You have received a report through the reporting channel and are wondering how much time you have to respond. The law specifies a deadline of seven days: within this period, you send the reporter a receipt acknowledgement. This is not a substantive response to the report, but a message confirming that the report has been received and is being handled.
The seven days begin from the moment the report arrives with you, not from the moment you read it or discuss it with a colleague. This distinction is important, because in the first days after a report there is often still no clarity about who will handle the matter. The deadline does not wait for that.
What counts as the moment of receipt
For a written or spoken report via a digital channel, the receipt moment is usually straightforward to determine: the system records when the report was submitted. For a report that is first made orally to a manager or colleague and is only later passed on to the handler, this is more difficult. In practice, the clock starts as soon as the report reaches the organisation, even if it has not yet reached the right person's desk. This is one of the reasons why it is useful to have one fixed channel where reports come in, instead of multiple separate entry points.
What the receipt acknowledgement must contain
A receipt acknowledgement confirms that the report has been received and usually also that a follow-up process will begin. What exactly must be included depends on the organisation's own reporting procedure. It is important that the acknowledgement says nothing about the content of the report: nothing is assessed, no one is identified, and no conclusion is drawn. The acknowledgement is only about the process, not about the matter itself.
For an anonymous report, this step is equally feasible, provided the reporter has been given the opportunity to return to the channel with a case code. Without an email address or name, an acknowledgement is needed in a different way than a simple message, and that is precisely where a fixed reporting channel makes the difference compared to a report that comes in via a separate email.
If the deadline is about to expire
Seven days seems generous, but in practice time is spent on internal coordination: who will handle the report, is this person impartial enough, and does someone else need to be involved. It is therefore wise to keep the deadline in view from day one, not only when the deadline is approaching. An environment in which this deadline runs automatically prevents the acknowledgement from simply being forgotten among other tasks. On how the deadlines are tracked in the handling environment you can read how this works in practice.
The relationship with the three-month deadline
The receipt acknowledgement is the first of two legal deadlines. Separately, there is the question of when the reporter receives information about the assessment of the report, and that deadline is three months. Both deadlines are separate from each other, but do begin from the same moment of receipt. Those who keep a close eye on the first deadline often have better oversight of the second as well.
Recording what has happened
Regardless of the content of the report, it is useful to record when the report was received and when the acknowledgement was sent. This is not only convenient for your own overview, it also shows that the procedure has been followed, should questions be asked about it later. For the precise rules that apply in your situation, the law or a lawyer is the appropriate source; this article describes the general outline, not advice for an individual case.
Are you unsure whether your organisation already has a comprehensive procedure for acknowledging and following up on reports? In the knowledge base each topic is worked out in detail about what is involved, and with a few questions you can immediately see where you stand. Practical questions about how the reporting channel works are often already answered in the frequently asked questions.