DUTIES OF A CONFIDENTIAL ADVISOR

Donderdag 25 mei 2023

DUTIES OF A CONFIDENTIAL ADVISOR

1. To lend a listening ear in situations of unacceptable behaviour.
2. To discuss your problem with you confidentially.
3. To deal with undesirable behaviour such as bullying, discrimination, stalking, (sexual) intimidation, abuse of power and violence.
4. To discuss and explore together how the problem can be solved.
5. Give advice to management.
6. Aftercare.

There are two kinds of advisors:
1. Confidential Advisor (inappropiate conduct).
2. Integrity Advisor (integrity issues).

Of course these 2 forms can also be combined if the expertise is available.

Coo Consult has both disciplines at it’s disposal.

1. Examples of inappropiate conduct:
Bullying, (sexual) harassment, aggression, violence or discrimination.

2. Examples of integrity:
Manipulation, abuse of information and authority, conflict of interest, criminal offenses, fraud, questionable gifts, theft.

The confidant should know that in certain situations it is allowed to break confidentiality. For example:
a. If someone steals something (laptop).
b. In the case of fraud.
c. In the case of forgery.

However a Confidental Advisor is not recommended in the following examples:
• A Director or CEO.
• Someone who holds a management position.
• Someone from the works council (in Dutch ‘Ondernemingsraad’).
• Someone from Human Resources (HR).

The internal confidant should have a protected status (the same status as someone from the OR). Besides that the right to privilege is recommended for a Confidential Advisor (in Dutch ‘verschoningsrecht’).

An external Confidential Advisor is perhaps more independent in comparison to an internal Confidential Advisor.

An accused person (in Dutch ‘beklaagde’) is also allowed to go to a Confidential Advisor.
However the Confidential Advisor should know that in this case you cannot help both persons in the same situation.

The Confidential Advisor is NOT a mediator and does not do truth-finding.

The law “House of Whistleblowers Act” has been changed to “Whistleblower Protection Act” with several amendments.

The Whistleblower Protection Act
(WPA) was established to ensure that employees who engage in protected disclosure are free from fear of reprisal for their disclosure.

Mid-size private sector employees (with 50 – 249 employees) will need to comply by December 17th, 2023.