I’ve been watching The Dropout, and it details how many NDAs employees at Theranos had to sign, which ultimately lead to the fraud being carried out as long as it did. But then I thought, “wait, did this company not have a whistleblower policy?” But then I realized, I don’t even know how a whistleblower policy works, and if employees who sign NDAs are protected by whistleblower policies.
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Lots of companies don’t have “whistleblower policies”, and those that do usually call them non-retaliation policies. That does absolutely no good at a place like Theranos where the problem *is* your top management. But, in principle, the policies protect the person who brings a problem to light (the whistleblower) from punishment, within reason and limits, for possibly being involved in whatever the problematic thing was. The idea is that you’d rather people brought the problem up than hid it for fear that they’d get in trouble themselves or for fear that the people they expose will take it out on them.
You may be thinking of whistleblower *laws*, which theoretically protect various classes of people from retribution (or sometimes charges) if they bring illegal conduct to light.
In practice, whistleblowers usually end up pretty bad off even if there are policies or laws in place…causing criminals to lose their source of income does not typically engender nice feelings.
NDAs have nothing directly to do with whistleblower policies/laws, and they don’t cover illegal conduct anyway.
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