What does an anonymous reporting tool need to do?
A reporting tool has to be simple enough that a frightened person will use it, and structured enough that an investigation can be run in it.
Those are not the same product, so Speak Up shows each side only its own.
A public page, no login
- Opens from a link or a printed QR code, with no CultureMonkey account
- Chooses anonymous or, where allowed, identified
- Picks a category and answers a few guided questions
- Attaches files, keeps a PDF copy, and leaves with a report number
- Returns with that number and their own password to read replies
- Writes in their own language, from more than 100
A private case portal
- A queue filtered by stage, category and risk level
- Seven days to acknowledge and three months to respond, flagged when late
- Five stages from New through to Closed, every change dated
- Replies to the reporter, plus internal notes the reporter never sees
- Assignment by hand or round-robin across the category's team
- Response times, overdue cases and reports per 100 employees
Can employees report without a login or a work email?
Yes. The portal is a public page. Someone raising a concern does not need a CultureMonkey account, a work email, or a company device: a link on the intranet works, and so does a printed poster with a QR code on the back of a door. They leave with a report number and a PDF of what they sent.
No login, no app, no inbox required
Anonymous by default
Identified reporting is a setting you switch on, not the other way round. The mode is fixed once a report is submitted.
Guided, not interrogated
Each category asks its own short set of questions, so the team gets consistent detail without a blank box and a hope.
Evidence attached at the source
Documents, screenshots and photos come in with the report rather than arriving by email a week later.
Their language, your English
The portal runs in more than 100 languages, and every report and message reaches the case team in English beside the original.
The concerns you never hear about are the expensive ones.
What happens to a report once it is submitted?
It opens as a case with an owner, a risk level and two deadlines, so nothing depends on somebody remembering. Concerns raised by email land in one person's inbox and stop there.
A queue, not an inbox
Two clocks on every case
Seven days to acknowledge and three months to give feedback, following the EU Whistleblower Directive. Set automatically, and flagged on the case, in the queue and in analytics when either slips.
Five stages, every move dated
New, Triage, Investigation, Concluding, Closed. Each change is dated on the case, and a case closed too early can be reopened.
Assigned, not volunteered
Assign by hand, or let new reports distribute round-robin across the people scoped to that category.
Notes stay internal
Team discussion lives on the case and is never visible to the reporter.
A programme you can evidence, not just describe
The question a leadership team asks about a reporting channel is never whether it exists. It is how much is coming in, how fast it is handled, and whether people trust it enough to use it.
What you can show a board
Reports per 100 employees
Your rate against the headcount CultureMonkey already holds, so a quiet channel can be told apart from a trusted one. The most widely published median is 1.65 (NAVEX, 2025 data).
Response times and overdue
Time to first reply, time to close, and the cases that are overdue or about to be.
Volume, month by month
A monthly trend over any date range, cases by category with their risk badge, and how many people chose to stay anonymous.
Exportable, and logged
Pull the view into a spreadsheet for a board pack. Every action on a case is logged.
Sensitive cases stay with the people who should have them
Speak Up sits apart from the rest of CultureMonkey, and the case team's concerns never mix with HR's engagement data. Ordinary administrators, however senior, do not browse these cases: access is granted per person, per role, and scoped to categories.
Who sees what
Three roles
Admin sees everything and configures it. Member handles cases and moves them. Viewer can read and respond, but cannot change a stage, assign, or close.
Scoped where the data lives
Someone given HR categories cannot open a fraud case, even by editing the URL: the scope is enforced where the data is stored, not on the screen.
Outside help, nothing else
An external investigator or your lawyer can join as a Speak Up-only member, with no way into the rest of CultureMonkey.
One security review
Speak Up cases sit inside the same SOC 2 and ISO 27001 scope as the rest of CultureMonkey, so there is no second vendor to assess.
How does anonymous reporting stay anonymous?
By never collecting what identifies the reporter, and by letting only the people scoped to a category open the case. Anyone deciding whether to raise something deserves that kind of mechanical answer rather than a reassuring one.
