We’re often sharing insights and best practices associated with ethics hotlines for your business. But there are financial benefits to consider, as well. In addition to the robust list of core reasons for implementing an ethics hotline, including fraud prevention and sexual harassment mitigation, there are several ways an ethics hotline can save your business a lot of money.

A Preventative Approach to Workplace Misbehavior

The most obvious financial benefit of an ethics hotline is the proactive ability to stop and prevent workplace misbehaviors before they result in costly fines or legal recourse. Safety violations that are reported before an accident occurs, for example, can save thousands. But the same preventative approach will help protect your business bottom line from claims of abuse, sexual harassment, and fraud, too.

Accounting and Financial Reporting

Some employee wrongdoing falls into the category of financial misconduct. And any amount of accounting miscalculations or mishaps, theft, or fraud is going to be costly to the employer. However, when you have an ethics hotline in place, allowing for anonymous reporting of suspicious activities, you increase the opportunity to spot these issues early. Imagine catching a cash register thief the first time he or she is reported instead of the fifth or sixth time. Imagine the savings if you could be made aware of account skimming one month in instead of after the fiscal year closes. Those savings could be well into the thousands.

Ethics Hotlines Deputize Everyone

How much would it cost your business to hire a dedicated Safety Supervisor, a Fraud Prevention Specialist, and Harassment Administrator? You would consider onboarding these professionals to help maintain compliance and oversee reporting. Or you could implement an ethics hotline whereby every employee, vendor, guest, and customer can be deputized to anonymously report concerns. And the latter is far more cost-effective than hiring dedicated staff members.

Legal Protection

Of course, when someone alerts the company to an issue using an ethics hotline, you can get a jump on investigations and potential resolutions. But there are other financial benefits to a company, especially when litigation comes into play. The ethics hotline reporting process itself establishes a timeline and documents each step, from the initial report called in, to the follow-through efforts your company takes, which can be crucial to any resulting lawsuits.

Reduction in Fines

Depending on your industry, there may be certain compliance, oversight, and regulatory guidelines your company is expected to follow. Violating these guidelines results in hefty fines, licensing restrictions, or worse. When you have an ethics hotline in place, you open the reporting and whistleblowing capability to everyone who encounters your business. And those reports can alert you quickly to compliance concerns, allowing you to address them before they translate into costly regulatory fines.

To explore other added benefits of an ethics hotline for your business, check out some of the other insights in our ongoing blog series. And when you’re ready to start leveraging the immediate financial advantages, contact Ethical Advocate to help get you started!