What are Best Practices for Hotline Reporting?

In the days before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), a hotline reporting program was often viewed as a luxury rather than a necessity. However, in the 12 years since the law passed, the anonymous hotline has become an essential part of any successful ethics and compliance program. Hotlines have become a critical means for detecting any kind of misconduct within an organization and have led to high-profile investigations. They also serve as a way to gauge the effectiveness of an organization’s ethics and compliance initiatives, and can identify any program shortcomings.

4 Keys for successful anonymous hotline reporting software:

1. Demonstrate Trustworthiness – Communicate your company’s values and find ways to reward ethical behavior. Employees who believe their company values an ethical culture will be more likely trust that their reports of misconduct will be taken seriously.

2. Give options for coming forward – The most effective way to learn about potential misconduct before any reputational, financial, or other serious damage can occur is to provide employees with a variety of methods for reporting their concerns.

3. Maintain a clear escalation and dissemination path – Executives and compliance officers should agree on a list of critical topics that, if reported, would require immediate escalation 24 hours per day, versus topics that can wait for normal next-business-day operations.

 

4. Single Hotline – Having a single general ethics and compliance hotline in place allows companies to focus their efforts on supporting and promoting awareness around just one hotline.

An anonymous hotline is a critical part of a broader program of building and maintaining an ethical company culture. Organizations must ensure their hotline is in line with today’s best practices in order to best serve employees and protect the business.

How can we help?

360factors, Inc. helps companies improve business performance by reducing risk and ensuring compliance. Predict360, its flagship software product, vertically integrates all risk, compliance and operational functions allowing companies of all sizes to successfully utilize its anonymous hotline reporting software and manage regulations and requirements, policies and procedures, risks and controls, audit and inspections, and on-line training and qualifications, in a single cloud-based platform.

 

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