Should employees report simulated phishing emails?
Yes, always. Reporting a simulated phishing email is the correct outcome, not a spoiled test. The report exercises exactly the behaviour that catches real attacks, and a rising report rate is the single healthiest metric a security awareness programme can show. Good platforms count a report as a win even when the same person clicked first, because reporting after a mistake is precisely what you want in a real incident.
Why the report rate beats the click rate
Click rate measures failure avoidance; report rate measures active defence. One employee reporting a real phish within minutes gives the security team time to purge the same email from every other inbox before anyone else opens it. That is why Australia's Scamwatch guidance on phishing puts recognising and reporting at the centre of its advice.
Make reporting effortless: a one-click report button in the mail client beats a process document every time. If reporting takes more than a few seconds, people will delete and move on, and the security team loses its sensors.
train2secure counts reports as wins, per employee and per campaign, so you can watch your real defence metric climb.
See how train2secure tracks reporting