Whistleblowing
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20 Minutes -
For all staff
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UK
Effective whistleblowing helps public sector organisations identify malpractice, address risks and protect public trust. When staff don't know how to report concerns or fear the consequences of speaking up, serious problems can go unchallenged. Our Whistleblowing Compliance for the Public Sector in-depth training outlines how and when to raise concerns, and recognises the protections available to whistleblowers.
Help staff understand what constitutes whistleblowing, distinguish reportable concerns from other workplace issues and ensure they have the knowledge to speak up through the right channels.This practical public sector whistleblowing compliance e-learning makes reporting routes and legal protections clear, supporting the accountability expected of organisations responsible for public money.
What you’ll learn in
this course
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Define what whistleblowing is
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Understand what is within the scope of whistleblowing, and what isn't
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Learn how and when to blow the whistle
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Recognise how whistleblowers are protected
Hear from our customers
Feefo Customer Rating ★★★★★ 4.9/5
Managing Safely
Public bodies operate under scrutiny that private organisations do not face, and a safety failure becomes a matter of public record quickly. Councils, trusts and agencies are also expected to model the standards they enforce. Equipping managers with practical risk assessment skills protects staff and service users, and gives your organisation a clear audit trail when an incident is reviewed externally.
Safeguarding the Vulnerable
Safeguarding vulnerable people is everyone’s responsibility. Staff need to recognise when someone may be at risk, identify signs of abuse and know how to act before concerns escalate into harm. Our Safeguarding the Vulnerable Compliance Training provides guidance on how to safeguard individuals, report concerns through the right channels and take action without increasing risk. Equip all staff, regardless of role, to fulfil their duty of care and help build a safer environment for vulnerable people in the UK. This in-depth, CPD UK-certified compliance e-learning course builds awareness and practical skills to protect the vulnerable.
Data Protection
Data protection is essential to maintaining trust, protecting personal information and meeting legal obligations under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Every employee who handles personal data has a role to play in preventing data breaches, safeguarding sensitive information and supporting an organisation’s compliance responsibilities. Our CPD UK-certified Data Protection Compliance Training Course gives staff practical knowledge to handle information responsibly. Ensure employees can distinguish personal data from special category data, understand how data protection requirements apply to everyday tasks, follow safe handling practices and recognise when to report a potential breach. This in-depth e-learning course builds staff awareness and helps reduce information security risks, supporting a consistent approach to protecting personal data across your organisation.
First Aid Awareness
Public sector staff work across offices, depots, schools, clinics and out in the community, where the nearest first aider is not always obvious. That uncertainty costs time. Making arrangements visible to everyone rather than only to appointed first aiders is a low-cost improvement that supports your statutory health and safety duties and reassures staff working away from a main site.
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Fraud Prevention
Public sector fraud is usually found by someone noticing that a claim, invoice or application does not quite fit. Data matching catches patterns; people catch the individual case. Training all staff rather than the counter-fraud team alone widens that detection capability, and supports the standards expected under public sector counter-fraud strategy and audit review.
Information Security
Public bodies hold information people had no choice about providing, which raises the standard expected of how it is handled. Public sector breaches attract ICO attention and local press coverage in roughly equal measure. Training all staff, including those in temporary and contracted roles, gives you both the practical control and the accountability evidence the ICO looks for after an incident.
Manual Handling
Manual handling injuries are a leading cause of sickness absence across public services, and they accumulate over years rather than arriving in a single event. Care, facilities, waste and library work all carry it. Training staff properly keeps experienced people in post and supports your position under the Manual Handling Operations Regulations if a claim is brought.
Driving at Work
Public sector driving covers community visits, service delivery and transport of people and equipment, often to unfamiliar locations under time pressure. Grey fleet use is widespread and rarely managed as carefully as an owned fleet. Bringing all drivers into the safety programme addresses the most dangerous activity many staff undertake, and closes a gap that site-based risk assessments do not cover.
