In the employee survey, the 21 per cent of all respondents who identified as managers demonstrated even greater levels of support for whistleblowing than non-managers, measured in terms of having a favourable personal attitude towards whistleblowing.

General support for whistleblowing also increases among those managers with higher job satisfaction, which appears to be a salient facilitating factor in managers’ support for whistleblowing ‘in principle’.

Greater levels of trust in management, job satisfaction and organisational citizenship all significantly increase the probability of any employee supporting whistleblowing, as do age and education. Being a manager, however, also increased the probability of supporting whistleblowing, net of other influences.

Managers with higher job satisfaction also indicated an increased knowledge of, and confidence in, their ability to navigate whistleblowing policies.

These results suggest that the organisational benefits of having highly satisfied managers extend not only to having managers with a more favourable personal attitude towards whistleblowing, but managers who should be able to put this attitude into practice through greater knowledge of relevant procedures.

Fifty-four per cent of all employee survey respondents indicated that they did not know whether they were covered by legislation setting out their ‘rights and responsibilities associated with reporting alleged wrongdoing’ involving their organisation.

While managers were more likely than non-managers to indicate that they knew whether they and their employees were covered by relevant legislation, a large proportion of managers—40 per cent—still did not know.

Most respondents who believed they were covered by legislation also indicated that they felt they needed more information and training about it—with this perceived need being significantly higher among managers than non-managers.

These results reinforce the importance of agency systems and procedures, and senior management leadership, that build on and maximise the general support for whistleblowing that exists among individual managers—especially given the dual role that managers often play as the potential solution to, and potential source of, the problems and conflicts associated with reporting of wrongdoing.

Based on the agency, employee and case-handler and manager surveys, a wide variety of internal organisational units and individuals and external resources are used to conduct investigations in or on behalf of the agencies studied. With almost all employee disclosures made internally, the responsibility for investigating reports of alleged wrongdoing rests primarily within organisations.

In the case study agencies, most internal witnesses, case-handlers and managers tended to agree that investigations were most often well handled if undertaken by some kind of specialist unit (for example, ethical standards, internal audit unit), rather than by line managers—on whom many agencies currently rely heavily.

Public sector organisations also currently rely heavily on using their chief executive officers (CEOs) to investigate whistleblowing matters—even though, in the assessment of most case-handlers and managers, the CEO is rarely the most appropriate person to conduct investigations.

These results highlight the need for appropriate expertise in investigations, but also the need for more careful consideration of the way in which institutional responsibilities for investigations are configured, given that not all management roles can be considered to be routinely compatible with investigation roles.

In the case study agencies, the results from the internal witness, case-handler and manager surveys also indicated that external watchdog or investigation agencies (that is, integrity agencies) did not enjoy much confidence in respect of the timeliness or effectiveness of their involvement in investigations.

These results indicate the importance and the difficulty of achieving more effective relationships between agencies and integrity agencies to help ensure that, wherever possible, the primary investigation of a disclosure is undertaken properly.

Only 26 per cent of agencies that responded to the agency survey indicated that they required or provided professional training for any staff involved in the investigation of employee-reported wrongdoing.

While 35 per cent of agencies indicated that they provided ‘informal or on-the-job’ training, the largest group of agencies—39 per cent—indicated that they did not require or provide any particular training.

In the case study agencies, 33 per cent of case-handler and manager respondents indicated that they had experienced professional training in how to deal with whistleblowing cases, while 43 per cent of respondents indicated that they had received only informal training and 24 per cent confirmed that they had no particular training.

This result was largely repeated in respect of case-handlers from internal audit, fraud, investigation and/or ethics units, 24 per cent of whom also confirmed that they had no particular training.

The amount and quality of training were shown to be positively related to case-handler and manager confidence in their ability to deal with whistleblowing reports, as well as less harsh or stereotypical views about the usefulness of whistleblowing and the feasibility of managing whistleblowing incidents to a positive outcome.

