CHALLENGES AN OPPORTUNITIES IN REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

Stakeholders perceptions of company behaviour are now the lead driver of enterprise value. Studies show that companies with high reputation are worth as much as 150% more than those with low reputations. A company’s constellation of stakeholder and influence relationship is its reputation ecosystem. Reputational risk is the risk arising from negative perception on the part of customers, counterparties, shareholders, investors or regulators that can adversely affect a company's ability to maintain existing, or establish new, business relationships and continued access to sources of funding. Reputational risk may give rise to credit, liquidity, market and legal risk – all of which can have a negative impact on  a company’s earnings, liquidity and capital position.

Managing risk to reputation is about fundamental perceptions of the company’s contributions, value and strategic direction.

It’s imperative that all actions taken to drive stakeholder perceptions or behaviours can be explicitly mapped to business outcome or a predictive and performance tracking basis. Any programme primarily focused on reputation should be accompanies by performance measures that tie to the bottom line numbers.

The one constant in the world of communications and reputation is change and along with additional focus and responsibility has come complexity in terms of channels, stakeholder segmentation and this calls for an approach to align all efforts for consistency and effectiveness.

In every industry there are key influencers – industry and policy thought leaders – who determine whether or not your company will be successful in their arena. Whether that’s marketplace influencers (impacting your customers) or government influencers (who affect your tax and regulatory situation), you need a plan to strengthen and deepen these relationships. Specifically, you need a plan for who to focus on and how to engage them beyond the typical issue-driven agenda.