In this chapter, we present a practical guide for professionals that is based on our analysis of relevant theories as well as our empirical research. In our empirical analysis, the key issues that emerged were ethical culture, trust building, effective communication and the importance of employee voice. In our analysis of the extant literature, we identified several key theories that can be linked together to create a framework for practical use (see Appendix for summary of key theories and how they link). The recommendations that follow are derived from this framework, and represent a novel way of understanding speak‐up arrangements.

(The following, with some minor updates, is taken with permission from Vandekerckhove et al. (2016), Designing and Implementing Effective Speak‐up Arrangements. Report to ACCA, developed from the research project Effective speak‐up Arrangements for Whistle‐blowers, which was carried out between September 2015 and June 2016 and funded by ACCA and ESRC.)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This chapter is meant to serve as a practical guide on how to design and implement effective speak‐up arrangements. It is based on a synthesis of best practice from our comparative research presented in Chapter 3, which included a healthcare organization (an NHS Trust in the UK), a multinational bank, and a multinational engineering company; and an extensive analysis of existing literature. In addition, supplementary empirical material from a study of speak‐up arrangements at central government in Southeast Asia was utilized.

In what follows, we give illustrative examples alongside clear practical recommendations.

The guide:

• Lists benefits of operating effective speak‐up arrangements.
• Introduces different types of speak‐up channels, their strengths and weaknesses.
• Provides detailed recommendations concerning how to design and operate speak‐up arrangements.
• Identifies the challenges an implementing organization may face in due process.
• Suggests strategies that can be adopted to address these challenges.

BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE SPEAK‐UP ARRANGEMENTS:

1. For the Organization
   1. 1.1 Prevents financial loss: Both public and private sector organizations can save money by implementing effective speak‐up arrangements. Recent research carried out in 40 countries showed that 40% of the 5,000‐plus firms studied had suffered serious economic crimes resulting in an average of over $3 million each in losses.¹ Of these crimes, 43% were exposed by whistleblowers. This means that whistleblowing was more effective than all other measures for preventing wrongdoing combined: corporate security, internal audits and law enforcement.
   2. 1.2 Prevents reputational loss: Workers who voice their concern can help to prevent the dysfunctional behaviour that leads to reputational losses if there are robust response systems in place. In their absence, unresolved operational concerns lead whistleblowers to escalate their concerns to regulators and the press, as was seen in many high profile cases in the health sector including the UK's NHS. Financial services whistleblowers emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to highlight the wrongdoing that had taken place in their well‐known banks.²
   3. 1.3 Saves time and money on legal battles: Legal costs relating to whistleblowing disputes can be significant for both parties involved. Whistleblowing provides organizations the opportunity to address wrongdoing at an earlier stage. This prevents loss of time, money and effort in protracted legal battles. US whistleblowing advocate Tom Devine at the Government Accountability Project describes the detrimental effects that this can have on organizations.³
   4. 1.4 Creates organizational trust: Three of the organizations we studied had introduced their speak‐up arrangements in response to a crisis of trust. In the engineering company this crisis was triggered by wrongdoing involving the organization, which led to media attention, police intervention and regulatory sanctions. In the NHS Trust regulators carried out inspections following a whistleblower concern raised with them. In the bank, the crisis in trust was triggered by scandals in the industry. All these organizations rebuilt trust by implementing speak‐up arrangements. Compliance officers from the bank and the engineering company noted that the speak‐up arrangements have changed employees' perception of their role from ‘policing' to ‘helping'.
2. For the Employee
   1. 2.1 Prevents retaliation: Lack of procedures to receive and follow‐up concerns raised by employees leads to exacerbated suffering and retaliation.⁴ Research shows the vicious nature of retaliation that some whistleblowers can receive at the hands of colleagues, managers and wider society.⁵ Even though laws have been introduced, it is difficult to effectively legislate against such responses. But speak up systems can lessen this effect.
   2. 2.2 Makes raising concerns more effective: Proper arrangements for investigating and following up concerns allow for wrongdoing to be stopped at an early stage, so workers can continue to be committed to the organization and their work.
3. For Society
   1. 3.1 Protects public interest: Our research shows instances in which unresolved operational concerns had grown further into problems harming clients and the public interest. Examples from many sectors including the BP whistleblowers who could have prevented the Gulf oil spill, or the Piper Alpha disaster, internal auditors in Indonesia,⁶ the NHS whistleblowers in Mid‐Staffordshire Foundation Trust and others, demonstrate how harm to the public and costs to the companies could have been prevented if whistleblowers' disclosures had been heeded.
   2. 3.2 Maintains trustworthy institutions and organizations: Responding to internal whistleblowing by correcting the wrongdoing and keeping the whistleblower unharmed creates institutions and organizations that can be trusted.

RECOMMENDATIONS

This section offers practical and detailed recommendations for organizations designing and operating speak‐up arrangements.

