Liz Gardiner: All sectors should be doing more to listen to those speaking up and acting on the concerns they raise.  Many sectors also need to catch up with the health and financial services sectors by putting in place the apparatus for speaking up.Speaking up is key to good governance, healthy workplace cultures and, crucially, stopping harm. For those working in the NHS, there are clear routes to speak up, including via the network of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians.  Yet this is far from the norm.

At Protect we offer advice to workers from across the UK who are unsure about whether or how to raise concerns.   We advise them on their employment rights, and on internal and external options to speak up.  Our aim is to maximise the chance of the concern being addressed and minimise the risk to the worker.  Usually, the best way to do this will be to raise the concern internally with the employer.    However obvious this may sound, it can be challenging.

Most employers are under no obligation to introduce even a speaking up policy, let alone ensure that their arrangements are effective.  During Covid, Protect received calls to our advice line from many working in the leisure and retail industries who had been asked to come into work even though their employer was claiming furlough money.    The workers knew this was fraud but had no internal channels to raise concerns.  They went instead to HMRC in their thousands.

Sometimes going external is the right route – if a worker doesn’t trust their employer or has been ignored already when trying to speak up, then we will signpost them to an appropriate regulator, MP or even the media.  But the opportunity is lost to the employer to put things right before a regulator gets involved.  And, too often, the opportunity is also lost to stop the harm.

We think that it is time for this to change.  At Protect we’re campaigning to reform the UK’s whistleblowing law so that employers across all sectors must introduce arrangements.  We’d also like to see a positive duty on employers – including in the NHS – to prevent victimisation to those who speak up.  This might include conducting risk assessments and putting action plans in place for those who fear retaliation.

Another key reform we’d like to see is to extend protections against retaliation or dismissal to a wider range of people who might speak up in the workplace.  The law protects “workers” but hasn’t kept pace with the modern workforce.  Self-employed people, non-executive directors, charity trustees and volunteers have no rights to be treated well if they have the courage to speak up about wrongdoing. For example, a volunteer in a small charity called us with concerns about misuse of the charity’s funds but knew they would lose their role if they spoke up.

Only in the NHS are job applicants protected when they speak up.  Employers can – and do – look at employment tribunal decisions and decide they don’t want to employ “troublemakers”.  This sort of discrimination can cause life-long career damage to those speaking up.

It is time we regarded those who speak up as working in the interests of their employer.  Most of the people who call our advice line just want the wrongdoing to stop – they raise concerns because they want their workplace to improve.  Doctors call us about malpractice affecting the quality of care, nurses raise concerns about bullying environments, care assistants call us because they’ve seen colleagues abusing residents: all want to stop harms that are getting in the way of their work.

All sectors should be doing more to listen to those speaking up and acting on the concerns they raise.  Many sectors also need to catch up with the health and financial services sectors by putting in place the apparatus for speaking up. But systems can only go so far – employers need to check those channels are not just available but also working effectively to protect everyone in the workplace and to stop harm.