Breaking news will grab people’s attention regardless of the time of day or night it’s released. It could be an ethics, fraud, or other claim against your organization that will negatively impact employees, your reputation, and the bottom line. 

It doesn’t matter the size of your organization or the industry, your business is at risk for legal, operational, and financial issues that can have a long-lasting impact. AnswerNet can help by providing an anonymous reporting hotline so that you can monitor one or more of these issues in all critical areas of your business. 

Three Types of Hotlines

This list of hotline types will help you identify where you need to establish a hotline for your business:

Whistleblower Hotline

A good place to start is with a Whistleblower Hotline. These hotlines are telephone numbers that are always ready for employees, board members and other parties to anonymously report misconduct, violations of company policy, dishonest or illegal activities. This type of hotline is a cost-effective way to bring incidents to your attention before things get out of control and are posted on social media or with local or national media. 

Ethics Hotline

Having an Ethics Hotline allows your employees to anonymously report sensitive ethical issues such as workplace safety, sexual harassment, drug and alcohol abuse, hostile working conditions, and acts of discrimination.

Fraud Hotline

Newly released Federal Trade Commission data shows consumers reported losing more than $5.8 billion to fraud in 2021, an increase of more than 70 percent over the previous year.

The FTC received fraud reports from more than 2.8 million consumers last year, with the most commonly reported category once again being imposter scams, followed by online shopping scams. Prizes, sweepstakes, and lotteries; internet services; and business and job opportunities rounded out the top five fraud categories.

Of the losses reported by consumers, more than $2.3 billion of losses reported last year were due to imposter scams—up from $1.2 billion in 2020, while online shopping accounted for about $392 million in reported losses from consumers—up from $246 million in 2020.

Why is a Fraud Hotline Important?

Not sure if what you suspect, or saw is worth reporting? Report it. One negative incident can result in years of damage to your company’s reputation. A simple mistake by an employee can result in an ethics concern, and an issue with a customer can turn into something much worse if it’s left unchecked.  

It’s better to report a situation that turns out to be harmless rather than let ethics or fraud go unchecked and turn into a nightmare that destroys the reputation of your business. 

Benefits for Employers and Employees

Hotlines often alert employers to problems in their company they didn’t know about. This information can help employers avoid many potentially costly issues such as lawsuits or loss of business due to unethical behavior.

Employees who witness unethical behavior can be reluctant to engage in whistleblowing while at work regardless of promises of confidentiality. There is often a fear of being overheard, emails shared with others, or someone seeing them making the report. A Whistleblower Hotline allows the user to make a report outside of the workplace without the fear of retribution. 

Your Solution

Employees may think that In-house reporting options are not truly anonymous. Outsourcing a hotline with AnswerNet is the ideal solution for your business or organization. 

AnswerNet is a trusted provider of Whistleblower Hotlines for corporations, government institutions, nonprofits, and social services agencies to report information accurately and responsibly while offering complete anonymity.

As a trusted third-party provider of inbound hotlines, AnswerNet serves organizations across the U.S. and in Canada. Our hotline services come with benefits for any size of business and include: 

• 24/7/365 Live Agent Answering 
• Omni-Channel Evidence Submission
• Web-Accessible Reports

Don’t Wait

Our service is a cost-effective way to help bring incidents to light before they cause your organization loss of business, theft of assets, legal issues, or damage to your reputation. Contact us now at AnswerNet to learn more.