- Is your organisation cutting corners on health and safety or staffing, and so putting people at risk?
- Are your colleagues behaving in an intimidating way to people in their care?
- Is the company behaving fraudulently, or failing to comply with their legal obligations?
If you become aware of illegal behaviour by your colleagues or employer, especially if it’s a public safety issue, you might wonder about the best way to raise your concerns.
The technical term is ‘whistleblowing’.
It’s important to do this properly, otherwise you risk being treated unfairly, bullied at work, or even dismissed.
Your employer might have a formal procedure which explains how to blow the whistle. For example, the first step might be reporting your concerns to a manager, trade union official or health and safety rep.
Alternatively, you may have to make your report to an external organisation, such as the Health and Safety Executive. If you work in a care home, you would have to disclose your concerns to the Care Quality Commission. If it’s a hospital, it could be the Independent Regulator of NHS Foundation Trusts. And if the issue is to do with mis-handling of personal data, it will be the Information Commissioner.
If the misconduct is exceptionally serious, you could make a protected disclosure to the media (as long as it’s not for personal gain) or to the police.
If you’re not sure, you can ask us. We’ll tell you if the misconduct is in the public interest, and who you should tell.
We can also help if you suffer detriment or dismissal as a result of whistle-blowing…
If you’ve blown the whistle on misconduct, you should not be treated any differently. For example, you should not be held over for promotion, nor given a poor reference when you leave. If that happens, you might be entitled to compensation for your financial loss and injured feelings.
If you lose your job as a result of whistle-blowing, you can claim for automatically unfair dismissal and could win compensation that includes a basic award (similar to a redundancy payment), plus loss of earnings and potentially injury to feelings.
In summary, the law protects you if you do the right thing and report malpractice at work – but take care, and take specialist advice first.
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