Issues Management

Question 1

What is Issues Management?

Answer 1

• The process organizations use to anticipate, analyze, respond to, evaluate and take control of complex issues that affect their business (e.g. legal disputes, environmental concerns, community awareness issues, product recalls, labour actions, natural disasters, etc.)
• Involves PR, community relations, HR, legal, finance, research & development
• Internal or external issue management

Question 2

What are some best practices for IM?

Answer 2

• Structure
– Developaprocesstoidentifyissues
– Establish a process for addressing the issues – Assign responsibility for managing the issues
• Implementation
– Ownership of major issues linked to accountability – Progress monitor at high management level
– Managementcaninterveneifneeded
• Integration
– Integrate issue concerns into strategic planning
– Issue managers part of the strategic planning unit
– Issue management = a core management issue, not limited to one department

Question 3

What is crisis management?

Answer 3

• All organizations vulnerable to crises
• How they manage them is crucial to their
reputation
• Success depends on pre-planning with communication playing a central role
• Crisis management team: personnel from various areas: PR, HR, legal, security

Question 4

What are the 5-steps in a crisis communication?

Answer 4

• 5-step crisis plan:
– Assess the possible risks: what can happen, how, why?
– Identify levels of vulnerability: how would a crisis affect day-to-day operations, how will the stakeholders react?
– Determine most likely vulnerabilities, develop action plans to address them; meet with key stakeholders, media, etc. to assess how to handle risks efficiently & cost effectively
– Implement the action plans; be honest & transparent; assign a spokesperson and a team of experts to deliver messages to key audiences
– Evaluate the effectiveness of of the action; modify the master plan to reflect the lessons learned

Question 5

What is CSR?

Answer 5

• A company’s/organization’s respect for society’s interests, demonstrated by taking ownership of the effect its activities have on key stakeholders
• An effort is made to reduce the negative social and environmental footprint of its operations through a thoughtfully developed long-term strategy
• Can involve time & expertise, as opposed to cash
• Contributes to a company’s reputation

Question 6

What is the UN global compact?

Answer 6

• Voluntary initiative for companies to align with its Ten Principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption to advance broader societal goals, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• As of 2014, more than 7,000 businesses in 145 countries around the world participated in the Global Compact
• Also launched the Principles for Responsible Investment initiative to help investors identify and invest in company with strong CSR practices

Question 7

Explain the communication about CSR.

Answer 7

• Important to integrate CSR messages into the communications strategy
• Key considerations to consider:
– Create a dialogue on CSR activities with stakeholders (they have to know what you’re doing with CSR vs. you have to know how they feel about that)
– Beware of empty boasting
– Transparency important
– Measure & report it
• E.g. Starbucks (fair trade coffee = based on fair labour compensation)

Question 8

Why is monitoring important?

Answer 8

• Just like research is important at the beginning of your communications planning to see what audiences want/expect, it is important to monitor & evaluate to see how successful you were

Question 9

What are some methods for communication planning?

Answer 9

Qualitative
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Participant observation (ethnography)
• Content analysis
• Generates non-numerical data
• Used to understand who the stakeholders are and what they want
Quantitative
• Surveys (many people)
• Questionnaires (can be one
person, e.g. hospital forms)
• Generates numerical data
• Used to measure the impact of communication on organizational performance, e.g. trust, employee attitudes, job satisfaction

Question 10

Explain the term ethics.

Answer 10

• A system of moral principles

* Communication ethics: the principles governing communications, what is right/wrong, moral/immoral