Regulatory & compliance strategy · 04
Whistleblowing & Ethics Framework
A code of conduct and ethics written in specifics rather than values-language; a protected-disclosure policy meeting the Protected Disclosures Act, with a channel that bypasses line management and…
A code of conduct and ethics written in specifics rather than values-language; a protected-disclosure policy meeting the Protected Disclosures Act, with a channel that bypasses line management and one that bypasses the executive; the investigation protocol; the conflict of interest and gifts policies and their registers; and the training and acknowledgement pack.
Public entities, NPOs and mid-size employers — often prompted by a funder’s condition, a social and ethics committee mandate, or an incident.
A whistleblowing policy that routes disclosures to line management defeats itself: the channel must bypass the people most likely to be the subject of a disclosure, which is a governance design question before it is a drafting one. And do not promise anonymity you cannot deliver once an investigation begins — promise confidentiality, and describe its limits honestly.
The law it sits under
The framework this work answers to.
The Protected Disclosures Act 26 of 2000, as amended by Act 5 of 2017, protects a worker who makes a protected disclosure from occupational detriment and extends that protection beyond employees to a wider class of workers. Section 34 of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act 12 of 2004 imposes a personal duty on a person in a position of authority to report specified corrupt activity involving R100 000 or more to a police official. For public companies and state-owned companies, section 159 of the Companies Act adds a disclosure regime of its own.
How the engagement runs
What you are committing to.
The framework is built as three connected instruments rather than one policy: the whistleblowing policy and channel, the conflicts and declarations regime that feeds it, and the investigation protocol that says what happens when a disclosure arrives. Each comes with the register that evidences it and the resolution that adopts it.
The design question comes before the drafting question: a channel that reports to the person most likely to be the subject of a disclosure is worse than no channel, because it identifies the discloser to exactly the wrong person. In a small organisation that usually means the channel has to sit outside it.
Related pages, tools and documents
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