New Perspectives in Wellness & Benefit Communications, Shawn M. Connors [scary books to read TXT] 📗

be sensational? What are the reasons to believe?

2. Social media will free up hidden assets and enable you to communicate with employees instead of at them.

Workplace communicators have untapped assets all around them — knowledge, skills, experiences, and perspectives that aren’t used because they simply aren’t known.

Who knew Melissa in Sales has been taking cooking classes, and can share five fun ways to grill with vegetables? Who knew Len in Marketing wants to start an after-work walking club and can share insight into preventing blisters?

Social media became popular among people interested in entertainment, news, and politics. Look for this type of communication to become more prominent within workplace cultures.

Until recently, many companies communicated at employees (emails from the HR department, meetings led by a manager, etc.). Today, a growing number of firms are using social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs to communicate with employees. The names and popularity of these tools will change, but the table has been set. Communication will never look like it did just a few years ago.

The best communication has always been a two-way street — and now it’s an interconnected superhighway system. It has changed from the wisdom of the oracle to the wisdom of the crowd. You’ll gain better, more frequent employee perspectives and feedback by fostering dialogue and discussion that spreads quickly and easily.

Social media is pushing companies to realize they need to approach employees as information consumers.

Quite literally, people are always on. We retrieve, send, text, tweet, upload, forward, and scan information quickly, from wherever we are, whenever we feel like it. The receiver, not the sender, is in control.

Firms can more effectively reach employees — especially younger ones — by literally getting under their noses and fingers.

The water cooler conversations of yesteryear have moved online, and so have brainstorming sessions, and your employees are texting, tweeting, blogging, and posting updates whether or not your servers allow it. Face-to-face and other traditional forms of communication are still vital, but social media technology can be the conduit of new knowledge and untapped resources, enabling richer interactions and more effective, personal communications.

Are you using social media?

Social media becomes more powerful as it becomes less obvious.

If you are using text messaging, editing documents with Word® or Google Docs, adding your comments to a subject on Wikipedia, using apps on your mobile device, or downloading digital music — then you’re part of the social fabric using electronic media.

For a person just learning a social media application — it’s easy and fast.

Social media is here — you’re probably already a player.

Consider that a few years ago, many workplace communicators didn’t know what a text message was. Today, some organizations are using quick-message methods to help employees maximize use of their benefit plans. The messages are helping benefits managers share concise plan updates, post open enrollment reminders, increase participation in 401(k) plans, and solicit employee feedback about new or changing options.

You probably have a repository of content from which you can pull or expand into social media messages. It’s time to make this happen, and to “follow” and “friend” those hidden assets that can make a real difference to your wellness and benefits communication.

It’s time to click with a connected crowd. What hidden resources will you uncover?

3. Powerful, new self-care tools will further empower people to be wise consumers of health.

We live in the Age of Information. As a society, we’ve never been more empowered to take control of our own health and well-being through powerful and easy-to-use self-care tools.

We can quickly and easily access informative self-care handbooks (that also direct to specific online resources), Websites, videos, journals, and other media to guide us. The key word here is guide.

Self-care technologies will increasingly be adapted to a person’s learning style, and customized to an individual’s needs. Powerful videos, animation, and messaging will save readers time by getting right at the pressing health issue.

Also look for the adaptation of “recognition content” now used by organizations like Amazon® and Netflix®. Adapted for health communications, these technologies will come to anticipate the user’s needs.

Organizations can use their own communication tools to help point employees to these valuable, self-help resources. They can encourage employees to ask more questions, understand more options, and develop more opinions. Employees will be empowered “as needed,” with information that makes them wiser consumers of health care.

Sander Domaszewicz, principal and lead of health consumerism at Mercer, Washington D.C., encourages employees to ask the following questions before they seek care:

Am I getting the right healthcare at the right time by the right provider?

Is this care important or necessary?

Are there better alternatives to this care?

Should I call a nurse line instead of going to an urgent-care center?

What over-the-counter medications might help?

Will these medical services really address my problem?

Will a primary care doctor be more practical for my needs than a specialist?

There is no longer any reason your employees, patients, or members should not be armed with answers to the above questions via affordable and powerful self-care tools.

4. Your community is an untapped gold mine waiting to be discovered.

How would you feel if a great fresh food chef offered to take your employees to the local farmers’ market and show them ways to buy and prepare food in quick, easy, nutritious ways? Sounds like fun.

Or if the local sports store was heading up a program that offered a cool and rewarding way to get young girls interested in running to build their self-esteem and confidence at the same time? Outstanding.

Think about the bicycle shop offering a family riding tour on the local rails-to-trails route. What a great day that would be.

What if the most insightful thinkers and scholars in health and human behavior from the local colleges were ready and willing to share their wisdom and insights with you all the time? Invaluable.

