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Don't shoot the messenger
Summary
IRS Employment Trends and Public Concern At Work
conducted a survey in May 1999 to assess how prepared employers were for the
advent of this summer's new act on whistleblowing. The key results of our survey
are:
90 of our sample of 114 public and private sector organisations had,
or intended to shortly introduce, a whistleblowing policy;
at the time of our survey, as many as 44 organisations were planning
to introduce a policy within the next few months;
public sector employers are more likely than those in the private
sector to have a policy - 95% compared with 63% in the private sector;
unlike the private sector, many public sector organisations consult
with a trade union when designing a policy;
the most common way to inform employees about a whistleblowing
policy is via the staff handbook;
only 39% of respondents train managers on what they should do if an
employee raises a concern under the whistleblowing policy, and 64% of those that
do so regard issuing written guidance as "training";
for 44% of respondents, responsibility for the policy rests at the
top of the organisation with the director or chief executive;
less than a third of organisations provide a telephone hotline to
enable employees to raise a concern;
two-thirds of respondents offer confidentiality to users;
70% of organisations inform the whistleblower of the outcome of the
investigation;
64% say that if dissatisfied with how their complaint has been
handled, the whistleblower can take it further;
two-thirds of respondents allow an employee to bring a union
representative or colleague with them to a meeting;
38% say that independent advice is available to a whistleblower;
44% of organisations report that victimisation of a whistleblower
will lead to disciplinary action;
six out of 10 respondents keep records of how an incident is dealt
with; and
in organisations that do not have a whistleblowing policy the most
common mechanism that staff can use to raise a concern is the grievance
procedure.
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