User:Seb1990/issues management

In business, Issue Management refers to the discipline and process of managing business issues under a management technique developed by UK author and public relations practitioner, Roger Haywood He defines an issue as any external or internal factor, controlled or not by management, which could affect the activities of an organisation. This process is more strategic that the normal communications audit as it identifies positions of strength and weakness, providing opportunities to develop improved corporate policies. The procedure to manage issues that he developed is based on a detailed issues audit.

History
Haywood developed the business management technique of issues analysis and ran the world's first issues audit in 1984 for major chemicals/pharmaceutical company Rhone Poulenc, later becoming part of Sanofi-Aventis, the world’s third largest pharmaceutical company. Haywood worked closely with the then chairman Dr Keith Humphreys. At the time the chemicals and pharmaceutical sectors were under much public and regulatory scrutiny. The audit looked at issues such as animal rights relating to pharmaceutical research, the environmental impact of manufacture, health and safety. When completed, Haywood was invited to present recommendations to the board: as a result, the company changed and improved a number of policies: for example, it ran an environmental audit across all its operations, introduced an open-door policy at all manufacturing sites, set up good neighbour policies, took steps to minimise research on animals and withdrew from the environmentally questionable mercury markets. The company also ran what was believed then to be the first full scale simulated emergency drill ever undertaken. The drill was planned by Haywood and it was run at their Dagenham facility, without management having any prior knowledge. The test involved all the emergency services and was built around a supposed explosion with injuries and fatalities, full media attention from members of Haywood’s staff acting these roles as well as distressed relatives and neighbours.

Positive verses Negative Issues
Some issues can be positive, which are those that work to the advantage of the organisation: some may be potentially negative, those that may work against its interests. However, Haywood claims from his experience that more issues are actually neutral than those that could be described either as positive or negative. From his studies over 70% of possible issues could be seen as neutral which he defines as those that could affect all organisations in the sector. As an example he cites the environment which has no bias one way or the other, so is clearly neutral. However, it can become positive or negative depending on whether the organisation has environmental policies of not – indeed, he argues many issues can only have a negative impact on organisations if they do not have the right enlightened and thoughtful policies developed and in operation.

This process of developing an issues policy, he says, requires a disciplined audit of all the issues that could have an impact. With Sainsbury’s, the major UK food retailer, the company believed there could be some twenty or thirty such key issues. The structured issues audit that he undertook identified over 350. From these he developed a priority schedule; then, from this, he and the company marketing, product and retailing teams developed strategies for handling these, including many changes in policies to minimise vulnerability and to build in competitive advantage.