What the product does
- Name and email are never collected when the reporter chooses anonymous
- A notification email, if they add one, is for alerts only and is hidden from the case team
- The reporter returns using a report number and a password they set themselves
- Internal notes written by the case team are never shown to the reporter
- CultureMonkey admins outside the case team cannot browse cases
Where anonymity has limits
- A reporter who describes an incident only they witnessed may identify themselves through the detail
- Identified mode shares a name and email with the assigned case team, and cannot be undone after submission
- Lose both the report number and the password and the case cannot be recovered for them
- Photos and documents can carry a location or an author name, so strip those before attaching if it matters
Worth saying out loud in your own rollout comms. People trust a channel that is straight with them about this far more than one that promises the impossible.
Anonymous reporting, answered
It is the default. In anonymous mode no name or email is collected. They still get a report number and set their own password, so they can come back, read replies and add information without ever identifying themselves.
Through the case itself. The reporter signs back in with their report number and password and reads your replies there. If they choose to save a notification email, they get an alert that something has changed, and that address stays hidden from the case team.
Only the people you put on the case team, and only for the categories you scope them to. Admins see everything, Members handle their categories, Viewers can read and respond but cannot move, assign or close a case. Other CultureMonkey administrators do not see Speak Up cases at all.
With a printed poster. The reporting page is public, so a QR code on a noticeboard or the back of a door is enough. Regenerating that QR immediately invalidates the old one, so reprint the posters if you rotate it.
Yes. Multilingual anonymous reporting is part of the portal rather than an add-on: it runs in any of the more than 100 languages CultureMonkey supports, you choose which ones to offer, and category questions translate on save. The case team reads every report and message in the original and in English beside it.
It runs the Directive's two deadlines on every case: seven days to acknowledge a report and three months to give feedback, set automatically and flagged when either slips, with every stage change dated. Anonymous and identified reporting, two-way follow-up and access limited by category are built in. Whether your programme complies also depends on your policy and your national law, so treat it as the system that runs the process rather than the compliance itself.
Yes. Add them as a Speak Up-only member with the role and categories they need. They get their own sign-in to the case portal and no way into surveys, engagement results or anything else in CultureMonkey.
Yes. Safety Violation is one of the default categories, set to Critical risk, with its own follow-up questions about the hazard and whether anyone was hurt. It is built for raising a concern and getting it handled, not for safety compliance recordkeeping such as injury logs, so it sits alongside a safety management system rather than replacing one.
Both. The default categories cover safety, harassment, discrimination, fraud and policy breaches, and you can add your own, so one channel takes misconduct reports and HR concerns alike, each routed to the people scoped to that category.
Speak Up is enabled for your account by our team rather than from a settings page, with analytics included. Talk to us or your customer success manager and we will turn it on and walk your case team through setup.
Go deeper on any part of it
The product pages sit with the sections above. These are the reads: what anonymous reporting is, the policy behind it, how far anonymity actually goes, how to train people to use the channel well, and how the tools in this category compare.
Anonymous reporting in the workplace
what anonymous reporting is and why it mattersWhat it is, why organisations put a channel in, what good looks like, and the ways these programmes quietly fail.The EU Whistleblower Directive, explained
what the EU Whistleblower Directive requires of employersWho has to run an internal reporting channel, what the channel has to do, the 7-day and 3-month deadlines, and how anonymity is left to each country.Anonymous reporting policy and procedure
writing the policy and the procedureThe policy a channel needs, and how categories and guided questions turn that policy into something people actually follow.Is anonymous reporting really anonymous?
whether anonymous reporting can be trustedWhat is stored, what the case team can see, what it can never see, and where anonymity genuinely has limits.How to train staff on anonymous reporting
launching the channel and training people on itTelling people the channel exists, teaching them to keep their report number, and what to say to managers.Best anonymous reporting software, compared
comparing the tools in this categoryTen tools compared on published price, channels, languages and whether the statutory deadlines are automatic, with where each one is not the fit.
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