Based on a comparison of 12 of the case study agencies, agencies with ‘better-than-average’ investigatory capacity were more likely to have a higher proportion of employees who reported the most serious wrongdoing they observed (50 per cent) than agencies with only ‘average’ investigatory capacity (44 per cent).

In agencies with better-than-average investigatory capacity, employees who had reported wrongdoing were also significantly more likely to indicate that they would be likely to report again (mean = 4.22) than equivalent employees in agencies with only average investigatory capacity (mean = 4.01).

These findings reinforce the crucial importance of good investigation practice and capacity to the process of realising the benefits of whistleblowing, and indicate that the conduct and management of internal investigations represent a major, continuing challenge for public sector agencies.

All the surveys indicate that organised systems for supporting and protecting internal witnesses are in relative infancy. Only 54 per cent of all agencies that responded to the agency survey had procedures for identifying internal witnesses in need of active management support and only 11 per cent of all agencies surveyed had a formal internal witness support system.

Even within the case study agencies, which did have higher levels of informal and formal systems, only a very small proportion of public interest whistleblowers (perhaps 1.3 per cent, or 6.5 per cent of all whistleblowers who indicated mistreatment) were estimated as having been provided with active management support.

The reasons for this low take-up of organised or dedicated support services, even in the case study agencies, are likely to include:

The main sources of support that currently prevent more whistleblowers from suffering more than they do are not organised support programs, but informal social and professional networks, including family, friends, colleagues, union officials and supervisors.

For those whistleblowers whose experience becomes more difficult, some sources of support, including professional counsellors and more formalised assistance programs, become more important, but supervisors, managers and investigation agencies become increasingly less so.

Case-handlers and managers—while not excessively optimistic about their own success—continue to overestimate the extent to which organised or official sources of support are helping prevent worse outcomes. The extent to which whistleblower support is currently reliant on informal, social and professional networks does not appear to be properly appreciated.

There is a high risk that support will fail in any of the many circumstances in which the dual role of direct supervisors and line managers, described in Chapter 7, can turn from positive to negative. There are also signs that most support strategies are reactive, attuned to bolstering the coping skills of whistleblowers to help them ‘tough out’ difficult situations, rather than geared to management intervention against the sources of workplace conflict.

Seventy per cent of agencies that responded to the agency survey did not carry out any assessment of the risks of reprisal when officials blew the whistle. Only 15 per cent of all agencies were able to nominate anyone with specific responsibility for undertaking or coordinating risk assessments and only 2 per cent indicated that their risk-assessment procedures were formal.

Thirty per cent of agencies indicated that they had no staff (including existing line managers) responsible for protecting whistleblowers from reprisals.

Reasons for the reactive and inadequate nature of systems for managing reprisal risks and other problems include a lack of previous data about the real nature of the risks, and a lack of the internal management information systems needed to enable case-handlers to engage supervisors and other managers in an effective risk-management approach.

Where reprisal risks are realised, agency case-handlers and managers do not currently regard themselves as very well equipped or well placed to deal with them. Their evidence confirms that, generally, allegations that whistleblowers have suffered reprisals or other management lapses are not currently handled well.

In case study agencies, 38 per cent of manager and case-handler respondents with experience of reprisal allegations indicated a belief that disciplinary action was ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ used as a cover for reprisals.

According to case-handler and manager respondents, the most common reasons for the fact that reprisal allegations are only rarely substantiated relate to difficulties in investigation, including the fact that most reprisals are not acts for which individuals can be held culpable to a criminal standard of proof, but rather are management reprisals and institutional reactions.

Most case-handler respondents from watchdog or integrity agencies were highly critical of agencies’ responses to reprisals, but also quite sceptical—like internal agency case-handlers—about their own agencies’ ability to improve the situation under existing circumstances.

These results indicate the need for a fresh approach to the handling of whistleblowing cases in which questions arise about the adequacy of the management response, including a new or different relationship between line agencies and integrity agencies in the reporting, monitoring and handling of reprisal risks.

