"An issue ignored, is a crisis invited." Henry Kissinger's famous quote summarizes the quintessential paradigm of issues management. And indeed, most crisis do not come out of the blue. Usually, they develop from issues that were ignored. A thorough issues management helps you to keep on top of your issues and often avoids them turning into a perfect storm. Knowing your stakeholders and their values is as essential for an effective issues management as keeping track of latest developments which influence the public's opinion.

Among others, an effective issues management can

• prevent a reputational crisis (e.g. by checking your supply chain for potential issues like working conditions at your suppliers factories).
• support the progress of infrastructure projects (e.g. by considering the concerns of the affected stakeholders in the planning).
• improve the relationships with your key stakeholders and your reputation.

We can help you

• analyze your underlying reputational issues that result from your business model.
• monitor your business environment for early indicators of newly arising issues.
• set-up a structure and processes for an effective in-house issues management.

Life is full of risks. Everyone deals with them on a daily basis, more or less intuitively, based on the things we know or believe to know. However, when the reputation and existence of your enterprise or institution are at stake, intuition is not good enough, especially when the safety of people, environment or property is in danger.

Risk is always subject to an individual perception. Whereas people living close to a power plant might perceive nuclear power as not risky at all, others might be literally frightened by radiation and potential radiological accidents. Why? The population around nuclear installations is usually involved in all kinds of emergency planning and often better informed about health hazards that could arise from ionizing radiation compared to the rest of the public.

Effective risk communication before and during a crisis can provide the necessary information to mitigate fears and unreasonable perceptions that are often caused by a lack of understandable information, as not only the latest events around the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease COVID-19 clearly show. A comprehensive risk communication in "peace times" will also help to build trust amongst your stakeholders. Together with you, we will have a close look at your risk map to identify areas where risk communication might be the key for an effective issues management and an effective response to a crisis.

We will support you in

• identifying relevant stakeholders
• developing key messages in a language understandable to your stakeholders
• identifying the best channels to reach out to your stakeholders
• integrating risk communication in your whole situation management system and linking it to your issues management and crisis response arrangements.

Risk communication is especially relevant for all activities and fields that might affect the safety of people, the environment or property such as

• Chemical industry
• Nuclear and radiological applications
• Healthcare and pharma
• Mass transportation
• Financial industry
• Energy
• Civil protection
• Etc.