What to Ask in a Whistleblower Hotline Use Survey (and Why It’s Important)

Having a hotline and/or other reporting mechanisms in place for employees is widely accepted as best practice. For employees, a hotline empowers them to raise concerns and make sure their voices are heard. For organizations, hotlines help identify issues before they have time to escalate; in fact, the ACFE found that 43 percent of internal fraud is uncovered through a tip.

But do your employees know about your hotline? Do they know how to use it and what they should report? A whistleblower hotline use survey can tell you if your communications about your hotline are landing. Below, you’ll find sample questions to include in your survey and insights on why sending one out every year is vital from Shannon Walker, Founder, WBS and EVP of Strategy, Case IQ.

Questions to Ask in Your Whistleblower Hotline Use Survey

What questions should you ask in your employee hotline survey? Make sure they cover topics including what to report, knowledge of the hotline, and preferred reporting method. Check out Shannon’s suggested sample questions below.

• Do you know that our organization has an ethics/fraud/employee relations hotline available for anonymous reporting/questions?
  • If you have more than one reporting mechanism, ask “Are you aware of the reporting options available to you (hotline, webform, email address, text, etc.)

  This question gauges employee awareness of your hotline. Employees knowing that they can safely report concerns somewhere is the bare minimum requirement for effectively catching and resolving issues early.

   

  • Have you witnessed any behavior that may be something worth reporting? If so, what was it? [add a free text area below for elaboration]

  This question helps you uncover the level of misconduct that goes on “behind the scenes.” It also gauges employee trust; if many employees say they’ve witnessed misconduct but didn’t report it, you need to find out why.

   

  • Which of these behaviors do you think should be reported on our company’s hotline? Check all that apply. [make the below list into checkable boxes]
    • Harassment (including physical, verbal, sexual, and mental/psychological)
    • Violence
    • Discrimination
    • Theft (data or physical goods)
    • Corruption or bribery
    • Conflict of interest
    • Endangering the health and/or safety of yourself or others
    • Misuse of company property
    • Breaking an internal policy in a way not listed here

  This question can help you with your whistleblower hotline messaging. If employees don’t mark every box on the list, rethink your hotline training, as you are not clearly communicating the types of behavior that you want to hear about.

   

  • Have you ever wanted to report something but felt uncomfortable or intimidated to do so?
    • For further insights, offer a free text field below this question where employees can elaborate on details of their situation. If they answered yes, when did it occur, why did they uncomfortable, and what did the concern regard?

  This question can help you identify cultural issues in your organization. If numerous employees feel uncomfortable reporting, you might need to implement an ethics focus company wide. Based on free text answers, you might find that employees in a certain department or of a specific group (i.e., gender, race, religion, etc.) are intimidated by reporting. If so, ethics training for that department’s manager or better DEI initiatives might be the answer.

   

  • Have you ever reported on anything and not received any feedback or response?

  Use this question to identify problem areas in your investigative process. Did reporters not receive a response because their report got lost in the shuffle? You need a better case management solution, preferably one that integrates with your intake systems. Or does your team not reply to reports when an investigation isn’t warranted? A simple response explaining this course of action assures the reporter that you value their feedback, even if you don’t move forward with an investigation into their concern.

   

  • If you have reported in the past, what mechanism did you use? Which mechanism would you prefer to use if you reported something today?

  By asking this question, you can determine the ROI of your reporting mechanisms. For example, if employees often use an expensive messaging platform to report, it is probably worth keeping on offer. Or, if they rarely fill out paper reporting forms, consider scrapping that option, even if it’s inexpensive, as it probably isn’t worth the effort to continue.

Why You Need to Conduct a Whistleblower Hotline Use Survey

What’s the purpose of conducting a whistleblower hotline use survey? “The idea of all of this is to see if [employees] even know [the hotline] is available,” says Shannon. “If they do, do they feel safe using it? If they have used it, did they submit feedback, and was it successful?” She explains that an employee hotline survey is an “excellent opportunity to do a temperature check with the actual audience of potential reporters and to identify strategies to increase awareness, usage, and value” of your reporting mechanisms.

If employees don’t know how to or simply aren’t using your reporting mechanisms, you risk leaving incidents unresolved for too long, or even overlooking them altogether. Minor issues can escalate into more serious problems with widespread impact. To reduce your organization’s risk, employ case management software that includes easy-to-use omnichannel intake.

READ MORE: What is a Speak Up Culture? (and Why Your Organization Needs One)

How Case IQ Can Help

Case IQ’s integrated hotline, powered by WhistleBlower Security, empowers your employees to report incidents and wrongdoing, facilitating the creation of a true speak-up culture. As soon as you receive a report, our case management platform creates a new case file populated with report details, so no reports slip through the cracks. Learn how you can uncover issues faster and reduce resolution time here.