Based on the employee survey, in agencies in which more staff are aware of and confident in whistleblowing legislation, there are more positive attitudes to whistleblowing, higher whistleblowing ‘propensity’ on the part of staff, higher trust in the anticipated management response to whistleblowing and a higher likelihood that serious wrongdoing will be exposed or ‘flushed out’ (lower inaction rates).

Agencies with higher levels of staff awareness and confidence in legislation are not experiencing any lower rates of mistreatment of reporters than other agencies—suggesting that while increased awareness of legislation encourages staff to report and to trust management, more is needed to meet these raised expectations.

A comparative assessment of the comprehensiveness of the whistleblowing procedures of 175 agencies that responded to the agency survey indicates systemic weaknesses in all jurisdictions in the internal disclosure procedures that guide agencies’ formal responses to whistleblowing.

Agency internal disclosure procedures are typically weakest for procedures relating to support and protection of whistleblowers. Formal procedures are frequently skewed more towards encouraging reporting and setting in place investigative responses to those reports than towards protection or management of the welfare of the individual employees involved.

Only five of the 175 agencies were rated as having developed reasonably strong procedures for the management of whistleblowing, measured against the current Australian Standard.

Among the 102 agencies whose procedures were reviewed and that participated in the employee survey, more comprehensive internal disclosure procedures were positively associated with a number of positive outcomes, including:

More-senior staff members in most agencies, however, currently appear to have little accurate grasp of the quality and comprehensiveness of their own procedures. More-senior staff members tended to have lower trust in their own management’s response in agencies whose procedures were in fact more comprehensive, and higher (but probably misplaced) trust in agencies whose procedures were less comprehensive.

While the general weakness of systems for protection of whistleblowers makes it difficult to trace any positive outcomes to better whistleblower support, these results suggest that more comprehensive approaches do yield better outcomes and provide encouragement for agencies prepared to make an effort to develop better whistleblowing management systems.

The patchiness, generally low comprehensiveness and substantial variability of procedures were found across all jurisdictions, indicating a need for the development of new ‘best-practice’ or ‘model’ procedures, clearer statutory requirements and better oversight of the quality of procedures and the adequacy of their implementation.

This research has shown that, among the set of clearer, first principles needed to inform the revision or development of best-practice legislation for the management of public interest whistleblowing, several principles relate to the need for more effective operational systems at agency and jurisdictional levels.

The need for more effective operational systems is underscored by the extent of differences between the agency and employee survey results, indicating that, in practice, the bulk of public interest whistleblowing is currently occurring without being recorded, monitored or reported under public interest disclosure legislation.

Legislative reforms requiring prioritisation include:

There is also a special need for legislative reform to address the current lack of practical remedies for public officials whose lives and careers suffer as a result of having made a public interest disclosure.

The research results and recent case law combine to show that current legislative settings are insufficiently focused on restitution (including financial compensation) as a response to adverse outcomes, as opposed to criminal remedies that are, in any event, inappropriate for the bulk of cases.

Legislation needs to better define the legal responsibilities of employers for the welfare of employees who report, including by providing incentives for public sector managers to be more diligent in exercising their duty of care to ensure a safe workplace for employees by preventing and minimising adverse outcomes.

Contrary to widespread public expectations and the larger logic of whistleblower protection, only one Australian jurisdiction (New South Wales) has legislative provisions dealing with circumstances under which a whistleblower may take a public interest disclosure outside official channels. Even in New South Wales, the provisions are inadequate.

While the research has confirmed that public whistleblowing is statistically infrequent in comparison with internal whistleblowing, it nevertheless does arise—legitimately. Recognition of this fact is of continuing importance to the successful management of whistleblowing as a process, including to the confidence of employees and the understanding of agencies that if authorities fail to act, a further disclosure may well be justified and protected .

In summary, this chapter presents 13 key principles to form the basis for best-practice whistleblowing legislation, reflecting comparative analysis of existing provisions, feedback on the issues identified through the project, lessons from the empirical research and previous reviews from academic literature.