WPP has seen a surge in the number of staff contacting its whistleblower hotline – with almost 500 incidents in 2021, according to the company’s annual report.
The volume of whistleblowing incidents has jumped by 150% in three years, rising from 200 in 2018 to 361 in 2019, 418 in 2020 and 494 in 2021.
The primary means for WPP’s 109,000 employees to flag concerns is by contacting the company’s “Right To Speak” hotline.
“The most commonly raised concerns were about respect in the workplace and protection of WPP’s assets,” the annual report said.
WPP, which is the world’s biggest ad agency group by staff numbers, gave a breakdown of the “risk impact” of the whistleblower reports in 2021: 78% involved people, 9% were financial, 5% were legal and regulatory, 3% concerned clients, 2% were strategic, 2% were operational and 1% were related to data, privacy and ethics.
“All reports were followed up, investigated where appropriate by our business integrity team, and reported to the audit committee [which is composed of non-executive directors of the parent company],” the annual report added.
It is understood a whistleblower report led to the internal investigation at Finecast, WPP’s addressable TV business, and subsequent departure of several senior executives in November 2021.
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