overview

Key Learning Objectives

• Understand whistleblowing as a policy and practical issue for your organisation
• Ensure you are fulfilling your obligations under Australia’s new corporate law requirements since January 1, 2020, or equivalent public sector rules
• Design, implement, monitor and improve your organisation’s whistleblowing policy using best practice principles
• Identify key features of different forms of whistleblowing, wrongdoing reporting and compliance
• Undertake a practical exercise to strengthen your knowledge of whistleblowing management and what makes the difference in practice

About the Course

The course equips professionals and organisations with a full understanding of the key elements of any whistleblowing policy or program — including the crucial objective of supporting and protecting employees who speak up. Whistleblowing or ‘speak up’ programs are central to maintaining integrity and controlling corruption and other wrongdoing — within organisations and across whole governments and societies. With Australia’s new Corporations Act whistleblowing protections having commenced on 1 July 2019, and requirements for all large and public companies to have whistleblowing policies in place since 1 January 2020, now is the time to update or review to ensure a best practice program.

Drawing on the world’s leading research from the Griffith University-led ‘Whistling While They Work’ program, supported by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission and a wide range of public integrity bodies, the course will help you design and implement a policy which properly embeds ‘speaking up’ in your compliance, ethics and human resource management systems, rather than a set of words that sits on the shelf. The course also helps senior managers, in-house counsel, policy makers and integrity and anti-corruption professionals fully understand the role of whistleblowing, and its management in our fast changing regulatory and integrity landscapessystems and wider program of ethical leadership and improved organisational culture, not just as a ‘stand-alone’ or ‘off-the-shelf’ policy.

The course also helps senior managers, in-house counsel, policy makers and integrity and anti-corruption professionals fully understand the role of whistleblowing, and its management in our fast changing regulatory and integrity landscapes.

Who Will Benefit

This course equips organisational leaders, compliance staff, corporate services professionals, human resource managers, governance and integrity practitioners with the tools to understand whistleblowing as a policy and practical issue.

The course is suitable for any professional interested in or responsible for organisational governance or integrity, or wider research or policy interest in whistleblowing and wrongdoing reporting systems. It has been specifically designed for those responsible for updating, evaluating or establishing whistleblowing policies in their own organisation in light of changing regulatory requirements, (or under public sector whistleblower protection regimes) – but will also be of interest to other professionals and integrity policy practitioners.