Richard Rumbelow - in-house public affairs

Strategy and tactics are important parts of being a public affairs practitioner, as delivery of strategic counsel and implementation of public affairs activity is now viewed as an essential element in the modern business environment as it manages more complex reputational, commercial and consumer focused goals.

In my experience, it is very few CEO's and Boards who will not lead effectively without being on top of relevant political and public policy issues across their markets whether in the UK, Europe or in other major capitals. The remit of corporate public affairs has progressively evolved and now increasingly supports an international perspective. It is also true that the more complex the industry, particularly where the outcome of political and regulatory change is high, the more value from our professional activity can be most added. I have found the more regulated the industry, the more at 'home' public affairs is within the structure of the business.

The task of in-house public affairs is to ensure that the business understands and appreciates the 'political' and 'legislative' noise across its geographical and corporate issue arena. Historically, a key part of public affairs has been to focus its activity around proposed legislative change on your business and ultimately the relationship with your consumer. This was and remains at a domestic level, but increasingly now at European level as its influence on the framework of business regulation becomes more extensive. For global business responsibility, a wider range of players at international level are involved covering trade, government and NGO interests.

The key responsibilities of in-house public affairs are to act as an internal resource of expert advice on the 'impact of legislative and public policy change' and 'thinking'. This requires having the skills of interpreting and evaluating political and intellectual language and bringing a fresh perspective to issues and arguments. In this, the support of external consultants to focus on your agenda, to provide specialist advice and perhaps to look after your agenda, can be invaluable.

In equal measure, the role is to provide external stakeholders with our perspectives on key policy issues. This means having insight into the 'process' and being able to deliver effective messages into key audiences. The initiation of dialogue is frequently now at the behest of stakeholders; the scale of internal resources, particularly on technical and detailed issues places business with expertise to provide expert analysis and insight on policy issues relevant to your sector, or business as a whole. Reputational management in dealing with an increasing variety of stakeholders and their agenda's is now as important as achieving key corporate goals.

In all our activity, focusing on achieving desired results is vital.

Fundamentally, two issues prioritise the internal public affairs agenda; responding to regulatory pressures to ensure that market structures and consumers benefit from appropriate change and reputational management with key stakeholders to ensure a continuing relationship on ever changing corporate issues.