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It’s been an interesting and challenging times for efforts to encourage employees to speak up, reports Neta Meidav, co-Founder and CEO of reporting tool provider Vault Platform. Despite the increase in employee activism, there has been a decline in year-over-year helpline volume, which she attributes to both the nature of traditional help vehicles and a deficit of trust in the workplace.
Other factors having an impact are: a desire of employees to report to external avenues, COVID-related changes in the workplace, and a new focus on ethics and purpose. This last factor goes hand in hand, she argues, with a growing tendency of social issues to become business issues.
Regulators have also been stepping in. For some time, of course, the SEC has encouraged reports to its Office of the Whistleblower. The EU Whistleblower Directive has acted as a catalyst across the Continent, with countries in the midst of creating their own laws, with varying protections likely. She expects this to drive increased accountability and transparency.
In this podcast she encourages compliance teams to think about the activist sentiment in Europe, what it means and how it differs from the US. And, of course, organizations need to recognize the complications posed by GDPR.
She also advocates for a reassessment of how compliance teams encourage employees to report internally. With open door policies no longer relevant in a time of remote working, she believes it’s time to find new tools and increase efforts to promote psychological safety.
Listen in to learn more about how to foster a speak-up culture in the current era.