Research

Among the findings, this report suggests that formal compliance is largely established among the companies involved. 96.4% of companies have an identifiable reporting channel for whistleblowers. Students also note that most of the selected companies offer training on this topic and more than 57% of the companies provide an alert channel accessible to external stakeholders. They also tried to explore the corporate culture and thus understand how “speak up culture” has developed much more than the use of the term whistleblowing, which can be perceived as having a negative connotation. 

However, other points still need to be improved, particularly in terms of communication.  Communication on the channel and the existence of training on the subject of whistleblowers in the company can be difficult because it is sometimes scattered in several documents. The students also showed that there is a differentiation in access to information on whistleblowing within a company. Indeed, the people who actually access training are more often white-collar workers than blue-collar workers. An equally important point noted in this study is anonymity. If it is essential to any system of whistleblowers, the latter can complicate the real investigation (lack of information and difficulty in contacting people to obtain it). 

Finally, many reports do not fall within the scope of the law but often focus more on the working environment, which shows that education and awareness still need to be strengthened around whistleblowers.  

The Federal Ombudsman, coordinator for external reporting in the private sector, highlighted the same problem in his annual report for 2025. It states that only 16.5% of the complaints submitted to the Federal Ombudsman were declared admissible, compared with 11.5% in the federal public sector.

Check the report of the Federal Ombudsman here.