Dentons’ latest innovative online tool analyzes whistleblower regulations in more than 30 jurisdictions

Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, has launched an online comparative tool to analyze the legal requirements related to whistleblowing across in more than 30 countries in North America, UK, Europe, Latin America, Australia, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. The tool is free of charge and available online at www.whistleblowerguidelines.com.

When implementing or updating a whistleblower system, multinational companies need to comply with regulations across multiple jurisdictions. This can present significant challenges to legal and compliance personnel. This tool brings together information on regulations such as data privacy, labor law and notification requirements from different countries into a single point of reference.

Dentons categorizes this information based on various criteria in a user-friendly, comparative tool. This approach enables the user to determine at a glance the priorities and need for action. The platform currently includes information on 33 countries, with additional jurisdictions to be added in the coming months. Users can compare and contrast up to three countries at a time.

Cynthia Jackson, Employment and Labor Partner in Silicon Valley, commented, “Keeping up and complying with whistleblower requirements and rule amendments can be perplexing and time consuming for globally active companies, particularly in emerging markets. Our tool is designed to break through this complexity and provide the user with a snapshot of requirements so compliance personnel can more efficiently make a decision on next steps.”

Rainer Markfort, Corporate Partner in Berlin and Head of the Dentons Europe Compliance Group, commented, “A whistleblower system is an important element of a compliance management system and required by most modern anti-bribery laws and international standards (e.g. ISO). We developed this tool as managing multijurisdictional policy implementation projects is a challenge for any organization and with this tool we make the first step easy.”

The whistleblower tool was prepared by Dentons’ global Compliance group, which includes more than 200 compliance lawyers, representing multiple practice areas worldwide.