IBE Speak Up Toolkit
01 Jul 2019
What is the ethical issue?
It is now generally accepted by many businesses that employees (and other stakeholders) need a means by which they can raise their concerns about practices they believe may be unethical, unsafe or unlawful. Malpractice can severely damage a company's reputation if it is not dealt with at an early stage, and may go undetected unless arrangements are in place for concerns to be reported.
The failure to have an adequate Speak Up programme can have many ramifications within an organisation. Not only does it not allow employees to feel confident to report wrongdoing, but it can also facilitate wrongdoing within the organisation. Offences such as, but not limited to, a failure to comply with company policy, miscarriages of justice and dangers to health and safety can all be more likely to occur with the absence of an effective Speak Up programme.
IBE Guidance
A summary of good practice
- Employees need to know how and where to obtain guidance on what is expected of them and the organisation they work for. Effective Speak Up arrangements facilitate the creation of an open and transparent culture, where employees have the confidence to speak out about issues that concern them. Through early detection and prevention of misconduct, organisations are more likely to avoid ethical risk.
- Methods of establishing an effective Speak Up programme include introducing a code of practice for speaking up, adopting a clear procedure for dealing with reporters which includes thorough feedback and monitoring, improving the reporting/publishing of Speak Up data and allowing third parties to use the organisation's Speak Up line to raise concerns.
- Speak Up programmes need to be implemented in a way that facilitates an open and transparent environment. Creating such programmes can lead to positive outcomes such as better risk management, the protection of stakeholders, improvement of staff morale and a reduction in staff turnover.
Essential resources
Further resources
Speaking up for whistleblowing
Read Prof. Chris Cowton's guest blog for Visslan - an organisation with a vision to simplify whistleblowing.
12 May 2022
Prevention is better than cure
Read the latest network blog by Mark Chambers, IBE's Associate Director (Governance).
27 April 2022
Innovating Business Ethics: Finding the employee pulse with polling
In the next blog of the Innovating Business Ethics series, Richard Hanson, Associate General Counsel - Ethics & Compliance shares how Smiths Group plc use surveys to identify and understand trends in employee views.
09 March 2022
Open conflict
Read the latest network blog by Mark Chambers, IBE's Associate Director (Governance).
03 March 2022
GE Whiz
In our first blog of 2022 Mark Chambers, our Associate Director (Governance), reflects on his time at GE.
13 January 2022
Innovating Business Ethics: The power of stories
In the first blog of the Innovating Business Ethics series, Steve Kerry, Rolls-Royce plc talks about how they use real-life cases handled by the company and turn them into anonymised stories known as ‘case studies’. This is done in collaboration with HR colleague Tracy Leja. This gives extra ‘power’ to their programmes!
22 December 2021
Shooting the Messenger
Read the latest network blog by Mark Chambers, IBE's Associate Director (Governance).
02 December 2021
Speak Up, Listen Up, Follow Up
In association with the National Guardian's Office, we participated in their final Speak Up Month event, bringing together the themes of Speak Up, Listen Up and Follow Up.
29 October 2021
Developing a network of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians to support workers to speak up safely
Read our latest guest blog, by Dr Henrietta Hughes OBE, National Guardian, NHS.
15 September 2021
IBE publish a new report, FTSE 100 Codes of Ethics: room for improvement
Less than half of FTSE 100 companies have Codes of Ethics that are up to scratch, according to new research by the Institute of Business Ethics.
09 August 2021
FTSE 100 Codes of Ethics: room for improvement
An assessment of the Codes of Ethics of the UK’s leading companies.
09 August 2021
The Ethics Study: translating aspiration into action
View the recording of our latest webinar.
13 April 2021
Building Back – Ethically
Dr Ian Peters' article for One magazine on culture and reputational challenges for all organisations. Putting values at the heart of purpose.
25 March 2021
Attitudes of the British Public to Business Ethics 2020
The 2020 results of the IBE's annual survey of the attitudes of the British public to business ethics.
30 December 2020
Business Ethics in the News 2020
This briefing provides an overview of the ethical concerns and lapses that were recorded by the IBE in its monitoring of media coverage in 2020.
23 December 2020
Global Ethics Day 2020
David Grayson, chair of the Institute of Business Ethics, reflects on the Seventh, annual Global Ethics Day, promoted by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, based in New York.
21 October 2020
#PandemicAndBeyond - Speak up and listen up. Ethics at the front line
In a guest blog for the National Guardian's Office, Dr Ian Peters discusses the importance of speaking up, and listening up.
07 October 2020
#PandemicAndBeyond - An ethical dilemma series
In the next blog of the series, Pandemic and Beyond: the ethical issues, Simon Webley, IBE’s Research Director, looks beyond a code of ethics and shares some ethical dilemmas.
10 September 2020