ORGANISING AN IN-HOUSE GR FUNCTION

Top companies make sure that their GR team excels at economic analysis and stakeholder engagement, not just at lobbying and industry-group participation. By having staff dedicated to handling tasks such as identifying issues, developing positions, and gathering compelling international benchmarks, leading GR units can anticipate a much broader range of possible regulatory outcomes. Notably, leading groups quantify the impact of these outcomes on all parties involved, not just their own companies, by including the regulator and even the broader industry in their analyses. This approach dramatically improves the quality of engagement and can even break through seemingly deadlocked situations—for example, when a company can quickly and accurately show a regulatory proposal’s negative consequences for national employment rates or tax revenues.

Top companies identify important stakeholders up front and work with them using a key account management–style approach that borrows from best-practice sales organizations. Designating senior executives as “owners” for important relationships, including those in social media, allows for smoother scheduling and coordination of day-to-day activities. More important, this approach makes it easier for a GR group to provide consistent, coherent, and proactive communication supporting a company’s GR strategy.

Companies tend to structure their GR units in one of six ways. Yet they face a host of design considerations, such as the size of the team, as well as its physical location (including special ones chosen for strategic reasons, such as Brussels; Washington, DC; and, increasingly, Beijing). In situations where decentralized GR teams are required—say, in highly regulated industries calling for deep country-level expertise, companies successfully create dual-reporting relationships to link GR with both the country head and the corporate function. The home office helps quantify the value at stake, shares best practices, and makes sure the company’s broader interests are accounted for.

Types of Structure

1. Centralised control: Firms manage their global GR strategy and local implementation through a central in-house GR team.
2. Centralised/unified: A central in-house GR team employs a GR consultancy network to  support global strategy and local implementation
3. Centralised/fragmented: A central in-house GR team creates a global strategy, possibly with a GR consultancy, and employs different GR consultancies locally.
4. Central guidelines/regional control: A central in-house GR team creates a global strategy, possibly with a GR consultancy, and hands tasks to its regional offices to manage local implementation.
5. Central guidelines/local control: A central in-house GR team creates a global strategy possibly with a GR consultancy, and tasks local offices with implementing it and bringing in local GR consultancies.
6. Localised Firms manage GR on a country-by-country basis.

Companies require skilled communications and GR leaders who are attuned to all of the organization’s stakeholders and their interests. They must bring a 360-degree perspective in guiding the strategic narratives and programmes that align the business, improve engagement with a wider array of stakeholders, protect reputation, and advance the company’s agenda in the marketplace. Now more than ever, GR executives play a critical advisory and integration role in serving the CEO and the executive leadership team. These leaders must have not only the core technical skills, but be creative problem solvers, understand/possess business acumen, as well as have outstanding influencing and diplomacy skills, and the tolerance, energy, and ability to lead through disruptive change.

Making a Clear GR Strategy and Plan

With a department now in place, the GR professionals and senior management need to sit down and formulate a formal GR strategy and plan. This plan calls for strategic planning, creative thinking, smart budgeting and the ability to plan for unforeseeable situations. Elements of a successful GR plan should include:

1. A concrete definition of Goals and Objectives
2. The identification of Target Audience
3. The development of Strategies and Tactics. Strategy is the overall idea while tactics are specific actions and steps that will be taken to reach a strategic goal.
4. Draft Key Message 
5. Draft a Budget. A realistic budget also needs to be allocated to the GR department and this needs to be divided into various heads with some set aside to handle unforeseen situations.
6. Develop a Task List and Timetable. For each tactic and action plan that is devised to reach the strategy, there needs to be task breakdown and a timetable so everyone is on board with what needs to be done and when. Deadlines are critical for the success of the GR plan.
7. Plan for a Crisis. In addition to planning for the everyday affairs, there also needs to be some time dedicated to planning for contingencies and for crises. This will allow the company to react proactively and address challenges as soon as they arise.
8. Review and Adjust Plan. High-level strategy statements do not change frequently. However, tactics, tasks and timetables should be reviewed on a regular basis and adjusted whenever needed. Plans should be easily modifiable as the situation calls for it.
9. Record Efforts for Future Use. Any GR worthy activity should be recorded carefully for possible use at a later time. Controls should be put in place to make this work.

With the right expectations, the right team and the right tools, a company can effectively manage its GR needs in-house.