[co-author: Chris Megone]

With the rollout of the EU Directive and relevant local regulations in the member states for the Protection of Whistleblowers, and more recently, the UK government’s announcement of a ‘failure to prevent’ fraud offence, organizations need to continue scrutinizing and updating their whistleblowing/speak-up policies and channels to ensure that they meet regulator expectations as well as maximizing opportunities to identify potential misconduct.

Organizations that to date have implemented whistleblowing mechanisms are better prepared to face the future, benefits include:

• Addressing financial crime.
  Financial crime continues to remain a worldwide issue. The commission of fraud within organizations’ structures is on the rise, and whistleblowing represents an important mechanism to prevent and detect conduct of this nature.
• Preserving reputation.
  Organizations with well-established whistleblowing systems demonstrate their willingness to combat corruption whilst enabling the organization to deal with issues promptly and discretely helping to reduce potential reputational damages.
• Awareness.
  With most of workplace wrongdoing still being reported outside of formal reporting channels and thus from an organizational perspective may be viewed as “going unreported”, speaking up mechanisms can support the organization in identifying potential misconduct and raise awareness on issues that need to be addressed.
• Crisis prevention.
  Whistleblowing/speak-up...

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