Harvesting the Company Gripevine

Clients can also reveal their identities to the MySafeWorkplace staff only, allowing MySafeWorkplace to contact the employee confidentially to gather additional information about the report.

Size Doesn't Matter

MySafeWorkplace is serious about its tagline, "insight in an instant," which guarantees that any report will be made available to the appropriate people in less than three minutes, while many other hot lines can guarantee only 12 to 24 hours.

It's all about recognizing and responding to issues before they become an expensive problem.

"You can be sitting in Indonesia and make a report instantaneously," says Foster, whose company won a Global Award from Microsoft for this technology. "The sooner information is relayed, the more valuable it is to our customers," Foster adds.

While reports are only available to certain individuals in a company, the MySafeWorkplace system gives a business bragging rites." [Our clients] advertise and tell the world that they are a well-run ethical company ... with a wide-open environment where communication can flow," Foster says.

This raises the question, if a business isn't boasting, what is it hiding?

MySafeWorkplace isn't just for white-collar big business. It serves companies as small as 12 employees. It adjusts its fees on the basis of employee count.

"What kills small business in America is fraud and cash flow," Foster notes. For relatively little -- a couple of thousand dollars a year -- a small business can have the system up and running.

In blue-collar environments such as factories, safety concerns get reported often. "Information is typically known by individuals working on the floor, but they don't know how to get to management without revealing their identity," says Foster.

For example, even though they might be adversely affected, no employee wants to rat out a colleague who is drinking on the job. But if the person gets hurt, the company has the medical costs to deal with. Anonymity assurance helps the right people to come forward.

Business Controls -- which started out with four customers in 1999 and is now in 87 countries -- has shown that a service like this is invaluable.

"This type of solution is emerging as a top priority for board members that make decisions worldwide," says Foster. Any small business with a big scope would agree.