Com­plete Whistle­blow­ing Pol­i­cy – Spar Hotel

Whistle­blow­ing Policy

Back­ground

At SPAR HOTEL, we strive to main­tain an open and trans­par­ent work­place where mis­con­duct has no place. For that rea­son, it is essen­tial that clear infor­ma­tion exists on how to report con­cerns con­fi­den­tial­ly and secure­ly. When­ev­er there is sus­pi­cion of ongo­ing or past mis­con­duct, there must be resources in place to uncov­er it. By mak­ing report­ing straight­for­ward, we col­lec­tive­ly help pro­tect the trust of employ­ees, cus­tomers, and the gen­er­al public.

All cas­es are ini­tial­ly han­dled by the law firm Star­ck & Part­ner to ensure inde­pen­dent case man­age­ment. Our inter­nal con­tact per­sons may sub­se­quent­ly take over the case from the ini­tial case han­dlers. See fur­ther details and con­tact infor­ma­tion under ​“6.1 Con­tact details for case handlers.”

This whistle­blow­ing pol­i­cy cov­ers the legal enti­ties Spar Hotel Major­na KB and Spar Hotel Går­da KB.

Def­i­n­i­tions

GDPR: The Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion ((EU) ²⁰¹⁶⁄₆₇₉), reg­u­lat­ing the pro­cess­ing and free move­ment of per­son­al data with­in the Euro­pean Union.
Whistle­blow­ing Direc­tive: Direc­tive ²⁰¹⁹⁄₁₉₃₆ on the pro­tec­tion of per­sons report­ing breach­es of Union law.
Whistle­blow­ing Act: The Swedish Act (2021:890) on the pro­tec­tion of per­sons report­ing misconduct.
Viss­lan: The Whis­tle Com­pli­ance Solu­tions AB’s whistle­blow­ing ser­vice ​“Viss­lan”, enabling dig­i­tal report­ing of misconduct.
Mis­con­duct: Acts or omis­sions occur­ring in a work-relat­ed con­text that are in the pub­lic inter­est to reveal.
Report­ing: Pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion oral­ly or in writ­ing regard­ing misconduct.
Inter­nal Report­ing: Pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on mis­con­duct with­in a pri­vate-sec­tor organisation.
Exter­nal Report­ing: Pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on mis­con­duct to the com­pe­tent authorities.
Dis­clo­sure / Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure: Mak­ing infor­ma­tion on mis­con­duct avail­able to the public.
Report­ing Per­son: An indi­vid­ual who reports or dis­clos­es infor­ma­tion on mis­con­duct obtained through their work-relat­ed activities.
Retal­i­a­tion: Any direct or indi­rect act or omis­sion occur­ring in a work-relat­ed con­text, prompt­ed by inter­nal or exter­nal report­ing or dis­clo­sure, which caus­es or could cause unjus­ti­fied harm to the report­ing person.
Fol­low-up: Any action tak­en by the recip­i­ent of a report to assess the accu­ra­cy of the alle­ga­tions and, where rel­e­vant, address the report­ed breach, includ­ing inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, legal actions, recov­ery efforts, or case closure.
Feed­back: Pro­vid­ing report­ing per­sons (“whistle­blow­ers”) with infor­ma­tion on planned or tak­en fol­low-up mea­sures and the grounds for such measures.

1. Who can report?

You may report and qual­i­fy for pro­tec­tion under the Whistle­blow­ing Act if you are an employ­ee, vol­un­teer, intern, active share­hold­er, or any per­son oth­er­wise work­ing under our con­trol and direc­tion, or if you are part of our gov­ern­ing, man­age­ment, or super­vi­so­ry bod­ies. Con­trac­tors, sub­con­trac­tors, and sup­pli­ers who become aware of mis­con­duct with­in the com­pa­ny may also report concerns.

End­ing or not yet start­ing your work-relat­ed rela­tion­ship with us does not pre­vent you from sub­mit­ting a report.

2. What can I report?

If you sus­pect pos­si­ble mis­con­duct, legal vio­la­tions, or breach­es of rules, we encour­age you to report them as a whistle­blow­ing mat­ter. At the time of report­ing, you must have rea­son­able grounds to believe that the infor­ma­tion you pro­vide is true. The assess­ment of ​“rea­son­able grounds” is based on the cir­cum­stances and infor­ma­tion avail­able to you at the time of report­ing. These require­ments must be met in order to receive pro­tec­tion under the Whistle­blow­ing Act.

