So Katie, why are we seeing such a dramatic increase in whistleblowing claims?

Well, I think there's a number of legal drivers that are behind what is a relative surge in the number of complaints that we're seeing that have the protected disclosure label attached to them.

Protected disclosures or whistleblowing legislation was introduced in the first instance in 2014. but it only applied to the public sector.

And in 2022, we saw the expansion into the not for profit and the private sector of the principles of protection around whistleblowers.

So since effectively December 2023, all private sector organisations with 50 or more employees are legally required under the provisions of the amending legislation to establish formalised compliant internal reporting channels around what a worker would determine is them notifying an employer about a relevant wrongdoing.

That's the terminology used in the legislation.

And maybe just to dip into the definition and we'll take the relevant wrongdoing because it's quite a layered piece of legislation in an effort to be concise around the parameters of this new legislation and why it's driving the surge.

And, you know, if we can unpack that a little bit then from the HR practitioner lens, can you briefly talk, Katie, before we move on to the difference between grievance and protected disclosure, which we know is a bit of a grey line as well, just around practitioners making sure their house is in order to try and avoid being in the predicament where there's a higher likelihood of somebody making a protected disclosure?