When the Government Can Pay Your Employees More Than You Can

The escalation of whistleblower payments just moved to a stratospheric level. Prior to this payment, the largest reward from the SEC was $125,000. We now live in a compliance environment where your employees can get rich by exposing fraud inside your organization.

So, what do we do to drive reporting inside the organization first? Most will say anonymous reporting systems, right? Wrong. Well-run companies managed this issue for decades without the use of modern technology. There’s no question that an appropriate culture of compliance and tone from the top in the organization is the key to addressing internal issues before the government is called in.

Most whistleblowers have attempted to report claims of fraud internally, but are ignored; or worse, told to “get on board.” This was a painful lesson learned during the financial meltdown. We now know that being a government whistleblower may become one of the highest paying jobs your employees could ever hope to have. Unless your organization is tuned in, committed to your code of conduct and setting a tone from the CEO down that fraud will not be tolerated, you are at risk.

Are you at risk? To find out, walk through your business and ask a group of employees what they would do if they discovered fraud within the company. Would they trust the organization to protect them if they reported it internally? If the answer is no, your organizations is at risk.