Andrew Mitton

The place where you report a con­cern — what do you call it?  The most com­mon name I see is hot­line.  I’ve always felt that using the word hot emits a sense of urgency, impor­tance, almost like call­ing 911.  This will catch bla­tant ille­gal con­duct, but might dis­cour­age less urgent mat­ters such as eth­i­cal ques­tions or mere con­cerns.  Which brings us to the name helpline.

Helpline seems more approach­able.  Like a per­son at the counter wait­ing to answer your ques­tion.  It’s like a pleas­ant cus­tomer ser­vice per­son.  But if things are bad, you don’t run to the cus­tomer ser­vice counter.  You run to the per­son with a badge.  If there’s no hot­line, it’s like not hav­ing some­one with a badge.

Which brings me to the name integrity line.  I saw this recently with Prov­i­dence hos­pi­tal.  This name cap­tures the urgent and impor­tant, but also allows the not so urgent.

All of this fails to men­tion the web part of the report­ing sys­tem.  I’ll leave that for another day.