A critical lesson employers can learn from the horrific murders of seven babies by neonatal nurse Lucy Letby is the importance of whistleblowing – and the need for employers to have robust procedures to deal with concerns when they’re raised.
The tragedies which unfolded at the Countess of Chester Hospital highlight the general need to ensure organisations of all kinds have staff sufficiently trained and familiar with whistleblowing rules and their procedures to deal effectively and even-handedly with disclosures made to them.
Allegations about the handling of suspicions made about Letby by a more senior colleague have been widely reported.
These will, no doubt, be considered by the inquiry set up by the UK Government to investigate the wider circumstances around what happened at the hospital. Those of us who work in employment law and human resources will be keeping a close eye on how that develops and whether it results in more prescriptive rules on handling whistleblowing, similar to those being implemented in the EU.
In the meantime – and whatever the fine detail – the Letby case is a heartbreaking reminder that effective, clear whistleblowing procedures are vital, and in the most serious cases, that appropriate management of a whistleblowing disclosure can save lives.
So how can an employer ensure they have the right procedures in place?
It’s important to recognise that whistleblowing is one of your key policies. This recognition requires commitment from the top, and buy in from management.
Senior managers, in particular, should be trained to know what a whistleblowing disclosure looks like, the organisation’s policy on handling those disclosures and the steps to take. Confidentiality and giving whistleblowers the confidence to come forward without fear of reprisals are key considerations.
Ideally you will have a whistleblowing officer or, for larger organisations, a confidential hotline – the person or department anyone can go to who can be trusted to deal with the disclosure in the right way. However you set your procedures out, they need to include clear statements that tell whistleblowers they will be treated fairly. Whistleblowing can be seen as a brave step to take. Those coming forward need reassurance and confidence.
Ill-intentioned disclosures, where the person making them doesn’t reasonably believe they’re true, though rare, can be addressed in policy, without compromising effective action.
For those with whistleblowing policies already, perhaps this is a good moment to look at them – refresh things where needed and ensure you have a clear internal reporting route. Some forward-thinking employers use whistleblowing as a way of improving policies and procedures, looking at disclosures made to them and examining broadly how to learn from those disclosures to improve what they do and how they go about it on a regular basis. Learning those lessons in house, rather than via a disclosure to a regulator will also give organisations the opportunity to improve without adverse publicity or comment.
None of us will ever truly know why Lucy Letby did what she did. Nothing can ever be done to ease the pain of the families whose children died.
What is clear, however, is that had the whistleblowing process worked effectively, there is a chance that at least some of those murders could have been prevented. This is why we must get our policies and procedures right.
