“And as a reward for your honesty, devotion to public safety and good citizenship we have decided to...SACK YOU.”
Up till now, those who raise concerns about company malpractices have been faced not merely with the prospect of being labelled a trouble maker by colleagues but risked losing their job altogether. Ironically, such individuals are often doing a favour not only to the public at large but to the companies themselves. Recently an employee of Abbey National received a £25 000 reward for reporting the man who had been due to be the next Chief Executive for fraud. The stress faced by any individual who does decide to “blow the whistle” cannot be under-estimated. Amidst a climate of insinuations that they have been motivated by petty revenge, they face dismissal and severely damaged job prospects that can even mean stigmatisation by the whole sector that the organisation works in. In a culture that has an aversion to sneaks, turning a blind eye to malpractice has become the easiest option.
Most companies seem to prefer to have “trouble-makers” removed at their earliest convenience. Yet in many cases, whistle-blowers have often identified serious breaches of financial, environmental or safety standards and are not only complying with employment law by taking due concern for the welfare of their colleagues but acting as responsible citizens. Public Concern at Work and Freedom to Care are two organisations that exist to offer support and advice to such individuals who speak out for the greater public good.
Freedom to Care is a not for profit organisation that assists individuals in the campaign for corporate responsibility. “We want to see organisations make themselves more accountable to their staff and to the public. This means ethical behaviour, social responsibility and openness.” By offering support, particularly by assisting the establishment of networks of concerned employees within various sectors, they help people take their sense of citizenship into the workplace. Under the title “The Whistle”, they also publish informative special reports of examples of blatant misconduct by companies in the effort to make organisations more accountable to their staff and to the public.
Public Concern at Work (PCW) is a registered charity with a mission “to ensure that concerns about serious malpractice are properly raised and addressed in the workplace”. They offer legal help to individuals, provide a conciliation service and and help employers review their codes of practice. Their “Whistleblowing Policy Checklist”, recommended by the Nolan Committee and the Audit Commission, offers advice to employers on dealing constructively with employees who raise concerns. While they will always recommend that clients liaise with their workplace union, PCW differ from a union in that they have no direct communication with management and no national organising body. They also tend to focus more on questions of wider public interest rather than individual rights.
Around 45% of the cases that PCW deal with relate to the private sector. In smaller companies, complaints are mostly against individuals, whereas allegations against larger companies tend to relate to financial malpractice. Many of the smaller companies that come to their attention are privately run nursing homes, with the nurses unions recommending that their members contact PCW when they see abuses of care. Currently there is litigation going on against some of the larger companies following tip-offs to PCW - no names named yet though.
The climate is certainly starting to change in favour of the whistle-blower. The Nolan Committee Report on Standards in Public Life highlighted whistle-blowing in relation to the issue of civil service leaks and in doing so specifically supported PCW’s recommendations, such as producing guidelines to ensure that employees are offered confidential routes to raise concerns within the workplace. The term “whistle-blowing” itself is starting to lose its perjorative connotations. PCW say that initially they preferred to use the words “raising concern” as, in the words of a PCW spokesperson, “whistle-blowers” conjured up ideas of evil malicious people “dobbing on their mates”. “No-gagging” clauses have become common-place in NHS contracts, while a Private Members’ Bill dubbed the “Whistle-Blowers’ Bill” is due for its first reading on 12th December before going out to consultation.
The Public Interest Disclosure Bill, currently being redrafted by the DTI, aims to protect employees from unfair dismissal or “suffering a detriment” if they report malpractice. While some of its details - such as whether there should be minimum rates of compensation - may not be welcomed by small businesses, the bill has cross-party support and will enshrine into employment law the idea that the employee who has a sense of public responsibility can’t be touched. The next stage should be to allow employees to spill the beans on the type of company behaviour that while not in breach of legal requirements, is an issue of wider public ethical concern.
After writing an anonymous letter to a supermarket alerting it to the fact that it was being supplied with rotten meat by the food wholesaler he worked for, Michael was dismissed by his employer. He and his solicitor consulted with Public Concern at Work, and brought a claim for unfair dismissal from which a good settlement was successfully negotiated. He found work with another firm that knew that having an employee prepared to do the right thing would be better for their business.