IMPORTANT! From December 2021, new legislation applies to strengthened protection for whistleblowers in all EU countries, which affects all companies and authorities with at least 50 employees.
Organizations are using ANON::form as a safe reporting channel for whistleblowers…
What you need to know about so-called Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers have long had a negative connotation, but constitute a very important function in society because they are often the ones who discover serious misconduct in the workplace, such as suspicions of irregularities, corruption, harassment and crime.
Despite the fact that many countries have legislation to protect whistleblowers, many are reluctant to report. In a survey from Transparency International, for example, 35% of EU citizens surveyed answered that the risk of retaliation is the biggest obstacle to reporting irregularities.
The problem has now been raised at EU level and from 2021 onwards, new EU rules (2019/19378) will apply that will be implemented in the legislation of all member states.
In short, the new rules mean that public activities and companies with more than 50 employees, municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants and organizations that are sensitive to money laundering or terrorist financing will be obliged to create safe, effective and efficient reporting channels that guarantee protection against whistleblower retaliation.
Anyone who uses the channels must dare to trust that confidentiality and anonymity are maintained throughout the process.
The EU is committed to having a well functioning democratic system based on the rule of law. That includes providing a high level of protection across the Union to those whistle-blowers who have the courage to speak up. No one should risk their reputation or job for exposing illegal behaviours.
Anna-Maja Henriksson, Finland’s Minister of Justice
A whistleblower system does not have to be expensive or complicated.
Even in larger organizations, it is quite unusual with reports from whistleblowers, most smaller organizations will probably never receive any report at all.
For the vast majority, a safe and secure technical report channel and a strategy with the management on how to handle irregularities are therefore sufficient.
Case management systems are certainly useful for large organizations but add unnecessary and expensive complexity to smaller organizations.
They also require a very high level of security as they are exposed to the internet and constantly risk information theft of extremely sensitive information.
And whistleblowers are skeptical of systems where, for example, they have to create an account and log in, etc., especially if they want to remain anonymous.
ANON::form offers a secure technical solution for creating internal and external reporting channels that meet all statutory requirements (and little more).
ANON::form is a unique solution where everything is unnecessarily scaled away so that what remains is an extremely secure and anonymous technical report channel as well as a default whistleblowing policy that is automatically created from your account settings.
Easy to embed in existing website and easy to use for both notifiers and recipients. Cost effective, you only pay for what you really need.
ANON::form is suitable for all types of reporting of sensitive information and is a safe alternative also for obtaining news tips for you who are a journalist.
Use our service to create a secure reporting channel for whistleblowers.
We can also help you create a simple strategy for how reports of irregularities in your organization should be handled, as a rule, 2-3 meetings that we take digitally are enough. Get in touch for more info.
