While whistleblower hotlines have been an organizational staple to detect fraud for nearly 20 years, are they still effective? The answer lies through a series of considerations, including objectives, training, awareness and trust. This article tackles these items, as well as metrics, benchmarking and resources to help gauge the health of a whistleblower program. A high volume of hotline calls compared to industry peers may indicate that the organization is experiencing significant fraud and potentially has an ineffective compliance and ethics program. Or, it could suggest that the compliance and ethics program is effective since people are using it. Conversely, hotline silence (i.e., a low volume of calls as compared to peers) may not necessarily imply that unethical or unlawful conduct is not occurring but, to the contrary, may be indicative of inadequate hotline awareness and an overall ineffective corporate compliance and ethics program. Now is a good time to reflect upon the question: is your whistleblower hotline alive or dying a slow death? Whether it's an effort to jump-start your hotline program or simply to harvest ideas for continuous, improvement, you will want to keep reading.
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