A global whistleblowing platform for 60+ countries at Decathlon

With a global presence in 62 countries and 1,500+ stores worldwide, Decathlon aims at making sports accessible to all. With such a global presence, managing compliance in every country and giving each entity the ability to speak up becomes a challenge that Whispli helps overcome.

Decathlon decided in January 2019 that it needed a new system to let people speak-up. With the new European Directive for whistleblowers' protection passed the same year, they were looking for a system:

• easy to use
• adaptable to legal requirements for whistleblowing in multiple countries
• available in many languages
• that could centralize and organize all reports
• allow case managers worldwide to handle reports according to their local requirements

With continuous changes in the legal landscape, Decathlon needed a user-friendly platform in which changes were easy to make. The platform had to give the compliance team the freedom to set it up the way they needed, for their multiple entities across the world.

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Setting Up a Common Foundation for a Global Whistleblowing Platform

Before Whispli, Decathlon had an open-door policy. If employees had any issues or concerns, they could go straight to their supervisors to report them. As a company spanning multiple legal jurisdictions, there was no centralized system to make sure that regulations were being met by local managers and organize reports. Decathlon felt that it was too decentralized, too autonomous, and didn’t represent its values: a company that wants to democratize sport in an ethically conforming way. Without clear visibility over the risks within the organisation as a whole, addressing and preventing them was a tough challenge.

The implementation process of Whispli at Decathlon had already started when Pierre Poujade, the current compliance officer in charge of the worldwide whistleblowing platform, became part of the team. He had to get hands-on very quickly. The first step was creating 20 different landing pages (where informants go to report) for different countries and in various languages. “It was very easy to set up,” he stated. This also included automations setup: the head office could configure the rule-based report routing to automatically triage reports to the right local team.

They also had to ensure that case managers at the local level were up to date with regulations. They also had to give whistleblowers the choice if they wanted reports to go through the local level or through headquarters. Partners, suppliers, service providers, and subcontractors can also speak up, and they might prefer speaking directly with headquarters. The headquarter staff was initially nervous about getting too many reports directly, but it hasn’t been the case.

Making sure that Decathlon was up to date with regulations was challenging. The wording of each homepage had to be checked through their legal advisors in the different countries, keeping in mind that a lot of them were in the process of implementing new whistleblowing laws (for instance with the transposition of the EU Directive in member states). They also had to adjust their platforms depending on affiliates - although Whispli was deployed everywhere, some subsidiaries wanted at first to keep their own system to report human ethics-related reports (like harassment). In this case, a few platforms only concerned business ethics-related topics for those legal entities, and human ethics topics were integrated later.

For Decathlon, knowing that they were giving reporters the choice of what would happen to their reports was very important. Ethics is paramount to them as a company.

Confidentiality. Security. Trust. People trust that the platform is secure, especially the ability to choose to be anonymous or not. It has worked quite well, so much so that when one informant who made a report realized that we were responding through the chat box and taking it very seriously, he spoke with his colleagues and they had the confidence to later send their own reports about the same issue. ‍

Jean-Baptiste Loriot, Compliance officer at Decathlon, Case Manager

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Complying with the Evolution of Local Requirements

With over 250 case managers in 62 countries, Decathlon needs to make sure to stay up to date with legal information and changes. They needed a system that was flexible and easy to use so changes and updates could easily be done according to new guidelines or regulations.

In 2019, the European Union passed a directive with the goal to have a common minimum standard of protection for whistleblowers across EU countries, requiring the creation of safe channels to report within both private and public organisations. Over the last few years, Japan has been updating its Whistleblowers Protection Act, with its most recent updated amendment in June 2022.

Decathlon also has stores in Russia and China. In both of these countries, it is unlawful to have the data hosted outside of the country, thus Decathlon needed a system that would allow data hosting in both.

Some of Whispli’s features that have played a key role in removing obstacles for Decathlon, include:

• A safe inbox, allowing reporters to choose their login and passwords, making it easy to reconnect and keep track of their reports. This makes it easier for Decathlon to communicate with reporters about how to handle their reports quickly.
• No code configuration: the Decathlon compliance team is able to make all the configuration changes by themselves, without any additional cost.
• The ability to host data in three different locations: the European Union, Russia and China.