1. Offer a variety of speak‐up channels.

Effective speak‐up arrangements are a combination of channels through which employees can voice a concern involving.

• Informal channels
• Question channel.
• Key internal persons.
• Internal hotline.
• External hotline.
• External ombudsperson.
• External independent advice channel.
• IT‐based channels.
• Email and Web applications.

Each of these channels has its own limitations. For example, their perceived accessibility exhibits differences depending on national culture and societal context. The extent to which any of these channels is used changes over time.

The engineering company we researched has operated a combination of speak‐up channels for almost a decade. The management implemented these channels as part of an organizational overhaul of the compliance function. This function was centralized, given more independence, and grew tenfold. Initially the question channel was used the most because employees raised integrity‐related questions through a Web interface. Subsequently more employees began raising concerns through the externally operated hotline. More recently, in most of the regions where the company operates, employees have turned to open and direct communication. Their experience shows that familiarity and positive experiences with one channel positively affects trust in other channels.⁷

These experiences show that providing a range of speak‐up channels:

• Allows these channels to compensate for each other's limitations.
• Increases accessibility.
• Caters to various national, cultural and organizational preferences.

2. Involve more than one function in your speak‐up arrangement.

We found that organizations with speak‐up arrangements operated by more than one function are more responsive. Functions such as compliance and HR should liaise with each other through clear protocols in a coordinated manner. This creates a division of labour in which each function applies its specialism. At the bank we researched, for example, Strategic HR owns the speak‐up arrangement and liaises with the special investigations unit (whose role is to oversee compliance). One function is to ‘mantle' the voicing employee and follow up his or her well‐being, and the other function investigates the potential wrongdoing. In the engineering firm, HR and the compliance work together on cases with both grievance and wrongdoing aspects, and all alleged wrongdoing is investigated by the compliance function.

We also noted that different functions within the speak‐up arrangements can set the ‘tone' and encourage employees to voice concerns. For example, the bank we researched moved the oversight of the speak‐up arrangement from the compliance function to the HR function at group level. This widened the scope of concerns taken into account, and shifted the attitude from ‘policing' to well‐being and engagement. This arrangement was supported by an additional free and independent advice channel that provided information on how to raise a concern and how the law protects those that do. In the NHS Trust, the HR and the board focused mainly on employment and patient safety issues, and the Trust Local Counter Fraud Specialist and the Finance Department respond to concerns about fraud, bribery and corruption. By dividing the responsibilities and ensuring that reports to the incorrect channel are redirected, the Trust is able to show they are taking a wide array of concerns seriously. These policies positively affected trust.

3. Build trust through speak‐up arrangements.

Trust is crucial in encouraging employees to speak‐up. So, it is often assumed that you should build trust before implementing speak‐up arrangements. Our research shows that effective speak‐up arrangements can actually help your organization build trust. This process manifests itself through speak‐up practices that evolve over time, and are supported by the independence of speak‐up operators.

A crucial characteristic of channels that further trust is the level of independence of the speak‐up operator. The perception of independence is based on speak‐up operators' specialist role and rule‐bound referrals (we use the term ‘rule‐bound referrals' for protocols and policies that specify rules for managers at different levels about how, when, and to whom within the organization a concern raised by an employee must be escalated). Where receiving and following‐up speak‐up concerns was central rather than marginal to their core job task, speak‐up operators were able to:

• Keep focus on appropriate listening.
• Objectively evaluate the quality of investigations.
• Carry out and document end‐to‐end follow‐up of concerns.
• Spot potential wrongdoing underlying concerns that seemed unsubstantial or unfounded at first sight.

For this research, it is vital to ensure that the speak‐up operators are given the time and resources to practise this work.

4. Be responsive.

Effective speak‐up arrangements involve robust systems to respond to concerns. Organizations must be as responsive as they can. They should explore whether employees who raised a concern can be included in developing a solution to the problem. This can increase trust in the effectiveness of the speak‐up arrangement. It can be a valuable opportunity for positively changing collective understanding of transparency and affect individual employee behaviour.

Responsiveness needs to be well organized, clearly mandated, and adequately resourced. Follow‐up activities must be planned and coordinated. Organizations should consider the following recommendations in order to build robust response systems:

