Crisis and Issues Management: Issues - are you managing them or praying?

published 2005

Events over recent years have made companies more aware of the need to handle a crisis when it occurs. But not enough companies are giving the same level of attention to issues.

An issue is usually defined as something that is long-standing or predictable that impacts on an industry or product category.  As examples:

• Specific types of pollution can be related to certain industries e.g. steel, oil.
• New technology can impact on certain products e.g. genetically modified foods.
• Certain conditions or results can be linked to specific products e.g. the eating of some foods is said to contribute to a range of medical conditions.

Some issues are a direct forerunner of a crisis e.g. an oil company faces the ever-present threat of oil leakage for which it needs to have a crisis plan.  But many other issues are environmental factors that are always present - to greater or lesser degree - when the organisation does business or the product is in the marketplace.

What has changed over the years is that in the past, issues emerged in such an orderly manner that organisations could marshal their resources in an orderly manner to deal with them. Today issues can break out anywhere - and can instantly put a company in the spotlight.

Particularly vulnerable are international companies that have done all the identification and ‘thinking’ in their Head Office and therefore feel they are technically prepared.  But because they often haven’t allowed their local organisations to do the necessary constituent or stakeholder engagement and building, they have no local ‘goodwill bank’ to draw down on when an issue develops.

There are three principal ways in which public relations can help organisations equip themselves to handle issues.

In short, PR can help with:

1. Identification

Help establish the level of risk that an issue might potentially impact on an organisation.  Someone will be able to assess the monetary or economic risk - what PR can help do is assess the risk to reputations that might flow from media, Government and other audiences.  A good example of this is James Hardie and its asbestos issue where the risk multiplied exponentially when these ‘intangibles’ were factored in.

2. Monitoring

Organisations that are exposed to issues need to actively monitor the environment.  Once this could be done by academics and specialists reading the monthly and quarterly ‘science journals’ and keeping one step ahead before the issue came over the horizon.  Today, with the media and online explosion, an issue that was dormant can suddenly erupt in one tiny area and race around the world with the pace and destructive force of a tsunami.  PR is increasingly being given the task of putting in place the monitoring systems that will help track an issue through a myriad of mediums on a daily basis so as to provide an advance warning that might only be a matter of hours.

3. Management

Once issues could be recognised, but left alone and plans put in place to manage the situation when it emerged.  Increasingly these days management of issues has to be ongoing because of the speed with which issues can engulf an organisation. The building of rapport with key stakeholders needs to take place continuously. Organisations can no longer wait and ‘keep their powder dry’ for when the issue is in the public arena, because that may be too late.

In short an organisation that hasn’t identified the issues it faces, developed a position on it and is pursuing an active process to monitor and manage the situation, is one whose stakeholders are entitled to have misgivings about.

Historically, issues management has been seen as a corporate function.  No longer - in fact marketing management has more reason to be ensuring that it is using issues management techniques than ever before.

One of the best marketing examples is the food industry. Its marketers (or food industry groups) should:

• know how the product ‘fits’ with the healthy eating guidelines
• have established and credible positions re known issues
• be working with key influencers so as to build a rapport and dialogue that might help protect the company or product reputation in the event of a major issue the product.

But the same applies across many industry categories. 

Phone companies face the issue of radiation from head sets through to towers in residential areas.  Apparel makers face the issue of cheap labour.  IT companies face the issue of their products providing inappropriately easy access by children.

Take your organisation and ask these four questions:

1. Have we identified what issues impact on our products?
2. Has management of these issues been clearly delegated within our organisation?
3. What mechanisms do we have in place to monitor these issues?
4. Are we building bridges with key influencers and acting in a manner that would stand us in good stead if an issue did develop?

If you can answer yes to all of these you can claim to be managing your issues.  If you can’t then you are still in the category most seem to find themselves in - praying that the issues that impact on your product or industry will likely not get any worse, never appear here in Australia or will simply go away.

Note: The author of this article is a senior Sydney-based independent corporate public relations consultant who has considerablecrisis management planning experience. In addition he also coaches and mentors PR Managers to help them get the best out of their PR Departments: also to review and select PR agencies. As well he blogs on PR and communication topics including crisis and issues management.