GBSV reporting line: recommendations for an accessible and reassuring reporting system

Since the French law of 21 March 2022 on whistleblower protection, organizations with at least 50 employees must have an internal reporting channel. Being compliant on paper, however, is not enough. A victim of gender-based and sexual violence still has to find the path, immediately understand where she has landed, and not give up along the way. For gender-based and sexual violence (GBSV) more than for any other type of report, the design of the channel determines whether it is actually used.

This article gathers concrete recommendations for building a reporting line truly adapted to GBSV: channel visibility, the reporting system's landing page, the form and the submission modes. The conduct of the investigation after a report is covered separately, in our article on the reporting procedure and internal investigation in cases of sexual harassment.

An invisible channel receives nothing

The first field observation: many compliant systems are simply impossible to find. The reporting link is buried in a deep section of the intranet, under a heading that nobody spontaneously associates with GBSV, or missing from the pages employees actually visit. In that case, the failure is silent. No error surfaces, no indicator goes off. The line exists, nobody uses it.

A local authority with several thousand staff discovered this late: its form had been online for two years under a "HR procedures" heading, four clicks away from the home page. The first report of sexist violence arrived the day the link was moved to the intranet footer and announced by senior management.

Three simple measures avoid this scenario:

• A permanent, visible access point: a link in the footer, on the intranet home page and in the HR space, without exception.
• Regular communication: a reminder during onboarding, during annual reviews, and at least twice a year through an institutional channel.
• Trained relays: managers, harassment referents and works council members able to point to the channel without steering the victim's account.

The channel's visibility is also a matter of consistency: an organization that loudly commits to fighting GBSV but hides its reporting system sends a contradictory message that employees know how to read.

A landing page that reassures rather than worries

The reporting system's landing page is the victim's first contact with the procedure. Too many systems spoil it with a dense page, packed with legal caveats, that treats moral harassment, discrimination, fraud and GBSV indiscriminately in a single list. That hodgepodge is counter-intuitive. A person considering reporting sexual violence does not recognize herself in a list of very different types of misconduct, and the feeling of having landed in the wrong place is often enough to close the page.

Recommendations for this landing page:

• State the scope clearly on the first screen: the types of misconduct covered, in plain language, with a dedicated path for GBSV.
• Reassure about what comes next: what happens after submission, within what timeframe, who reads the report, what protections exist against retaliation.
• Do not drown the information: a few short sentences beat a wall of text that creates anxiety before the first checkbox.

The goal is simple: within one minute, the victim should understand that she is in the right place, and what awaits her if she continues.

A form in plain language, not legal language

The form is where many systems lose their users. Qualifying the facts legally is demanding work, and it is not the victim's job. Asking a person to choose between "sexual harassment", "sexual assault" or "sexist insult" assumes a command of the law that even professionals do not always have, and turns the report into a failed exam.

Observed good practices:

• Broad categories of facts in plain language (for example: "comments or gestures with sexual connotations", "humiliating behaviour related to gender", "situations of pressure or blackmail"), without forcing the victim to legally qualify what she experienced.
• A reasonable length: ask for the essentials, meaning what the person knows and when she knows it. Additional details can be gathered later, by the trained team handling the case.
• Automatic routing: each category sends the report to the right team and the right processing workflow, without manual intervention and without the victim having to guess "which department handles this".

This last point matters twice as much on the organization's side: a GBSV report that lands in a generic mailbox and circulates for days before finding the right team loses evidentiary value and multiplies the risk of leaks.

Anonymous, semi-anonymous or identified: three modes, not one

The submission mode deserves a real trade-off. Offering only full anonymity, a common choice out of legal caution, strips the organization of any possibility of dialogue. If the person loses the tracking code generated at submission, the internal investigation can neither contact her to clarify the facts nor inform her of the outcome. On facts as sensitive as GBSV, that broken dialogue can drain the report of most of its value.

The recommendation is to offer three modes and to explain each in one sentence:

• Anonymous: no identity data collected, tracking only through a generated code, with a clear warning about what losing the code implies.
• Semi-anonymous: a non-identifying means of contact, for example an email address created for the occasion, which makes it possible to reach the person without knowing her identity. It is the most useful safety net in GBSV cases, where chronology and context weigh heavily.
• Identified: for people who want to be accompanied by name and to follow the processing of their case.

Presenting the three modes with their honest implications, rather than quietly steering towards anonymity, respects the victim's choice and secures the upcoming investigation. This is consistent with the traceability requirements of European Directive 2019/1937, detailed in our complete guide to ethics reporting systems.

A well-designed reporting line is not enough

A visible channel, a clear landing page, a form in plain language and three submission modes: that covers the victim's journey. But the quality of a GBSV reporting line is also judged, and above all, on the teams' side. A well-collected report that lands in a shared spreadsheet, with no workflow and no deadline, recreates all the risks described above, after submission this time.

On the processing side, you need dedicated workflows per type of report, end-to-end traceability, and assistance that guides the teams through handling the case, up to post-report follow-up when relevant. The harassment investigation checklist published on this blog gives an overview of the steps to frame.

Evidencia was designed to cover both sides in a single platform: the reporting channel, accessible, configurable and multi-mode, and case management with guided workflows per type of misconduct. If you are building or rethinking your GBSV system, you can book a 20-minute conversation on evidencia.io to see concretely what the platform would do for your organization.