Retaliation, also known as “eye for an eye,” is the act of doing something harmful to a person in return for that person’s harmful act.
In corporations, employees who report and reveal an actual or potential wrongdoing and its perpetrator to relevant officers, the Ethics Committee, or the Ethics Hotline may experience unfavorable consequences and treatment such as exclusion, bullying, discrimination, threats, insults, mobbing, harassment, change of duty, hindering of career opportunities, and increase in surveillance and control.
As a highly recommended practice, companies create anti-retaliation policies to impede retaliatory action against employees who raise their concerns or report potential or actual violations.
Employees and third parties should be able to voice their concerns in a fair and private setting. As such, retaliation against employees or whistleblowers is unacceptable, and if an employee experiences retaliation, they should report it right away so that the appropriate measures can be taken. Companies should show their ethics to their employees who are in good faith, and support them in this regard, by encouraging them to report any situation that they think is wrong, incomplete, incorrect, inappropriate, contrary to the legislation, internal rules and practices, with the policy they create with names such as retaliation policy or the policy of preventing retaliation.
The management of a company should ensure that employees will not suffer any consequences if they report any violations of government regulations, business ethics, internal rules & practices, and company bylaws & guidelines. Whistleblowers should remain anonymous and not incur any harm due to their reports or notifications. An anonymous or confidential reporting mechanism should be available on hotlines.
Although the units where these notifications will be made differ according to the organizational structures of the companies, notifications can be made mostly to units such as Human Resources, Legal Unit, Ethics Committee and Compliance Unit.
