Take a harassment report without asking for a name
Harassment is the thing people are least willing to put their name to, and the first question they ask is who will read it. This is the category side of CultureMonkey's anonymous reporting software: what the intake asks, who it reaches, and who it stays away from.
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- Anonymous
- Identified
Locked the moment it is submitted.
Unwanted verbal, physical, or digital behavior that creates a hostile or offensive work environment.
- 01Isolated, or recurring?
- 02Relationship to the person involved?
- 03Two more, yours to reword
What should a harassment reporting form ask?
Questions about harassment specifically, asked once the reporter picks the category, rather than one box marked "describe your concern". That box asks someone in distress to work out for themselves what you need to know.
- Follow-up questions
- 01Isolated, or recurring?
- 02Relationship to the person involved?
- 03
- 04
Four questions ship with the category
The seeded harassment category asks whether the incident was isolated or recurring, and what the reporter's relationship is to the person involved. Reword them, remove them, or write your own. - Your answerOptionalSubmit report
Optional by default
Follow-up questions are free text and optional unless you decide otherwise. Somebody writing this at eleven at night should never be stopped by a required field. - Question 01ENIsolated, or recurring?ES¿Aislado, o recurrente?Your wording, in every language you run.
In the language they think in
Category names, descriptions and follow-up questions are all translatable, so the form does not switch to English at the hardest question on it. - Open casesSafety ViolationCriticalWorkplace HarassmentHighPolicy ViolationMedium
Harassment lands as a High-risk case
The category's risk level is stamped onto the case at submission, so harassment sorts by severity before anyone has read a word of it. High is the seeded default, and changing it affects new cases rather than open ones.
What if a harassment report involves someone close to HR?
Then it stays with the people scoped to the harassment category, and nobody else can open it. A harassment report often involves someone who sits near the team that would normally read it.
Category scope is the control that keeps that circle small: every investigator is mapped to the categories they cover, and cases outside that mapping are not theirs to open. The category list itself is the Speak Up Admin's to set, and nobody else's.
| Who they are | On a harassment case |
|---|---|
| Speak Up Admin | Sees every case, in every category |
| Member scoped to harassment | Opens it, works it, moves its stage, closes it |
| Viewer scoped to harassment | Reads it and replies, nothing else |
| Member scoped elsewhere | Never sees it, in any list or report |
| Not added to Speak Up, even a Super Admin | No access at all |
Where does a harassment report go once it is filed?
To a named investigator, picked the moment it is filed from the people mapped to the harassment category. Most reporting channels stop at submission; here the category is a routing instruction as well as a label.
One category can map to several investigators, and one investigator can cover several categories. That is what lets two people share the harassment queue while a specialist owns fraud.
The moment it arrives, two clocks start: seven days to acknowledge the reporter and three months to give feedback, following the EU Whistleblower Directive. Either one slipping is flagged on the case and in the queue.
The reporter picks the category
It is the first choice on the form, and it sets the questions, the risk level, and where the case goes.
Auto-assignment is on by default, with a per-person toggle for anyone who should stay out of the pool. If nobody is mapped to the category, or auto-assignment is off, the case is created unassigned and waits in the queue rather than being lost.
What HR and compliance teams ask first
Yes, and it is the default. In anonymous mode Speak Up captures no name and no email, so the identity fields on a harassment case are empty by design. The reporter gets a report number and sets their own password, which is how they come back to read replies and add detail without ever identifying themselves. The mode is locked at submission and cannot be reversed by anyone afterwards.
The reporter picks the category, then answers the follow-up questions attached to it. The seeded Workplace Harassment category ships with four, including whether the incident was isolated or recurring and what the reporter's relationship is to the person involved. They are free text and optional by default, and you can reword them, remove them or replace them with your own wording.
Only the people scoped to that category. Each investigator is mapped to the categories they cover, and a case outside that mapping does not appear in their list, their filters or their analytics. A Viewer scoped to harassment can read the case and reply to the reporter but cannot move its stage or close it. A Speak Up Admin sees everything, and a CultureMonkey Super Admin who has not been added to the case team sees nothing.
The category's risk level is copied onto the case at the moment it is submitted, so it arrives in the queue already sorted by severity, and every case carries a 7-day acknowledgement window and a 3-month due date that are flagged when they slip. Workplace Harassment is seeded as High, alongside Discrimination, with Safety Violation and Fraud seeded as Critical and Policy Violation as Medium. You can change any of them, and the change applies to cases filed afterwards rather than rewriting the ones already open.
Whoever is next in line for that category. Speak Up looks up every active investigator mapped to harassment who is in the auto-assignment pool, finds who received the last harassment case, and hands the new one to the next person in line. If nobody is mapped, or auto-assignment is switched off, the case is created unassigned and waits in the queue for someone to pick it up.
Yes. The five seeded categories are a starting template: you can rename them, rewrite their descriptions, change their risk levels, reorder them, and add your own. Existing cases keep the name and risk level they were filed under, so history stays intact. Deactivating a category hides it from new reporters while preserving every case ever filed under it, which is why it is the safer move than deleting one.
Make a harassment report easier to file than to sit on
See the harassment intake and the case team's side on a walkthrough with our team.