Germany: Do employees have to be informed of external reporting offices?

 

The Whistleblower Protection Act is taking shape and is about to be finalized. In the current draft, Section 13 (2) contains a provision according to which the internal reporting offices must provide employees with clear and easily accessible information on external reporting procedures, eg B. via the intranet or the company website. This is intended to show whistleblowers their right to choose between internal and external reporting.

For the companies concerned, the question naturally arises as to how far this duty to provide information goes and, above all, how potential whistleblowers can be persuaded to opt for internal reporting .

With regard to the scope, in the absence of other regulations, it should probably be sufficient to provide information about the existence of the external reporting office and to name it. In order to convince the whistleblower of the advantages of an internal report, easy-to-use whistleblower channels with personally accessible contact persons and a hotline outside of the company's IT infrastructure certainly help.

 

For further information, please contact:

Diane Frank  , Lawyer

SCHMID FRANK, Augsburg

e: diane.frank@schmid-frank.de

t: +49 (0)1578 90 333 60

 

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