Public Concern at Work (PCaW), the whistleblowing charity, has released a report  which makes for depressing reading if you are employee thinking of blowing the whistle on your employer.  The report summarises PCaW’s findings from a review of 1,000 cases handled by the charity in 2013.

In half of the cases reviewed by PCaW, the employee left the business after they blew the whistle, either through dismissal or resignation. A worrying 22% of employees reported being victimised for making a complaint.

A major concern is that once an employee has made a whistleblowing complaint many employers seem unaware of how to handle the complaint or prefer to hide their heads in the sand. The report stated that following a whistleblowing complaint 37% of employers denied there was a concern, while 26% of employers chose to ignore the concerns altogether.

PCaW noted an alarming increase in whistleblowing cases from the education sector, which rose by 57% from the previous year. They were unable to account for this sudden spike.

The largest rise in cases, however, belonged to the healthcare sector, which saw a 61% increase from the previous year. PCaW attributed this spike to the release of the final report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and the publicity surrounding that event.