Before report­ing, con­sult the ​“5 ques­tions to deter­mine whether you are pro­tect­ed under the Whistle­blow­ing Act.”

2.1 Mis­con­duct of pub­lic interest

You may report infor­ma­tion on mis­con­duct occur­ring in a work-relat­ed con­text when it is in the pub­lic inter­est for the infor­ma­tion to come to light. Per­son­al com­plaints with­out pub­lic inter­est — such as dis­putes or issues con­cern­ing the work­place or work envi­ron­ment — should instead be raised with your imme­di­ate man­ag­er, the hotel direc­tor, or the finance man­ag­er. This ensures such mat­ters are han­dled appropriately.

Exam­ples of seri­ous mis­con­duct that may be report­ed include:

• Inten­tion­al mis­state­ments in account­ing, inter­nal finan­cial con­trols, or oth­er finan­cial crime

• Theft, cor­rup­tion, van­dal­ism, fraud, embez­zle­ment, or data breaches

• Seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal vio­la­tions or sig­nif­i­cant work­place safe­ty deficiencies

• Seri­ous forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion or harassment

• Oth­er seri­ous issues affect­ing indi­vid­u­als’ life or health

• Oth­er seri­ous mis­con­duct affect­ing the company’s vital interests

2.2 Mis­con­duct in breach of EU law

You may also report sus­pect­ed mis­con­duct in breach of EU reg­u­la­tions. If you believe this applies, con­sult Sec­tion 2 of the Whistle­blow­ing Act and Arti­cle 2 with Annex Part 1 of the Whistle­blow­ing Direc­tive for applic­a­ble legislation.

3. How do I report?

3.1 Writ­ten reporting

Writ­ten reports must be sub­mit­ted via our dig­i­tal whistle­blow­ing ser­vice Viss­lan, avail­able at:

https://​sparho​tel​.viss​lan​-report​.se

Select ​“Report” and pro­vide a detailed descrip­tion of the sus­pect­ed mis­con­duct. You may attach addi­tion­al evi­dence such as doc­u­ments, images, or audio files.

3.1.1 Sen­si­tive per­son­al data

Do not include sen­si­tive per­son­al data unless nec­es­sary to describe your case. Sen­si­tive data includes infor­ma­tion on:
– eth­nic origin
– polit­i­cal opinions
– reli­gious or philo­soph­i­cal beliefs
– trade union membership
– health
– sex­u­al life or orientation
– genet­ic or bio­met­ric data used for identification

3.1.2 Anonymi­ty

You may remain anony­mous through­out the process with­out los­ing legal pro­tec­tion. You may also dis­close your iden­ti­ty under strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. Note that anonymi­ty may lim­it our abil­i­ty to fol­low up; in such cas­es, we may lat­er ask you to iden­ti­fy your­self confidentially.

3.1.3 Fol­low-up & login

After sub­mit­ting a report, you receive a six­teen-dig­it code that allows you to log in to Visslan.
You must save this code — with­out it, you can­not access your case again.

If the code is lost, you may sub­mit a new report ref­er­enc­ing the pre­vi­ous one.

With­in sev­en days, you will receive con­fir­ma­tion from the case han­dler that your report has been received. You may com­mu­ni­cate anony­mous­ly with the case han­dler through the plat­form. With­in three months, you will receive fol­low-up infor­ma­tion regard­ing planned or com­plet­ed measures.

You must log in reg­u­lar­ly using your six­teen-dig­it code to answer poten­tial fol­low-up ques­tions. With­out your respons­es, the case may not proceed.

3.2 Oral reporting

You may also report oral­ly by upload­ing an audio file when sub­mit­ting a case at:
https://​sparho​tel​.viss​lan​-report​.se

Select ​“Yes” when asked about addi­tion­al evi­dence to upload your file. The record­ing should include the same details you would pro­vide in a writ­ten report.

You may also request a phys­i­cal meet­ing with the case han­dler through Visslan.

3.3 Exter­nal reporting

We rec­om­mend inter­nal report­ing first. How­ev­er, if inter­nal report­ing is inap­pro­pri­ate or dif­fi­cult, you may report exter­nal­ly to the rel­e­vant author­i­ty or, where applic­a­ble, EU bodies.

A list of exter­nal report­ing chan­nels is avail­able at: Exter­nal report­ing chan­nels for whistleblowing

4. What are my rights?

4.1 Right to confidentiality

Through­out case man­age­ment, your iden­ti­ty will remain con­fi­den­tial, and access will be restrict­ed to autho­rised per­son­nel only. Your iden­ti­ty will not be dis­closed with­out your con­sent unless required by law. We will also ensure that you are pro­tect­ed from retaliation.

