The WhistleB system: a small step for your company but a giant step for global business
2019. A year that saw the world celebrate the 50th anniversary of humanity’s first footsteps on another planet. It was also the year that saw a young Swedish teenager inspire a global movement to fight climate change. In the world of whistleblowing, the EU passed a ground-breaking new whistleblower protection directive that essentially makes it a legal requirement to be an ethical company.
These moments of 2019, along with WhistleB’s own giant leap during the year, frame my and Karin’s positive outlook for 2020 and the next decade. We firmly believe that implementing a whistleblowing solution should be seen as a simple step for a responsible company to take, which nonetheless contributes to the greater good.
It all started around twenty years ago.
I had the privilege to work with some forward-thinking Swedish business leaders as they decided to fully grasp the issue of climate change and make it a business imperative. We were able to show that reducing the climate footprint and good business ethics reduced costs and were positive for employee satisfaction and recruitment of young professionals.
Some ten years later, Karin and I then pooled our experience to write a handbook on sustainability, Sustainable Profit. Our mission was to reframe sustainability, shifting it from being a matter for the environmental manager to deal with, to a business opportunity for the Board and management team. Your customers do not want to risk their reputation due to poor working conditions in the value chain; your customers want to strengthen their brands through secure products; your customers want to manufacture and sell products safely, and so on. We were greatly encouraged that investors were quick to join and paved the way for many more.
Soon after the book, we took another important step forward on our journey. Inspired by progressive Swedish companies such as Spotify and Skype, we decided we would offer an effective and secure online tool for companies to follow up on their sustainability work. It would be a way to ensure that employees, management, and leaders alike were doing the right thing, as stated in company codes of conduct.
This was the birth of the WhistleB solution, a secure, user-friendly reporting channel for all companies, which we are proud to have developed with TrueSec, the Swedish market-leading cybersecurity company.
Since then we have developed our service hand-in-hand with our customers across all industries. We have expanded rapidly from our corner of Scandinavia and now serve forward-thinking customers all over the world.
And exciting things keep on happening.
During the last year we decided to join the global market-leader in the field of ethics and compliance, taking a giant leap forward in delivering our vision. At the end of 2019 WhistleB was acquired by NAVEX Global, giving our combined companies the power and expertise to bring greater innovation to answer customer needs in the marketplace even faster.
We are often asked what it is that drives us. Just like with our earlier work on sustainability, the honest answer is still customers. We eat, sleep and breathe customer satisfaction, a perspective that will continue to shape the decisions and actions of every WhistleB function and employee. This is enough for us; it simplifies decision-making and ensures we do the right thing.
Going forward this will remain our focus. Our mission is to provide our service to everybody everywhere, simply, online and service them with the easiest-to-deal-with customer support no matter what question they have.
We all have everything to gain from the business world acting responsibly – doing everything it can to reduce corruption, discrimination, sexual harassment, environmental damage and more. Such crime is equally detrimental to the individual, the company and society at large. Implementing a whistleblowing solution is one step that companies can take in the right direction.
As WhistleB takes our next step, we would like to thank all our customers for the pioneering steps they have already taken. And we invite the rest of you to follow in their footsteps.
Here’s to 2020 and the next decade.
Contact
Gunilla Hadders
E-mail: gunilla.hadders@whistleb.com
