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There is also a significant increase in C-suite executives overseeing their organisation's whistleblowing programmes, at 32% in 2024 — up from 11% the previous year.
With the growing emphasis on transparency and ethical practices within organisations, the role of whistleblowing has become more critical in the recent years. According to Deloitte's most recent report, whistleblowing has seen several significant changes over the past year — particularly, with greater focus on protection, accessibility, and accountability, reflecting a growing recognition of its role in promoting transparency and ethical behaviour.
On the whole, the 2024 Conduct Watch Survey delves into the current state of whistleblowing practices, challenges, and protections across the Asia-Pacific region.
As a basis, whistleblowing remains a high priority for many, with 66% of respondents indicating it as such in 2024 — up from 58% in 2023. In line with this, 91% of respondents have implemented whistleblowing policies, also an increase from 87% in 2023.
More specifically, top management was also observed to be taking on greater responsibility for their organisation's whistleblowing practices, highlighting a stronger recognition of the importance of whistleblowing. In 2024, there was a significant increase in C-suite executives are overseeing their organisation's whistleblowing programmes at 32%, from 11% in 2023.
In trying to better understand the purpose, the study recorded that organisations employ whistleblowing programmes to foster a proactive ethical culture, enhance workplace transparency, and focus on financial integrity. Between 2023 and 2024, organisations have placed greater emphasis on:
- Improving the culture of ethics and integrity (from 25% to 26%),
- Encouraging a positive and transparent working environment (from 21% to 23%), and
- Detecting fraud and other financial misconduct (from 23% to 28%).
Conversely, there has been less focus on initiatives mandated by legal, regulatory or group requirements from 20% to 11%. This possibly suggests that organisations are becoming more internally motivated to implement whistleblowing policies to ensure responsible governance.
In terms of results, the most anticipated and observed benefits of a sound whistleblowing programme are early detection and prevention of fraud (35%), creating a safe working environment (31%) and enhancing stakeholder confidence (20%).
To measure whistleblowing effectiveness, most of the respondents indicated that they rely on the numbers of reports received (28%), followed by specific employee surveys to measure awareness and trust in whistleblowing programme (20%) and a broader employee engagement survey (20%). Notably, one in five organisations indicated that they do not measure effectiveness despite whistleblowing being labelled a high priority.
The report also identified a greater need for organisations to make consistent efforts to communicate their whistleblowing policies to their stakeholders and provide sufficient guidance on the effective use of whistleblowing channels. Per the results, most respondents indicated that they do not adhere to a specific timeframe for communicating their whistleblowing policies to stakeholders (44%). Further, less than a quarter (24%) provide annual communication regarding their programmes.
Organisations were also observed to be silent on whistleblowing statistics, as statistics were not disclosed in most of the respondents (38%).
A significant portion of the challenges faced by organisations when implementing whistleblowing programmes are related to trust by employees and their stakeholders in their policies. More specifically, 61% of challenges organisations face in implementing a whistleblowing programme are in the areas of employee issues such as independence, awareness, and fear of retaliation.
That being said, this is still an improvement from 2023, when 69% of the challenges were related to similar employee issues.
Looking at security measures used by respondents, access control mechanisms remain the most popular at 30%. This was followed by firewall protection (17%), regular security audits (14%), and incident response plans (13%).
Finally, the 2024 areas of improvement were:
- Enhanced whistleblowing training (36%),
- Better case management (35%), and
- Accessibility of reporting channels (24%).
Lead image / 2024 Conduct Watch Survey
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