Clients of People Intouch perform better in Corporate Social Responsibility
When Annemarie ter Haar began her thesis with People Intouch to conclude her Master’s degree in Criminology, she chose a bold research question: how does the SpeakUp System effect the way that organizations perform?
When employees are able to remain fully anonymous when reporting misconduct, the barrier to reporting is lowered. Employees do not have to worry about retaliation or other negative consequences and this may actually increase the number of reports. Is this a bad thing? On the contrary. When employees have the chance to report misconduct internally it prevents them from turning into whistleblowers who seek a sympathetic ear outside of the organisation. It is important to prevent this as misconduct reported outside of the organisation could have devastating effects, even if the claim is eventually proven to be false. More importantly, the reports can be investigated internally and issues that would otherwise have gone on for longer can be solved. In this way, organizations can remove any bad apples that might otherwise have caused even greater trouble and they can do so in a controlled and safe manner. This theory of self-cleansing led Annemarie to expect that having an anonymous internal reporting system in place could have a positive effect on corporate performance.
“Internal reporting gives organisations the chance to deal with misconduct in a controlled and safe manner”
After comparing the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of People Intouch’s clients and three times as many other organisations which did not use an anonymous internal reporting system, the results pointed in a very interesting direction. SpeakUp users scored significantly higher in CSR than the control group in every year analysed. This can be seen in chart 1. CSR was measured using the Thompson Reuters Data stream which objectively rates listed organizations according to various aspects of performance. These comprise Environmental, Social and Governance scores (ESG).
“SpeakUp users scored significantly higher in Corporate Social Responsibility.”
The other significant score that shares a place with Environmental in the abbreviation ‘ESG’ is Economic performance. In addition to the overall CSR, it was also very interesting to compare how the two groups scored for this aspect. Not surprisingly, when SpeakUp users scored higher in CSR, they also scored higher for Economic performance.
These results indicate that there are merits to the self-cleansing theory and that organisations should embrace employees, who are their eyes and ears in the work place. After all, employees are the people who see the misconduct and organisations should make it easier for them to report misconduct without having to deal with any negative consequences.
To read the full thesis, request a copy at info@peopleintouch.nl