Survey: Employees Prefer Help Line and In-person Reports over Whistleblower Route

According to the recent survey Helpline Calls and Incident Reports conducted by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) and the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA), businesses benefit from encouraging employees to report wrongdoing. Employees are more likely to come forward through both helplines and directly to management or compliance over going the whistleblower route. Further, just 6 percent of respondents reported an increase in claims of wrongdoing, allaying fears over a rise in whistleblower claims.

“The data here is very good for the compliance profession and business as a whole. 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,” said SCCE and HCCA Chief Executive Officer Roy Snell.

The survey found that 56 percent of publicly traded companies reported an increase in helpline calls, while 17 percent reported a call volume that had increased a great deal. The overall numbers of incident reports have increased but the number of anonymous reports have remained unchanged as 70 percent reported no increase. Employees seem more willing to make in-person reporting to management.

According to the survey, 58 percent of compliance professionals reported an increase in using all means of incident reporting. An additional 14 percent reported that incident reports had increased a great deal.

“The vast majority of employees are willing to give the company a chance to find and fix problems,” said Snell.