Compliance officers should take comfort in a recent benchmark report, which indicates an uptick in the willingness of employees to come forward and raise concerns internally through whistleblower hotlines and directly to management or their compliance departments, rather than the government.
According to a recent survey, Helpline Calls and Incident Reports, conducted by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association, 37 percent of 677 compliance and ethics professionals polled said their companies experienced an increase in hotline calls. Another 51 percent said the volume of these hotline calls remained the same.
This trend was more pronounced among publicly traded companies. The majority (56 percent) reported an increase, whereas 33 percent reported that the volume of hotline calls remained the same.
Roy Snell, Chief Executive Officer of the SCCE and HCCA, said the findings are positive news for compliance and ethics officers. “It shows that more employees are willing to come forward when they see something wrong at work, and more are willing to trust that they will be listened to objectively,” he said.
Fears of a stampede of whistleblowers running to the government appear to be overblown. Only six percent of total respondents reported an increase in whistleblower claims; the numbers were the same for public companies. “The vast majority of employees are willing to give the company a chance to find and fix problems,” said Snell.
Employees appear more comfortable with in-person reporting of their concerns to management. According to the survey, 58 percent of the compliance professionals surveyed said they observed an increase in using all means of incident reporting, including in-person reports.
Anonymous Calls
The report also revealed that anonymous reports have remained static, with 70 percent of respondents reporting no increase. Eighteen percent of respondents reporting an increase in anonymous calls over the last two years, while 12 percent reported a decrease.
Fifty-nine percent of publicly-traded companies, in comparison, reported that the number of anonymous calls remained relatively constant. Another 23 percent reported an increase, while 18 percent reported a decrease.
Source: SCCE.
According to the report, anonymous calls are no less substantiated than callers who gave their names. The plurality of respondents (39 percent) said the substantiation rate of claims made anonymous was about the same as non-anonymous reports; another nine percent said they were even more substantiated.
In comparison, 35 percent of respondents said anonymous calls were lower than the substantiation rate of non-anonymous reports, while 17 percent said they weren't sure.
Increased attention paid to encouraging employees to report wrongdoing does seem to be having an effect on employees, although not in the way that many feared, the report concluded. More appear to be willing to come forward, either through the company hotline or face-to-face with management.
The findings highlight how important it is for companies to respond effectively and quickly to employee reports of wrongdoing. If an internal complaint goes unanswered, employees may quickly lose faith in their employer and turn to the government if and when wrongdoing arises.
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