• Responding: Research shows that at least half of the concerns raised through speak‐up channels are not about wrongdoing (harm to the public interest, breach of regulation, or breach of organizational policy). Such concerns are often disregarded as ‘employee grievances' or just a nuisance. In our research there were examples where the compliance function had initially referred a concern to the specialist HR speak‐up operator because they believed it had no compliance‐related content. When the HR officer looked into the matter however, issues were uncovered that had relevance for compliance but were not initially mentioned by the employee. Therefore, it is important to prepare your organization to respond to both grievance and wrongdoing‐related concerns, for risk management purposes. Specialist speak‐up operators tend to be more capable of identifying operational, people management‐related, or compliance‐related risks at an earlier stage.
• Investigation: As mentioned earlier, organizations should explore whether employees who raised a concern can be included in developing a solution to the problem. Seize the opportunity to increase trust. The NHS Trust that we studied provided a good example for this strategy. A staff member raised a concern related to an operational matter, which was not compliance‐related. They formed a team to develop and implement a solution to the raised issue and included the voicing employee in the team. This proved to be a good opportunity for collective sense making.
• Intervention: Design your speak‐up ‘back office' to investigate and intervene with regard to different types of concern. Be ready to deal with employee concerns triggered by the external environment. Scandals in your sector, country or at a global scale can change the attitude towards speaking up. A Latin American branch of the engineering company, for example, experienced a sudden increase in speak‐up events following a scandal that involved a publicly owned company operating in a different sector. A speak‐up operator from the engineering company believed that the surge in the complaints they received resulted from the changing public attitude towards speaking up.

5. Be aware of the barriers to responsiveness.

Being responsive does not guarantee being perceived as such. Inability to share the results of an investigation due to legal limitations or not having the contact information of an anonymous whistleblower may lead an organization to be perceived as irresponsive. Nevertheless, it is the perceived response rather than the real response that matters for creating trust, which encourages employees to raise concerns in the future. For this reason it is important for managers and speak‐up operators to understand barriers to being perceived as responsive and to develop strategies that address them. Failure to do so may create a culture of silence or lead whistleblowers to escalate their concerns to regulators and the press. These barriers include the following:

• Anonymous Concerns: Concerns are often raised anonymously for fear of retaliation. Communicating back to someone who voiced concern anonymously is difficult, if not impossible. Anonymous speak‐ups often occur through purposely made email accounts, for example, [email protected]. These email accounts can be used to raise a concern but are not checked afterwards to see if there is a response. Therefore, the speak‐up operator's efforts to communicate back inevitably fail. An added problem is encountered when additional information about the alleged wrongdoing is sought.
• Legal Limitations: Privacy and data protection regulations limit what can be communicated about an investigation or outcome. Conveying details can inhibit legal proceedings against a wrongdoer. Therefore, speak‐up operators often can only provide limited and vague information about investigations and outcomes. This may leave the voicing employee with the impression that their concern is not taken seriously.
• Invisibility of the Response: Sanctions against a wrongdoer are not always visible to other organizational members. For example, a minor wrongdoing might be sanctioned by a reprimand or a formal warning. Invisibility of sanctions is an added barrier in demonstrating responsiveness.

6. Develop strategies to circumvent barriers to responsiveness.

Organizations can adopt various strategies to circumvent barriers to responsiveness. Some of these strategies directly address the problems previously listed. Others aim to create a generalised perception of a responsive organization.

• Legal limitations: Speak‐up operators should manage the expectations of voicing employees. To do so,

1. • Give them an indicative timescale of follow‐up activities.
   • Inform them of legal limitations that prevent you from providing a detailed response.

• Invisibility of Sanctions: Some organizations rely on word‐of‐mouth amongst employees in making sanctions visible. A more strategic approach is to create a generalised perception of a responsive organization by:

1. • Communicating widely about concerns that were not related to wrongdoing.
   • Engaging with the voicing employee in finding a solution to the problem.
   • Reporting on the aggregated speak‐up events: The NHS Trust we researched published answers to voiced questions or concerns where no other person is accused of wrongdoing, on the intranet visible to all staff.
   • Being responsive to concerns that do not lead to investigations or sanctions: A supportive organizational culture is necessary in order to encourage whistleblowing. Because there are limits to organizations' responsiveness, it is important for management to seize every opportunity to demonstrate responsiveness. Responses to concerns that do not lead to investigations or sanctions should be considered as such opportunities because the response can be openly communicated within the organization without breach of law.

7. Shape and coordinate attitudes to responding.

Organizations should continuously reinforce the message to managers at all levels that responding to concerns is part of their role. They should also restrict managers' discretion about how to respond to speak‐up attempts. Giving a coherent and consistent response is crucial for building trust.

8. Involve third parties wherever possible.

Our research shows that involvement of third parties, such as unions, in the speak‐up process is beneficial. There is typically no ‘contracting' between a union and a company, and in this sense unions, like regulators, are not part of speak‐up arrangements.⁸ Theoretically, unions can give employees advice on how to raise a concern and even be a source of support. Our research shows however that this is not a common practice. Among the organizations we researched, only the NHS Trust explicitly lists this route.

