Employers throughout Europe are failing to meet the expectations of their employees, when it comes to managing fraud within their organizations - despite overwhelming support from their people for strong anti-fraud measures.

This is one of the key findings of a new survey by Ernst & Young among employees of multinational businesses in 13 European countries.

The survey, "Fraud Risk Mitigation", interviewed 1,300 employees of multinational companies in eight Western European and five Central and Eastern European countries, and invited their views on how anti-fraud measures were implemented within their employer organizations.

David Stulb, global leader of Ernst & Young's Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, comments, "Employees are not hostile to corporate anti-fraud measures, indeed they positively support such programs.

However, they are crying out for their employers to provide clarity and encouragement for them to act positively in the interests of the company. Employees want strong codes of conduct and make high ethical demands on companies in return. Regrettably some employers are failing to persuade staff they feel the same."

Among the key findings of the study, which with some small variations by country were largely consistent across Europe, were:

• Companies miss out on the fraud controls that employees expect — nine out of ten staff (88%) believe companies should have a code of conduct to address fraud, bribery and corruption, yet only half of Central and Eastern European respondents and two-thirds of Western European respondents have such a code or are aware of one.
• Half of respondents believe that their organizations' whistleblower hotlines are used, where they know they exist, but as many as one in five say they are not used. Only two out of five (38%) are aware of a whistleblower hotline in their employer organization, highlighting the lack of education and awareness in many organizations.
• While there is almost total unanimity that whistleblower rights should be protected, only 55% of Central and Eastern Europeans and 76% of Western Europeans believe their employer will actually protect whistleblowers. Despite plenty of evidence to show that whistleblowers are one of the best ways to identify and stop fraud, many employees fear reprisals, even loss of employment, if they do blow the whistle.

Stulb concludes, "There is massive support and commitment from employees to anti-fraud programs and robust codes of ethical conduct. Employers have a great opportunity to reduce the risk of fraud and create a healthy corporate culture but many are missing the trick.

Good education and awareness programs will help but in the final analysis it is how the company and its leadership behave that sets the standard for the whole organization."