The Interlock Employee Hotline service allows employees to flag potentially serious issues within an organisation before they become more serious and the organisation suffers financial impact or loss of key employees.
Our HR Hotline product is designed to assist businesses to have an outlet for employees to raise issues of concern to the employer via an external contact. We will take a call and identify where the complaint is escalated to based on an agreed matrix. We also offer a short phone call for the business with a qualified workplace lawyer in extreme cases. This provides a safe “in house“ avenue for employees to raise issues and have them addressed by the business potentially saving thousands in legal claims which often occurs in such cases.
What is the Employee Hotline?
The hotline is a proactive, early warning service designed to put you and your organisation on the front foot by addressing potentially serious problems in their early stages, thereby allowing you to take steps to address and resolve such issues.
The Employee Hotline provides an avenue for employees to raise issues of concern to a counselor, anonymously if desired. Interlock can respond to this by identifying concerns and helping the organisation avoid escalation of the problem.
What are the advantages of the Employee Hotline to your business?
The Employee Hotline acts as a form of insurance to reduce potential risk to your business. It affords you the security of being able to demonstrate that you have taken steps to implement and manage a comprehensive process of addressing issues of concern to employees. By doing this, your organisation substantially reduces the risk of financial loss or damage of reputation.
By offering employees a non-threatening process to address their concerns, your business is communicating that you are serious about providing a positive and supportive working environment.
If Interlock receives a call or message from the Employee Hotline, you can be confident you are dealing with a company of integrity which has over 30 years' experience in workplace training, counselling and critical incident management for workplaces.
How is this service different to our in-house HR Department?
Recent cases in the media have highlighted the fact that employees do not always believe they can approach their HR Manager or Department to resolve all workplace issues with complete understanding of confidentiality. The Employee Hotline is an external and independent service which provides your employees with a ‘safe’ avenue to raise their serious workplace concerns that require confidentiality.
How does the service work?
Employees are provided with telephone and email access to allow them to report an issue of immediate or potential concern, such as discrimination, bullying or sexual harassment 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The steps include:
Recorded conversation or email is assessed according to the Escalation and Harm matrices which will be determined by senior management in consultation with Interlock.
If a caller is distressed, appropriate assessment and referral options are offered. Calls may be transferred to a psychologist depending on severity of the issue presenting.
The issue is then reported to your organisation and high-risk issues will follow an escalation protocol.
Your business has the option of a free 15 minute phone call to a qualified workplace lawyer to discuss the issue raised.
Your business identifies and implements an appropriate response.
All people who call the Employee Hotline are followed up within seven days by Interlock personnel to ensure the issue has been resolved or is progressing towards a resolution.
Interlock is able to provide Fee for Service-based counselling for employees and recommends this as a standard response for high priority issues.
What support services does your organisation receive from Interlock?
A variety of measures are offered to businesses who implement the employee hotline. These include:
The facilitation of one annual education and training session for your managers, tailored to suit the characteristics and existing policies of your business. This session addresses the risks of unacceptable behaviours, as well as how the Employee Hotline operates and is implemented.
Supply of all Employee Hotline support materials for use by managers in presentations to employees.
Provision of marketing material, such as flyers, magnets and notices to promote the Employee Hotline to employees.
Provision of quarterly summary reports on your organisation’s Employee Hotline usage in addition to issue reporting.
Interlock can also help your business update or develop relevant policies.
For more information, or to book this service, please contact us.
