Two legal compliance experts recently shared, in separate blog posts, why they believe in-house efforts to get employees to speak up about misconduct may be failing. It all comes down to trust, they said.

Lorene Schaefer, a former division general counsel at General Electric Co. and now managing partner of the boutique Atlanta law firm Schaefer & Associates, wrote about her in-house legal days when co-workers distrusted the human resources department, referring to HR as “the company spies.”

Separately, Hui Chen, the former compliance counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice and now a compliance consultant, wrote about her own distrust of a former employer's internal reporting system.

“Just because the company has an anti-retaliation policy doesn't mean people believe it; and even if you believe it as a bystander, it doesn't mean you believe it … when your own life and career are on the line,” Chen said.

Both women used sexual harassment cases as their lead examples. For Schaefer, it was a recent Sports Illustrated article about sexual harassment and workplace misconduct at the offices of professional basketball's Dallas Mavericks.

If the article was correct, Schaefer wrote, then Mavericks office employees refrained from reporting their concerns because they didn't trust HR.

“To state the obvious, an organization cannot investigate and address alleged harassment or misconduct it doesn't know about,” her blog said.

Chen wrote about a personal experience involving a colleague who confided that her boss was pressuring the colleague to meet him in a hotel room. The revelation led to Chen's personal struggle over whether or not to report the boss.

“Informal anonymous surveys I have conducted on whether employees have failed to report a wrongdoing they have witnessed have been revealing: not everything that should be reported is reported—not even close,” Chen wrote.

She went on to explore the cultural and psychological reasons that people do or don't report misconduct.

Both Schaefer and Chen discussed the importance of removing the mystery from the process and making it as transparent as possible. And they stressed the need for a good communicator in the job, someone who listens well.

”If you want people to talk, you need to learn to listen,” Chen wrote. “In my experience, most whistleblowers are not motivated by rewards: they just want to be heard.”

And both authors arrived at a key point: trust.

Chen concluded, “Fundamental to that calculation [of whether to report] is trust in the company's internal reporting system: Can I really remain anonymous? What will they do with my report?”

She suggested humanizing the reporting connection to reassure employees. “People prefer to talk to those they feel they know,” Chen said.

Schaefer also wrote of humanizing the process by choosing a person to receive employee concerns who has “approachability and accessibility.”

If the complaint moves forward, she also recommended choosing a neutral investigator.

“Research shows that the trustworthiness of the investigator, as perceived by the reporting employee, is critical to whether the reporting employee believed the investigation was procedurally fair,” she wrote.