A confidential counselor for SMEs? Every employee has the right to a socially safe working environment. As an employer you are obliged to ensure this. Bullying at work, discrimination, sexual intimidation and aggression in the workplace: undesirable behaviour has a major effect on your employees, as do abuses and integrity issues. It creates uncertainty, an unsafe feeling and can lead to absenteeism, a labor dispute or even dismissal.
Create a external confidential counsellor for a socially safe work culture and business integrity helps you as an employer and entrepreneur to prevent unwanted behaviour and abuses and limit their impact. Trustlr is the all-in-one solution for SMEs.
Trustlr works accessible and proactive to social safety in your organisation. This way your employees know where to find us and we prevent unwanted behaviour.
We deliver customised services to tailor our service to your needs. We determine together which tools are best suited.
Your employees have freedom of choice from our pool of confidential counsellors with different backgrounds - multilingual, LGBTIQ+ and gender.
If it soon becomes mandatory to appoint a confidential counselor at companies with 10 or more employees, you are in the right place with us.
Appointing a confidential counsellor within your own company does not always work ideally in SME companies, because an internal confidential counsellor is often not seen by employees as independent and trusted. Smaller (family) businesses often have an informal, know-us culture. We see it a lot in practice: the owner's wife is the confidential counsellor, or the HR advisor with whom you sit at the table when discussing employment conditions or contract termination. This creates barriers that make employees more likely not to raise the alarm. An external confidential counselor works better in these types of situations.
However, we strongly believe in the combination of an internal and external confidential counselor within SMEs. They reinforce each other's positives and cancel out negatives. The increased anonymity, independence and often specialist knowledge of an external confidential counsellor is supplemented by the greater signaling function, improved organisational knowledge and shorter distance of an internal confidential counsellor.
At Trustlr we prefer to talk about improvements and providing solutions, rather than about the consequences of undesirable behaviour for SMEs, but sometimes we have to put our finger on the sore spot. TNO research shows that every year 1,2 million people in the Netherlands are confronted with an unsafe working environment. Nearly 30% experience intimidating behaviour from management. More than 22% of employees have had to deal with cross-border situations at work. While only 13% of victims go to a counselor. In total, this causes high costs for employers — in a 2017/18 study, the costs for continued payment of wages for work-related absenteeism were estimated at 6,1 billion. Undesirable behaviour in the workplace was the main cause in 64% of cases.
Trustlr is for every organisation
From catering and tourism to consultancy and notary offices — Trustlr is as versatile as your company.
With TrustNet we give employees the power; they maintain control over their own working environment.
Undesirable behaviour unfortunately takes many forms. We are open, without judgement, to any situation that feels unsafe.
It's better if it never happens, but... as If it happens, Trustlr can be reached immediately. We are there for you 24/7.
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Expand our all-in-one services and make Trustlr your one-for-all solution.
Want to hire an SME confidential counselor? With our external confidential counsellors and TrustNet, our online information platform with Elearnings and tools specially developed for SMEs, you can work preventively on a healthy and open work culture. We see that legislation and regulations are mainly made for large organisations and corporates and the existing services are tailored to this, which increases the regulatory burden for SMEs. With Trustlr you can easily comply with current and future laws and regulations and at a fair rate.
In practice, we see that within SMEs, no information and training is often provided to employees regarding additional costs, while this is mandatory and can have a strong preventive and de-escalating effect on undesirable behaviour. With Trustlr, all your employees receive information through TrustNet, the online e-learning platform. If your employees need an external confidential counsellor, our LVV-certified external confidential counsellors are always ready to help you.
Do you want online support or would you prefer an in-person appointment? Our external confidential counsellors are there for you, wherever you are.
Employees create the best version of your company together. Trustlr offers innovative and preventive solutions — the guidance needed to keep everything running smoothly.
Frequently asked questions
You can find answers to general questions here. If you have specific questions, you can always make an appointment with our team.
The House of Representatives adopted the Groen Links initiative law in 2023. This law is now being discussed by the Senate. Because 95% of all bills that pass the House of Representatives are also adopted in the Senate, it seems likely that an external confidential counsellor will soon become mandatory for companies with more than 10 employees.
We work on prevention and intervention. At best, our external confidential counsellors only help you proactively improve your work culture. Nevertheless, if necessary, we help to discuss unwanted behaviour and integrity violations and work together on de-escalation.
Undesirable behaviour involves bullying, discrimination, intimidation and sexual intimidation. Integrity issues are matters such as theft, fraud, conflicts of interest, corruption and other forms of abuse of power that harm the organisation or society.
The three most important tasks of our confidential counsellors are to provide initial support, guidance and advice to employees, to provide information, and to provide solicited and unsolicited advice to the top of an organisation.
In addition, Trustlr offers additional preventive services through our e-learning courses via the Trustlr platform.
Every employer is obliged to implement a policy on psychosocial workload. One of the ways in which the Dutch Labor Inspectorate (the Arbo Inspection) checks this is by looking at the presence of a number of matters that you have arranged directly with Trustlr, such as making a confidential counsellor available and providing information about inappropriate behaviour. The presence of a code of conduct and a complaints procedure is also checked and Trustlr can arrange both for you.
Sounds nice: 'our confidential counsellors help you save costs,' but how does that work? In the Netherlands, 1,2 million people annually experience unwanted behaviour in the workplace, and of the 6 billion euros in work-related absenteeism costs, 64% is caused by psychosocial work strain. Because Trustlr's services proactively contribute to a safer work culture, we often see a decrease in work-related absenteeism costs. In addition, the Trustlr platform helps us to reduce our billable hours, meaning that our service quickly yields more than you invest in it.
The trust of these companies motivates us every day
Everyone deserves to work in a safe work culture and that's why these companies are just the beginning. Discover the grateful responses that motivate us to give 100% every day.
Still have questions?
Our team is here for you — today for all your questions and tomorrow for all your safe work culture solutions. Plan a no-obligation consultation immediately with one of our confidential counsellors and they will help you with the next step.
A reliable choice for Dutch companies.
