Whistleblowing

What it means

Whistleblowing is a report of unlawful or anti-social conduct that someone learned about through their work: corruption, tax fraud or rigged public procurement. The law protects the whistleblower even when the suspicion is not confirmed in the end, provided they acted in good faith.

It is not a complaint about a manager or a wage dispute. Protection attaches to the content of the report rather than to who filed it, and it rests on the Whistleblower Protection Act, not merely on the company code of ethics.

A whistleblower does not have to go through the employer’s internal system first. The report can go straight outside, to the law enforcement authorities or another body competent to deal with the matter. The internal system is an offer to solve the problem inside the company before it reaches the authorities, not a mandatory first stop.

How it works in practice

An employer with at least 50 employees must set up an internal reporting system and appoint a responsible person in writing; for public authorities the same duty starts at the lower headcount the Act sets. The rules are issued as an internal regulation alongside the works rules and do not replace internal control.

The responsible person confirms receipt, checks the report and tells the whistleblower the outcome within the statutory period; the whistleblower’s identity may not be disclosed without their consent. The Whistleblower Protection Office supervises the system and imposes fines, and the whole area sits under compliance.

When a company grows and its headcount reaches the statutory threshold, the system has to be set up at once, not from the new year. As part of payroll we keep an eye on headcount, alert the client and help draft an internal policy that names the responsible person, the way reports are filed and the deadlines for handling them.

What to watch out for

The costliest mistake is dismissing a protected whistleblower or cutting their pay: without the consent of the Whistleblower Protection Office the act is invalid, the employee comes back, and the employer pays wage compensation for the whole length of the dispute on top of a fine for retaliation.

The responsible person forwards the report, whistleblower’s name included, to the manager it concerns so he can respond. That breaks the ban on revealing identity, the company faces a fine, and it is also a personal data breach; on top of that the whistleblower now has grounds to go to the authority alleging retaliation.