What to do when issues aren’t issues

Any corporate affairs and communications practitioner takes pride in their ability to see reputation risks from a mile away. But what happens when the issue we believe we can see on the horizon fails to materialise? Is our radar failing us?

Earlier this year a client of Daymark’s discussed what they saw as a looming issue that required some preparation in case a quick and substantive response was required. This was in the face of a widely held view within the client’s organisation that the issue was not a risk, largely an operational matter, and was mostly well known by the external parties who counted.

Roll forward to when the matter did indeed come to the surface – and against our predictions – it did not raise an eyebrow with the media or stakeholders. The issue passed without a trace.

Did the organisation get lucky or was our reputation risk radar just a bit off in the lead up?

It helps here to take a look again at the definition of reputation risk. In short, a reputation risk arises where there is a potential disconnect between how an organisation reacts (or plans to react) to a certain event versus how the public expects the organisation to react.  If the organisation falls short of public expectations, reputation damage can be done.

Now of course we still believe there was nothing wrong with our reputation risk radar in the case of the client’s matter.  But there will be times when you may need to convince your organisation otherwise about a potential reputation risk – or to just check yourself.

Here are five tactics we recommend.

1. Take some stakeholder soundings: this may be formal or informal testing of the waters on a single or multiple issues. Questions to ask: are we exposed here when it comes to public perception or expectations about what we are doing? What level of transparency do we need to take on such and such matters?

2. Survey the public: this is to test their understanding of the matter to gauge their level of surprise or potential outrage if they were to learn that the organisation was acting in a particular way on an issue or operational matter.

3. Look for parallels: what normal day-to-day operations do you see outside of your sector as coming as new news when they came to the surface?

4. Watch for low-risk issues: not all low-risk issues are the same. If their impact on the business is rated severe then show what severe means in terms of factors other than reputation, for example, revenue, customer satisfaction or investor confidence.

5. Do some basic prep anyway: Trust your instinct and get fact sheets together on your top low-risk / high-impact issues – as you rate them.

The real risk here is that no preparation gets done because the matter is not seen as important. This anchors the issue to ‘unimportant’ status or ‘we have always done it that way’.  The result is when you do respond, your response is also anchored and well below where the public sees the problem.

Now is the perfect time to schedule a call and discuss your issues management strategy for 2025.