4.2 Pro­tec­tion against retaliation

You are pro­tect­ed from adverse con­se­quences as a result of report­ing mis­con­duct. This pro­tec­tion also extends to per­sons assist­ing you, col­leagues or rel­a­tives at the work­place, and legal enti­ties you own, work for, or are oth­er­wise con­nect­ed to.

Retal­i­a­tion is pro­hib­it­ed, includ­ing dis­missal, changes in duties, dis­ci­pli­nary actions, threats, dis­crim­i­na­tion, black­list­ing, or sim­i­lar actions.

You are still pro­tect­ed even if you are iden­ti­fied and face retal­i­a­tion, pro­vid­ed you had rea­son­able grounds to believe the report­ed mis­con­duct was true and with­in the scope of the Whistle­blow­ing Act. Pro­tec­tion does not apply if you com­mit a crim­i­nal offence to obtain or access the report­ed information.

Pro­tec­tion applies in legal pro­ceed­ings, includ­ing defama­tion, copy­right infringe­ment, breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, data pro­tec­tion vio­la­tions, dis­clo­sure of trade secrets, or claims under pri­vate, pub­lic, or col­lec­tive labour law — pro­vid­ed you had rea­son­able grounds to believe report­ing or dis­clos­ing the infor­ma­tion was necessary.

4.3 Pub­lic disclosure

Pro­tec­tion also applies when infor­ma­tion is made pub­lic. This requires that inter­nal or exter­nal report­ing has occurred and no appro­pri­ate action has been tak­en with­in three months (or six months, where jus­ti­fied). Pro­tec­tion also applies in urgent cas­es involv­ing an appar­ent dan­ger to the pub­lic inter­est, or where exter­nal report­ing pos­es retal­i­a­tion risks or is unlike­ly to address the mis­con­duct effec­tive­ly — for exam­ple, risk of evi­dence being hid­den or destroyed.

This pro­tec­tion does not apply to direct dis­clo­sure to the media under sep­a­rate sys­tems pro­tect­ing free­dom of expres­sion. Your rights to source pro­tec­tion and free­dom of infor­ma­tion remain unaf­fect­ed where applicable.

4.4 Right to doc­u­men­ta­tion review

If you request a meet­ing with the case han­dler, they will ensure — sub­ject to your con­sent — that full and accu­rate doc­u­men­ta­tion is pre­served, either through an audio record­ing or writ­ten min­utes. You will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to review, cor­rect, and approve the documentation.

We rec­om­mend stor­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion with­in Viss­lan by cre­at­ing a case where infor­ma­tion can be main­tained securely.

5. GDPR and per­son­al data handling

We always strive to pro­tect you and your per­son­al data. All pro­cess­ing is car­ried out in accor­dance with the Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR).

All per­son­al data irrel­e­vant to the case will be delet­ed. A case will be stored only as long as nec­es­sary and pro­por­tion­ate, and no longer than two years after its closure.

6. Addi­tion­al contact

If you have fur­ther ques­tions about how we han­dle whistle­blow­ing cas­es, you are wel­come to con­tact the case handlers.

For tech­ni­cal issues with Viss­lan, please sub­mit a case at:
https://​sparho​tel​.viss​lan​-report​.se

If this is not pos­si­ble, con­tact The Whis­tle Com­pli­ance Solu­tions AB. Con­tact details are below.

6.1 Con­tact details for case handlers

Mari­ta Bark
08 – 40 90 46 48
marita.​bark@​starckpartner.​se

Jes­per Wigzell
08 – 40 90 46 52
jesper.​wigzell@​starckpartner.​se

6.2 Con­tact details for Spar Hotel

Terese Wibeck – Hotel Director
0734 – 228499
terese.​wibeck@​sparhotel.​se

Veron­i­ca Erdo­gan – Finance Manager
070 – 142 78 74
veronica.​erdogan@​sparhotel.​se

The inter­nal con­tact per­sons list­ed above may take over the case from the case han­dlers, regard­less of whether the mat­ter qual­i­fies as whistle­blow­ing or, for exam­ple, an HR issue.

6.3 Con­tact details for The Whis­tle Com­pli­ance Solu­tions AB

Email: clientsupport@​visslan.​com
Phone: +46 10 – 750 08 10

Vis­it Visslan’s web­site for more infor­ma­tion.