Environmental Scanning & Benchmarking for 5 Bridges
- Anna Swafford
- Jan 25, 2022
- 3 min read
One of the most important jobs for a public relations professional involves ensuring that some things never cross the boss’s desk: crises. A PR professional can not prevent every disaster from occurring, but a good pr person will block a good chunk of those disasters from ever hitting the front page, and the best way to achieve this defense is through thorough environmental scanning and benchmarking.
Environmental Scanning & Benchmarking
Environmental scanning is the process of finding “information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization’s external environment” (Choo, 2001). For a PR practitioner, environmental scanning would be consistent monitoring of the external media environment (i.e. competitors, stockholders, producers, etc) for potential risks which could later impact the organization. Several studies and real-world examples have shown that including environmental scanning in the general daily practice of a communication strategist can give preemptive warning to organizations to prevent or get ahead of a potential crisis. Organizations should find “what external factors are most impactful to make the environmental scan a useful tool” (SHRM, n.d.).
For example, your organization deals primarily with food products and there is news circulating about a potential outbreak of salmonella at a competing organization. Your organization has not heard of any contamination in your company but you can start testing your products for contaminants early and begin to warn or reassure your key stakeholders about the issue before it becomes a major crisis on your hands.
Tips for environmental scanning:
Look at competitor’s social media
Create Google Alerts for key terms for your organization
Keep an eye on activist groups
What are the economy and market supply doing
Benchmarking is finding a benchmark, “an organization or standard of performance you aspire to achieve” (Smith, 2021). Benchmarking can be a way for practitioners to measure your organization’s success against and as an added bonus it can be used to prove to clients the benefits of staying with your PR strategy. Benchmarking can be used in a multitude of ways but specifically in crisis prevention, it can be used similarly to environmental scanning. You benchmark your organization by “determining how and where other companies are achieving higher performance levels than your company has been able to achieve” among other analyses of your chosen benchmark organization (8 steps, 2019). Here, it can be a potential warning for your organization if you have seen that the benchmark had to deal with x, y, and z issues and crises when it was at your stage, then you should begin preparing plans for those crises so your organization can learn from those that came before.
When you find out that environmental scanning can stop a crisis from happening
Both of these tools can be extremely useful for organizations, especially those trying to build a stronger brand recognition like 5 Bridges Holistic Wellness because it can create better strategic plans, stronger forethought, and increase the potential expected outcomes for organizations. Doing so can allow for better long-term audience relations and stronger positive brand relations.
References:
Choo, C. W. (2001). Environmental scanning as information seeking and organizational learning. Information research, 7(1), 7-1.
SHRM - The Voice of All Things Work. What are the basics of environmental scanning as part of the strategic planning process? (n.d.). Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/basics-of-environmental-scanning.aspx
Smith, R.D. (2021). Strategic planning for public relations (6th Ed.). Routledge.
8 steps of the benchmarking process. 8 Steps of the Benchmarking Process | Lucidchart Blog. (2019, October 14). Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/8-steps-of-the-benchmarking-process
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