NAVEX dominates the hotline market.  Given its global footprint, NAVEX has access to a large database of employee reports.  Building on this unique perspective, NAVEX provides an annual report analyzing the employee reporting data and identifying important trends.

On June 3, 2025, NAVEX released its 2025 Regional Whistleblowing & Incident Management Benchmark Report. 

NAVEX analyzed 2.15 million reports — the highest level ever.  Its 2024 report covers over 4,000 organizations across Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), North America and South America, representing nearly 70 million employees. 

NAVEX reported several key findings:

Reporting Rates: The North American region receives more than twice the number of reports than Europe and APAC.  However, Europe had the largest increase from 2023 to 2024: 0.49 to 0.67 reports per 100 employees.  All four regions have experienced an increase in employee reporting rates over the last four years.

Time to Resolution: Aside from the larger volume, North American organizations are able to sift through employee reports, investigate when needed and resolve such matters in a median of 19 days.  By contrast, European and APAC companies are much slower in resolving internal reports with median times to closure of 69 days (European)and 56 days (APAC), respectively.

Time to Report:  Organizations in Europe and APAC experienced longer time periods between the incident and the employee report.  In Europe, the median time period from incident to report was 13 days; in APAC it was 12 days; and in North America the time difference was 8 days. Reporters who wait to report a incident may be resultant to do so because of the fear of retaliation.

Anonymous Reporting: Europe, APAC, and South America had the highest median rates of anonymous reports (65%, 67%, and 70% respectively), compared to just over half (52%) in North America. Higher levels of anonymous reporting may be an important indication of a culture of fear of retaliation. 

Retaliation Cases: With the EU Directive’s focus on whistleblower protection, it is important to note that by headquarters region, Europe-based companies substantiate retaliation cases at 32%, nearly double the rate of North America which achieved a four-year high of retaliation substantiation of 17% in 2024; APAC had a substantiation rate for retaliation reports of 28% for 2024.  The EU substantiation rate may reflect the unique legal framework under which companies must presume that a change in an employee’s conditions of employment are presumed to indicate retaliation .

Reporting Channels:  NAVEX’s report looked at reports received via a phone channel (hotline), web-based reporting, and “other” which can be walk-ins to compliance or through human resources. In North America, by frequency, the hotline is used for 31% of reports – significantly above Europe (18%) and even more than APAC (11%).

Reporting by Ownership Type: Finally, NAVEX analyzed the internal reporting data to reflect the different structures of company ownership – publicly traded companies, private organizations, government entities and education entities – to show how reporting metrics differ within these groups with notable findings. Privately owned companies are more likely to substantiate reports across the board, with Europe and APAC at 50%, North America at 49%, and South America at 67% substantiated.

Conversely, public companies’ substantiation rate was below 50% for all regions – Europe at 45%, APAC at 47%, North America at 42%, and South America at 43%.