.png)
You have developed your whistleblowing policy and thought through each step of your whistleblowing process. Now your whistleblowing platform is all set up, and you can receive anonymous reports. You also understand how to receive anonymous reports, engage with a whistleblower, and investigate what's been flagged up. Everything is complete, and you’re ready to communicate your whistleblowing program to your employees.
If there is a step where whistleblowing programs fall down, it’s typically this one. You could have a world-class whistleblowing program, but if you don’t communicate it well, employees will never use it. The communication phase is where you sell your program and help employees to understand how it will benefit them.
In this article, we will provide you with six tips to help you be successful in communicating your whistleblowing program. We’ll outline what you need to think about as you roll out your program and execute on your overall whistleblowing strategy.
Understand Your Audience
Before communicating your whistleblowing program, ensure you understand your audience. You might now be a whistleblowing expert after developing your program. For most employees however, this will be their first experience with anything related to whistleblowing. It’s imperative you understand who your audience is, what messages resonate, and what's the best medium to communicate your program.
Some key questions to ask yourself:
- How aware is your audience of any existing corporate values or code of conduct?
- Is your audience more office-bound or are they always out in the field?
- What corporate channels do they use to get information (email, intranet, face-to-face meetings)?
- What communication strategies have worked well for other initiatives?
- When you think about the average employee, do they want a simple, easy to understand message or are they looking for more details?
A great practice is to go out and actually talk with your audience. Answer the questions above to come up with some initial ideas and then test these out with actual employees. What you learn might surprise you and will help you craft a message that helps them better understand your whistleblowing program.
Articulate What’s In It For The Employee (Sell It To Them)
After you understand your audience, next focus on what’s in it for the employee. Many corporate messages are very top-down and instruct employees on what they need to do, and employees often ignore them. Use your insight to sell your whistleblowing program using approaches like:
- Altruistic: “Being able to report misconduct is the right thing to do, and we want to enable this for our employees.”
- Growth: “As we grow, we need the right processes to help manage this growth. Giving you the ability to anonymously report misconduct is a key piece to upholding our values.”
- Improvement: “We’ve had issues in the past, and we know we need to improve. Allowing employees to anonymously report is a key part of this.”
- Corporate Values: “We want to understand when we are not living our values. Anonymous reports help us take action.”
- Management/Ownership Changes: “As our management reviewed the organisation, we identified how employees could help anonymously report misconduct.”
Keep Your Message Simple (But Link To More Details)
If it's hard to understand your whistleblowing program, employees won't pay attention to it. Your goal is for them to know there is a program and where to learn more. Keep this message simple so employees can easily remember it.
Often a catch-phrase linked to your message can be useful to help make it stand out. While keeping your message simple, you will also want to add links to additional information. Providing more detail helps those employees that want to understand more. It’s a balance: keep the message simple but make it easy to access additional information.
Communicate Anonymity, Then Communicate It Again
No matter your company culture, a whistleblower is always thinking about the worst case scenario. Maintaining anonymity is a crucial way to protect themselves and ensure they do not face any retaliation.
If an employee does not have confidence that they can make a report and be anonymous, they won’t even take the first step. Focus on over-communicating the anonymity of your program and highlight how you will protect their identity. Approach your communication with the view that you need to convince them your program is truly anonymous. One message on anonymity is not enough; you need to keep at this to ensure employees believe it.
Reinforce Your Message Over Time And Across Channels
As humans, our mental retention is quite low and hearing something one time is never enough. That means you'll need to reinforce your whistleblowing message to employees over time.
After your initial campaign, set up a cadence of communication. These updates do not need to be unique to your whistleblowing program; they could be part of other corporate messages that mention it. It's also important that you are working across different communication channels. Combinations can include seeing (posters), hearing (company meetings), and reading (email, intranet) about your program, all of which help employees remember your key message.
Ensure Your Message Lives On
Make sure when you roll out your program, your communication does not end there. You need to ensure everyone coming into your organisation receives your message.
Next up is to think about how new employees will learn how to make anonymous reports. If they don't learn about your program in their onboarding, it's a safe bet they won't learn it on their own. Make sure you put this into your new employee training so everyone joining has the background on what to report and where to report it.
Conclusion
The hardest truth of whistleblowing is that a program is only as good as the people who know it exists. You can spend months building the perfect policy, but if it stays tucked away on page twenty of an intranet site, it will never protect your organization.
Whispli was built to solve this exact communication challenge. We do more than just receive reports: we help you make your program visible and trusted. By using features like secure QR codes on posters or a mobile first interface that feels like the apps your team uses every day, Whispli turns your speak up culture into a living reality.
When you choose Whispli, you are giving your employees a safe haven they can actually find and trust. Don't let your investment in integrity go unnoticed: use Whispli to make sure your message is heard.
%201.avif)
%201%20(2).avif)
%201%20(1).avif)
