Corporate whistleblowing arrangements are not working, says IBE survey

Roughly half of employees aware of misconduct do not ‘speak up’ about their concerns, evidence from the IBE Ethics at Work survey shows.

The survey aims to discover what employees think about the way corporate values are applied in their workplace. The new data suggests that corporate ethics programmes have matured, and now appear to be embedded in British organisations.

As employees have become more aware of elements of an ethics programme their expectations of their organisations are higher than before. However, nearly half of employees (45 percent) are not willing to raise their concerns about misconduct. And of those that did speak up, the proportion who say that they were not satisfied with the outcome has doubled.

Simon Webley, IBE’s Research Director commented on the numbers:“61 percent of those who did speak up say they were dissatisfied with what happened next (compared with 30 percent in 2012). Why this happens needs addressing if organisations wish employees to have confidence that something will be done if they raise concerns of a potentially serious ethical problem.”

Across continental Europe, in general, employees are less positive about their experiences of ethics in the workplace than they were in 2012, when the IBE first extended the survey to include France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Honesty is said to be practised less frequently and employees say that they are more aware of misconduct. Fewer of those aware of misconduct raised their concerns. Furthermore, awareness of each of the four elements of a formal ethics programme is lower.