Health Sector
Implementing a third-party ethics helpline to protect your organization from harm may seem like a drastic measure. Why pay an annual fee to protect your organization from fraud that may not even exist? Especially when the code of conduct you’ve asked every employee to sign includes a piece on reporting workplace issues to the internal audit department?
Here’s why:
More than 90% of fraud costs the victim organization a minimum of $10,000[1]. For this amount, organizations that have 200 employees plus could provide a third-party tip helpline for 20 years (for special requests please contact info@whistleblowersecurity.com). Through the helpline, employees and clients can report financial misconduct, harassment, time theft, patient maltreatment, malpractice, non-compliance with health regulations, and so on. The third party solution is truly anonymous and provides a safe place for the whistleblower to report, essentially protecting them from retaliation.
Tips are the most common means of fraud detection (40.2% of frauds are discovered by a tip as compared to the 13.9% found by an organization’s internal audit department[2]), and organizations with hotlines have not only increased tip rates, but will detect fraud faster and suffer fewer losses than an organization without one[3].
A lack of internal controls was perceived to be the biggest problem in fraud reduction for victim organizations, despite the fact that most had at least some form of control, whether it was an audit department or an employee code of conduct[4]. Many people are afraid of reporting workplace wrongdoing because they are afraid of what will happen to them if others find out what they have done.
A third-party ethics hotline is an easy fix to this problem. It allows employees and clients, under the safety of anonymity, to report the issues to those who need to know, so that the reputation of the organization can be protected.
Many small organizations feel that this form of internal control is overkill. “We’re too small to need that” is a phrase heard far too often when discussing whistleblower solutions. However, one-third of frauds are committed against small businesses, and mostly because they tend to have fewer anti-fraud controls in place than their larger counterparts[5].
Thus, the numbers of the ACFE’s Report to the Nations illustrate the point: that a third-party reporting program is more effective at catching and resolving problems in the workplace than other forms of internal control, because employees are more likely to use it.
Can you afford not to have WhistleBlower Security?
[1] ACFE. (2010). Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. Retrieved on August 8, 2011, from PDF
[2] ACFE. (2010). Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. Retrieved on August 8, 2011, from PDF
[3] ACFE. (2010). Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. Retrieved on August 8, 2011, from PDF