Whistleblowing starts before the whistle is blown
World Whistleblowing Day on 23 June gives organisations a useful moment to reflect on how people raise concerns, and what helps them feel safe enough to do so.
Legal and regulatory frameworks rightly play an important role in whistleblowing. In the UK, the law protects workers when they make a qualifying disclosure (UK gov). Across the world, protections continue to evolve, including the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive, financial reward programmes in the US (SEC), and strengthened corporate and financial sector safeguards in Australia (AU gov).
But regulation only tells part of the story.
Before someone formally reports a concern, something more human has usually happened. They have noticed something. They have weighed up whether to say something. They have made a quick, often unspoken calculation about whether speaking up will cost more than staying silent.
That calculation sits at the heart of safety culture.
In high-risk environments, the concern may relate to physical safety. It may also relate to behaviour, pressure, poor decision-making, psychological safety, ethical conduct or financial risk. In every case, the question is not only whether a reporting route exists. It is whether people believe others will receive their voice properly.
As Active Training Team Co-Founder, Adam Christopher, puts it:
“The central argument is simple: speaking up is the most human thing we do. What gets in the way isn’t usually a lack of process or policy – it’s the unspoken calculation that saying something will cost more than staying silent.
Psychological safety is what changes that calculation. And psychological safety isn’t built by organisations. It’s built by people, in small moments, every day – by anyone and everyone willing to be a little more courageous, curious, caring and collaborative in how they show up.”
That is why leaders should see speaking up as a safety behaviour, not only a compliance process.
Silence rarely stays neutral. It can hide early warnings, keep concerns out of view, and allow risk to travel further than it should. A person may stay quiet in a meeting, then carry that pressure into the next conversation. A rushed decision may go unchallenged. A colleague may stop raising concerns because someone dismissed, minimised or met the last one with defensiveness.
Culture does not stay in one room. It moves through teams, conversations and decisions.
For Safety Directors, this matters because the weakest signals often appear before the most serious incidents. For HR and People leaders, it matters because people build or lose trust through lived experience, not policy alone.
A speak-up campaign can make a real difference, but only if it connects awareness with behaviour. People do not just need to know where to report a concern. They need to believe that raising it feels safe, worthwhile and expected.
Five routes to strengthen speaking up
1. Make the first response matter
The moment after someone raises a concern is critical. A calm, respectful and curious response can build trust. A defensive or dismissive one can close the door quickly.
2. Ask genuine questions
People know when a question is really an instruction in disguise. Leaders can create safer moments by asking open questions, pausing properly and listening to the answer.
3. Notice who is not being heard
The most important insight may not come from the loudest voice. It may come from the quiet colleague, the new starter, the contractor, the remote worker or the person who has stopped trying to contribute.
4. Connect speaking up to prevention
People often see whistleblowing as what happens when something has gone wrong. Strong cultures encourage people to raise concerns earlier, when there is still time to act.
5. Reinforce it beyond a single campaign
World Whistleblowing Day can open the conversation, but repetition builds trust. Small moments, repeated consistently, shape whether people continue to use their voice.
The opportunity for organisations is not simply to tell people to speak up. It is to create the conditions where speaking up feels possible.
At Active Training Team, we help organisations build the leadership behaviours and cultural conditions that make speaking up possible. Through immersive safety leadership training, modular learning programmes and ongoing digital learning, we support leaders and teams to keep critical safety behaviours alive beyond a single campaign moment.
If you are planning your next safety, culture or speak-up campaign, we can help you turn awareness into meaningful, sustained action. Contact us for more information here.
