The Thanksgiving holiday is approaching in the US, and with it a reminder of the opportunity for you to express appreciation to your employees for their efforts to sustain an ethical culture and to engage in ethical behavior on and off the job.

Consider using the opportunity specifically to thank employees for using the ethics hotline to call attention to potential ethics violations or other wrongdoing. You know that organizations with ethics hotlines are more likely to catch unethical behavior early as compared to organizations without hotlines. You recognize how important it is to promote your ethics hotline throughout the year in order to encourage employees to continue using the hotline. And you know that employees like to know they made a difference. So tell them they did.

Acknowledge that it can be a tough decision for employees to make a report. Thank them for choosing to support the majority of their coworkers who try to do the right thing every day and for helping the organization live up to its highest standards. Share some of the high-level metrics, if you can, so that all employees gain a better understanding of how the hotline is being used. These metrics might include the number of inquiries (as opposed to allegations) received in the past year, the number of allegations received in the past year, the percentage of substantiated allegations, and the top categories of concerns, if they can be summarized broadly enough to protect individual or department names.

Reiterate the hotline’s purpose and value, remind employees how it works, and thank them again for their efforts to sustain an ethical culture.

Ethical Advocate provides hotline support and comprehensive compliance solutions for public and private companies, non-profits, educational, and government institutions. Please contact us for more information.