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Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH)
Public sector COSHH exposure is spread across cleaning, grounds maintenance, catering, laboratories and care settings, which makes it easy to assume it belongs to someone else. Health effects appear years later and are well documented by then. Training everyone who handles substances rather than only specialist teams is what makes your assessments effective where the work is actually done.
Accident Reporting and Investigation
Public sector incidents are examined by internal audit, elected members and sometimes coroners, and the quality of the original investigation determines how that scrutiny goes. Investigations that stop at immediate cause miss the staffing, training and equipment decisions underneath. Building genuine capability across services protects staff and service users and gives the organisation defensible records.
Work-related Stress
Stress-related absence runs consistently higher across public services than the private sector, driven by demand that does not reduce when capacity does. The HSE treats stress as a hazard requiring assessment like any other, and its management standards set out what that looks like. Training the workforce makes the subject discussable, which is the only way to intervene before absence becomes the first sign.
Work Equipment
Public sector equipment ranges across grounds machinery, kitchen and catering equipment, workshop tools, lifting aids and vehicles, frequently used by staff whose main role is something else. Inspection regimes depend on faults being reported. Training users on why the controls exist keeps that reporting flowing and supports your duties under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations.
Violence and Aggression
Public-facing services absorb a great deal of abuse from people who are frustrated, distressed or unwell, and staff often normalise it rather than reporting it. That silence keeps the pattern invisible to the people who could change staffing, layout or process. Training the workforce on both handling and reporting protects individuals and gives the organisation the data it needs to act.
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Display Screen Equipment (DSE)
Hybrid and touchdown working moved DSE risk into homes and shared spaces that nobody has assessed, while the employer's duty stayed where it was. Discomfort builds quietly and surfaces as absence. Training staff to set up and adjust their own workstation wherever they are is the only control that scales across a dispersed workforce.
Asbestos
Public sector estates include a large stock of schools, offices, depots and housing built before 2000, where asbestos remains in place and is managed rather than removed. Maintenance and refurbishment work is where disturbance happens. Anyone whose work could disturb building fabric needs awareness training by law, and in an estate of that age the population is wider than most organisations assume.
Menopause Awareness
Public sector workforces skew toward the age groups most affected, and losing experienced staff to symptoms nobody discussed is an expensive way to find out. Claims have succeeded on sex, age and disability grounds. Most adjustments cost almost nothing. Training everyone rather than only those affected removes the need to explain first, which is the barrier that stops adjustments being asked for.
Slips and Trips
Slips and trips remain the most common cause of workplace injury, and public buildings add their own factors: high footfall, weather brought in through entrances, and floors shared with the public. A fall involving a service user brings liability that an internal incident would not. Training all staff to spot and clear temporary hazards is the control that permanent measures cannot replace.
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Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
Public sector PPE spans care settings, waste and grounds services, workshops, kitchens and community visits, and it is often issued to staff whose main role is something else entirely. Equipment that does not fit or has degraded offers less protection than the wearer assumes. Training people to check and challenge what they are given keeps the last line of defence genuine rather than nominal.
General Office Hygiene
Public services run on staffing levels with little slack, so seasonal illness translates directly into cancelled appointments and delayed casework. Many staff also work with people who are more vulnerable to infection than the general population. Short, practical hygiene training reduces absence and protects service users, which makes it one of the better returns available in a wellbeing programme.
Equality and Diversity in the Workplace
The Public Sector Equality Duty requires organisations to actively consider equality in what they do, which reaches service delivery as well as employment. Staff decisions about who gets what support, and how, are where that duty is tested. Training the whole workforce gives the duty a delivery mechanism and supports the equality information public bodies are required to publish.
New and Expectant Mothers at Work
A specific risk assessment is required once an employer is notified of a pregnancy, and pregnancy and maternity is a protected characteristic in its own right. Public sector roles frequently involve shift work, standing, manual handling and contact with substances or infection. Making the arrangements visible to everyone means adjustments are understood rather than treated as special treatment.
