Employee Protection Line®
The Employee Protection Line® is an effective risk management tool. The Line allows employees to report workplace wrongdoing toll-free 24 hours a day, seven days a week-a barrier-free method for preventing and discovering workplace violence, harassment, discrimination, theft, fraud, or other wrongdoing that lowers morale and reduces productivity.
The Employee Protection Line® helps create a foundation upon which employers can assert the U.S. Supreme Court's Faragher and Burlington affirmative defenses. The Line allows anonymous and confidential reporting, decreasing the fear associated with reporting threats, ethics violations, and theft.
Employees learn to use the Line through a simple program that includes a video, poster, and sample policies and procedures. The Employee Protection Line® also includes training on efficient and effective report management.
The AGOS Group offers the Employee Protection Line® as a simple, easy-to-use, and low-cost way for publicly traded companies to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Anonymous reporting lines are the best way to comply with the new federal law requiring publicly traded companies to implement a process to receive anonymous/confidential reports from employees. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires audit committees of publicly traded companies to establish procedures for employees to confidentially report problems within the company. Establishment of these procedures can encourage whistleblowers to report their concerns to their employer through the anonymous reporting line-rather than taking their initial complaints to outside authorities or the media.
Under Section 301 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, audit committees are mandated to establish procedures for receipt of complaints by employees (301.4.A) and for the confidential submission of the complaint by employees (301.4.B).
Under part 4 of Section 301, the exact language of the Act specifies:
"Each audit committee shall establish procedures for:
- the receipt, retention, and treatment of complaints received by the issuer regarding accounting, internal accounting controls, or auditing matters; and
- the confidential, anonymous submission by employees of the issuer of concerns regarding questionable accounting or auditing matters."
The Act applies only to companies that are publicly traded. However, the new standards are almost certain to become widely accepted best practices for all organizations-regardless of the type of industry or whether the company is publicly traded.