9. Record all speak‐up events.

Some concerns raised with speak‐up operators will not lead to investigation or sanction. Such concerns, by themselves, may seem unimportant and not worth recording. However, recording all speak‐up events is useful for:

• Recognising patterns of concerns resulting from underlying problems: This helps identify and interfere with issues at an early stage. The speak‐up data will strengthen the organization's risk management, beyond simply filtering for alleged wrongdoing worth investigating. Managers can use them to monitor risk cultures. In this sense, speak‐up arrangements help organizations improve risk awareness and internal controls in proactive organizations.
• Collecting data for training purpose: Speak‐up cases can be used for training purposes. Concerns about the confidentiality and safety of the whistleblower often deter organizations from doing so. But strategies can be developed to use speak‐up data without endangering confidentiality and whistleblower safety. The engineering company that we researched, for example, used speak‐up data in developing their training programmes. Their message focused on the ‘back‐office' process of what happens with an employee concern and they emphasised independence of investigation and follow‐up.
• Monitoring speak‐up cultures and most‐used channels. There are often differences among departments or regions within the same organization in:

1. • Frequency of speak‐up events.
   • Channels used.
   • Types of concerns raised.

Managers and speak‐up operators can use data on speak‐up events to identify these differences and design their speak‐up arrangements accordingly.

10. Report.

Organizations can use the speak‐up data by publishing aggregated numbers of speak‐up events in the annual report. They can also participate in the development of a standard for the public reporting of data from speak‐up arrangements, with some efforts to support this evident in the UK for example.⁹

We have identified benefits for organizations in publicly reporting data:

• Positive interest from investors: One organization that recently published speak‐up results in its annual report notes that they had received questions from investors.¹⁰ The queries were about the types of concerns employees had raised through the speak‐up arrangement. The management interpreted this as positive interest from investors.
• Internal transparency: An organization participating in our research publishes data publicly. A speak‐up operator from that organization explains that reporting contributes to culture of internal transparency, and the pride in the effective first steps already taken motivated them to report.

Despite these benefits, organizations often hesitate in reporting numbers publicly through the annual report. They fear an influx of questions from other stakeholders and misinterpretation of the data. The aforementioned speak‐up operator says:

Sometimes we receive questions from journalists who want to have more detailed numbers. You cannot compare the incoming cases of one period, let's say one year or one quarter, with the disciplinary measures and the closing of the cases, because sometimes complex investigations take more than half a year or more than one year in total. Therefore, the numbers do mostly not refer to the same cases, they are just stating the in‐ and output of cases without saying anything about how much is still ongoing within the compliance organization. If we in one year have an incoming number of 100 cases and in parallel to that outline disciplinary measures in or closing of 60 cases, that does not mean we are only handling 60 of the 100 cases. We may very well have 40 open cases which are passing on to the next quarter or the next year.' (Engineering company interviewee B)

There are risks associated with misinterpretation of data by uninformed parties, and other first‐mover disadvantages following from increased transparency. But these can be mitigated as more organizations publish data from their speak‐up arrangements. This is likely to lead to emergence of a voluntary standard of reporting on speak‐up data. Such a standard can also contribute to further development of best practices in designing and implementing speak‐up arrangements.

11. Consider national and organizational culture.

Culture is an important factor in the effectiveness of speak‐up arrangements. The channels preferred and overall sense of receptiveness to voice, for example, are shaped by culture. When implementing a speak‐up arrangement, it is important to understand the potentially difficult interactions between organizational and national cultures in order to develop an appropriate strategy.

The engineering multinational that we studied provides good insights into the impact of culture on effectiveness of speak‐up arrangements. Their speak‐up operators noticed that in some parts of the world people preferred to speak directly to a compliance officer. Calling a hotline or written communication through a web application did not appeal to them. The external ombudsperson was sometimes used to raise a concern in Germany, the Middle East, and Asian countries, but much less by employees in the UK, the United States, or Latin America.

The differences in speak‐up channels preferred seems to be shaped by national culture. Yet, at times, organizational culture overrides national culture. The engineering multinational, for example, has a global expat strategy that ensures consistency across regions. Regional leaders are either nationals of the HQ‐country or have several years of work experience with the company at the HQ.

Overcoming regional differences requires effort. As conveyed by an interviewee from Latin America, when the speak‐up arrangement was initially rolled out, HQ had been clear enough on what structures, mandates, and reporting lines had to be implemented. However, it had taken a while for managers in Latin America to comprehend the rationale and the intended culture behind this.

12. Provide access in different languages.

For an effective speak‐up arrangement, it is important to ensure accessibility in different languages especially in multinational organizations. The engineering company we studied provides a good example in this regard. Its web‐based and hotline speak‐up channels are available in the languages of all the countries in which it operates. It is telling that Latin American employees voiced their concern via these channels instead of the external ombudsperson because they assumed she would not speak Portuguese. On the other hand, having a shared conversational language (French) provided employees in the Maghreb and West Central African countries the chance to voice a concern directly to compliance officers. These examples show that provision of channels in local languages contributes to success of speak‐up arrangements.