Encouraging a Speak Up Culture

Publication type: Good practice guide
09 November 2017

Tags: Speak Up, Supportive Environment

This Good Practice Guide looks at practical ways that organisations can encourage a Speak Up culture by establishing a procedure for employees that gives employees the confidence to raise concerns about anything they find unsafe, unethical or unlawful. It examines the investigation process and looks at some ways which organisations can increase confidence in the process.

Speed read

This Guide is divided into six chapters:

Chapter 1 looks at the business and regulatory case for establishing a Speak Up procedure and developing an open culture.

Chapter 2 identifies the features of an effective Speak Up policy, with information from a survey of IBE subscriber companies on how they manage their respective programmes.

Chapter 3 looks at ways to make the Speak Up policy Summary effective by creating a Speak Up culture and provides examples of communicating and training.

Chapter 4 provides practical advice on how to embed the policy, from handling a call, to logging a report. It also provides information on how to monitor ‘informal’ reports through line management.

Chapter 5 looks in more detail at investigations: how they are conducted and ways to preserve confidence in the Speak Up process.

Chapter 6 covers monitoring and reporting to the board, as well as reviewing the effectiveness of the Speak Up procedure

The freedom to raise concerns without fear of retaliation is a core component of a supportive ethical business culture – one where employees are confident they will be supported to ‘do the right thing’.

Encouraging staff to raise concerns is just one step along the route to developing an open culture. Listening to those concerns, investigating them and acting upon the information received are essential. If companies do not support their employees in this way, they risk a concern becoming a crisis.

This Good Practice Guide looks at practical ways that organisations can encourage a Speak Up culture by establishing a procedure for employees that gives employees the confidence to raise concerns about anything they find unsafe, unethical or unlawful. It examines the investigation process and looks at some ways which organisations can increase confidence in the process.

Drawing on interviews with IBE subscribers, this Guide shares examples how successful organisations implement their Speak Up process and investigations.

This Guide will help all those given the responsibility for implementing a Speak Up procedure, and encouraging an open culture, in particular:

  • Ethics and Compliance practitioners
  • Human Resources, Internal Audit, Risk, Corporate Security professionals and Company Secretaries
  • Board members and senior leadership
Encouraging a Speak Up Culture

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