Establishing Confidential Hot Line

canuck

Our company needs to establish a confidential Hot Line using a contractual service to maintain annonymity. Has anyone used such a service? Can you let me know the cost and the firm's contact information? Thanks

Down_the_Middle

What type of confidential hotline????? Corporate compliance, ethics, whistleblower, grievance, pizza delivery ???????

canuck

We have just established a Code of Conduct policy and we wanted to incorporate a telephone hot line through a 3rd party. The hot line would be used for everything from workplace complaintsto ethics violations.

POPEYE

The problem I see with "confidential" call in programs is that if you have one EE that has a personal beef with another EE, supervisor or manager, they will flood the lines calling in. Then when you start investigating, (on "hearsay") you open up another can of worms.

IMOH, if an EE doesn't have the intestinal fortitude to come forward in person, they probably don't have a legitimate complaint.

pork1

I concur! The HR is the "confidential hot-line server" for our company. I am by policy the "HOT-LINE administrator". My reputation in this company is solid, and I receive all sorts of tips and always take some sort of action on each. Even into the arena of counselling the concerned person as to how to handle the individual's issues or concerns. The ownership would not begin to think about an outside brocker of internal problems. I recommend the same for all companies. If the HR does not have the ability to handle this issue, then you are looking around the corner at facing an NLRB challenge.

PORK

Parabeagle

Pork, what is true for your company may not be true for all companies. Not all companies (unless they are located in Utopian societies) have the level of trust in HR - or even their own management, for that matter - to expect all complaints will be delivered to the appropriate person internally and adjudicated fairly. Many employees just simply prefer to go outside the organization (if they didn't, we wouldn't have whistleblower statutes).

Personally, when I think of hotlines I think of the Air Force. The Air Force has hundreds of people whose particular specialities include Equal Opportunity, Social Actions, or Inspector General activities. All of these agencies are responsible for handling complaints of discrimination, fraud, waste, abuse, etc. There are some of these people on every AF installation. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one!

However, despite the wealth of resources available, the Air Force also maintains a hotline service through which members can make complaints without fear of retaliation and the system works well.

LarryC

Canuck, judging by the responses so far, it appears that the effectiveness of such a hot line depends on the size of the organization. It may make sense for your organization if your HR department is "corporate". If you have an "interactive" HR department, it may be a waste of time and resources to have one.

Gillian3

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 11-21-05 AT 03:51PM (CST)[/font][br][br]I don't know who does this, but this type of service is becoming rather common, especially after the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley. It provides an opportunity for employees to complain to someone outside of the company and provides a defense to the company when an employees has failed to contact anyone, inside or out.

mwild3136

Hi canuck - Here's something I googled on the web:

[url]http://www.tnwinc.com/news/whitepapers/TNW_RLART2_CM.asp[/url]

There seems to be a bunch of information online - good luck in your search!

canuck

Thanks mwild3136. I appreciate the information. I also appreciate the comments from the other forumites who responded. Although I agree with most, our company does not have a choice in this matter. We have established an internal direct line but I feel the need for an external source to convey the message to our employees that we are serious about confidentiality and protecting the source of the information. This would best be served through a neutral third party.

Shadowfax

I would not do this unless I were statutorily mandated to do so. Reason: depending on the language of your state whistleblower statute, you may be setting yourself up for a whistleblower complaint that would not be a valid complaint, if the same complaint were made internally. That is, complaints made outside the co. may be actionable as whistleblowing, whereas complaints made inside the co. are not. Just check to be sure.