report in confidence, and it should always be free.
The organizations should provide opportunities for the employees to learn about the concepts of whisteblowing, where should they report in such instances, what can they disclose, through workshop programs. Also organizations need to establish protocols from upper management on down, every unit in the organization should be on the same page regarding fraud reporting. This is a key leadership issue in establishing the mechanism consistent with the overall organizational culture and goals.
If an employee feels he needs to disclose something wrong in the organization, he/she can make a disclosure to their immediate manager who will be able to decide whether they can take forward the disclosure or whether it will require escalation. An organization will need to equip managers with the knowledge and confidence to make these judgements.
In case, if the problem is with the immediate manager, the employee can report it to the higher level managers of trade unions within the organization. The employee can seek help from advocates too in this case. There are some commercial providers too exist who handles these problems. In smaller organizations, it is considered best practice that there is at least one senior member of staff as a point of contact for individuals who wish to blow the whistle.
Once an employee disclose something, usually the organizations tempts to have a meeting with that employee, and gather all information from employee regarding the problem. In some situations, conclusions can be reached with that meeting itself. If it is a serious issues, the actions will be taken for investigations over the problem. Through the further activities, it is recommended for the organizations to respond to the complaints and work on them.
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