How to Navigate Peru’s Turmoil

A company must have full visibility over where it is operating and what the surrounding context is.

Firstly, it must understand its exposure and the location of its facilities, finances and personnel. It must have a clarified idea of its current security position and any gaps which may exist in its management procedures. This stage may involve embedding local security experts into the workforce or contracting a third party for localized insight.

Secondly, the company should contextualize its operations and undergo a security analysis of the region. Relevant sociopolitical and regulatory events must be analyzed on a regular basis. To this end, many companies contract data & analytics experts who provide real-time incident databases and dashboards of the evolving risk landscape. Such technology enables the security team to be cognizant of any trends, changes, threat levels and KRIs.

Furthermore, a dashboard of this kind allows companies to keep a record of all incidents. This becomes pivotal during internal reviews and arbitration cases, where timely and detailed evidence must be presented.

Once the security risks have been assessed, it is advisable to develop a risk matrix which scores incidents based on their likelihood and impact. Matrixes provide visibility over all scenarios and enable companies to prioritize the most pressing issues quickly.

Crisis Management Training and Testing

Once you know the risks facing your company, it is important to draw up procedures of how to respond in the case of certain events. If Boluarte resigns tomorrow, how does the company react? How do you communicate with your customers, shareholders and general public?

A crisis management plan means that a company is never caught unawares. It specifies the measures used to respond and recover when an incident has occurred.

Strikes, blockages, terrorist attacks from the Sendero Luminoso and other armed groups, new elections, a new populist President or foreign intervention are all possible in Peru’s current climate. An organization should have a clear idea of how it responds in each of these scenarios.

With an eye on all potential events which can occur, nothing should come as a surprise, and everything becomes manageable. Accordingly, regular simulated training should be conducted with operational teams on the ground in coordination with crisis management teams at head office.

Investigative Stakeholder Mapping

As well as understanding the ‘what’, companies must have a clear grasp on the ‘who’. In Peru, it is not always clear which parties are calling the shots in a certain region or project. There are many players – including indigenous communities, local politicians, multi-nationals, landowners, armed groups and drug-traffickers. According to the Corruptions Perception Index 2022, Peru was ranked as very corrupt with only a 36% ‘clean’ level, meaning that deals do not always operate as they should.25

In this climate, it is crucial to know all the stakeholders who can impact a company’s operations. ‘Know’ information can be gleaned from public domain sources including articles, PR statements and social media sites. But equally important is the ‘unknown’ information, the relationships of interest, networks, hidden agendas, problematic connections and motivations. This information is sourced through delicate human source inquiries and can uncover critical insight about who is really in control, and what the true reputation and disposition of a given stakeholder is.

Just as with a risk matrix, it is possible to develop a stakeholder matrix which monitors the profiles, positions and activities of every stakeholder who can influence a company’s operations.

Community Engagement

After identifying your stakeholders, their motivations and power relationships, you can then develop a community relations engagement plan and strengthen capacities for dialogue with each party. In Peru, communities are often actively engaged and constantly oppose large-scale private projects. A community relations expert can help ensure that the local population is onside with a particular venture or presence and specify the needs and requirements of the community – whether it be a school, a hospital or a voice in the project.

This process should be conducted in close consultation with your security preparedness, as especially in Peru, there is a strong symbiosis between community and security issues. These four actions are linked and feed into each other – stakeholder mapping and risk assessments determine crisis response actions and inform stakeholder engagement, and all four are critical for any company which decides to conduct business in Peru.

Source link : https://www.fticonsulting.com/insights/articles/how-navigate-perus-political-social-turmoil

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Publish date : 2023-03-20 03:00:00

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