All the above are examples of actual events taking place in our home community of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

There are diamonds in your backyard.

Over the last 30 years, we’ve had an opportunity to visit hundreds of workplaces and communities. Often we’ve been amazed and inspired by the talent, passion, and expertise we learned existed in a single community.

Trust us, you are living in a sea of solutions. An ocean of new and fun revelations. An army of talent and passion. It really is all around you.

Colleges, hospitals, chefs, bicycle shops, park rangers, hobbyists, libraries, retirement communities (talk about experience!), artists, actors, writers, martial artists, and teachers — you get the idea.

Grassroots efforts by local merchants and small organizations will influence community health the most.

Most of us are unaware of the resources that remain untapped within five miles from where we work and live. It’s time to plug in.

We sense something powerful happening. We think your employees and local citizens are way ahead of you. Small businesses, individuals, and small groups are using social media in powerful, local ways, and converting that interest into grassroots-oriented events.

The tipping point may be the proliferation of short video. Seeing is believing. Video will be used more and more as a responsive medium. The point is your employees will now see what’s going on around them rather than just hear about it. And the desire to participate will transform into action.

Here are a few tips:

Tap into community activities being talked about by grassroots groups.

Collaborate with other workplaces and institutions and bring their expertise and experience to the table.

Plan events and programs in conjunction with other organizations to share resources, reduce costs, and leverage your messages inside and out.

Watch new communication technologies carefully (like video streaming). They enable us to connect and interact more. Social interaction is a fundamental human need.

5. Consumer retailers and advertisers will fund workplace wellness programs via sponsorships and incentive offers.

The era of traditional mass advertising — producing one message for big, diverse audiences —is coming to an end. Advertising is becoming highly targeted with built-in analytic capabilities. Custom media, search, viral, and value added are the terms you hear today. Look for advertisers to knock on your door soon.

Today’s buyers are more in control over the content they choose to read, and traditional media sources are losing reach. “Blanket” marketing has left advertisers cold, and they now seek new ways to reach consumers.

Advertising Means Response and Communication

A key to their approach is targeting. They crave the opportunity to penetrate different customer segments and understand their “buyer personas.” Instead of shouting at millions of strangers, they’re starting conversations (and programs and events) for fewer, more interested consumers. Once the firms understand what’s important to a particular persona, they stand a much better chance of communicating and persuading them to take action and buy products.

The new marketing model is to deliver timely information to groups that actively look for something: tips, customized offers, solutions to problems, and so on.

Meanwhile, HR leaders face a common problem: They want to generate buzz and credibility for their wellness programs. Sure, they have well-crafted messages about the dangers of eating too much saturated fat. But those messages — heck, the wellness programs themselves — have no sizzle.

On one front, retailers and other advertisers with health-related products and services have untapped, valuable targets: wellness program participants and other community members with an expressed interested in health. On another front, HR departments need help funding their wellness programs, enticing new participants, and organizing events and new offerings. The two fronts are colliding. It’s a perfect storm.

HR pros can get financial support and a credibility boost from retailers, who in turn can market their products and services using existing workplace communication tools such as newsletters, posters, emails, and fliers.

The local bike shop owner could write a newsletter article and include a 25% off coupon. A local yoga instructor can print posters showing five moves to try, and the company could hang the posters around the office, along with information about new yoga classes. A local farmer’s market can “keep the healthy healthy” by offering recipes and ideas on including vegetables as part of meals or snacks.

Big companies will get in the game, too, in a major way. Get ready for posters, offers and motivational messages with the Nike® “swoosh,” coming to a conference-room wall and inbox near you. Get ready for wellness-program cooking classes led by chefs from Whole Foods® (or our beloved Meijer®). Welcome to ABC Company’s Wellness Program Kickoff Spectacular, Sponsored by Weight Watchers®!

Doubt it will happen? Keep this in mind: Several years ago, athletic logos were taboo in high school and college athletics programs. Check out the scene today — logos on lockers and socks, exclusive deals for schools, major ROI for the advertisers. Those firms realized the value of a niche, helped to fund its targets, and both sides capitalized.

The concept of consumer retailers funding workplace wellness programs will introduce a number of ethical issues and conflicts of interest. We believe these issues can be mitigated by following these principles:

a. Be true to your organization’s culture and brand

b. Clearly distinguish advertising from other content

c. Strive for messages that are relevant to your content

d. Ensure all messages are in the best interest of employees

We report this trend without opinion on the issues it will raise, but rather to make you aware that these consumer retailers may be knocking on your door soon.

This movement in the health and wellness industry will be huge, and it could change the way wellness programs are funded and organized. Retailers are getting ready. Are you?

6. Demographics, technology, and healthcare system changes converge into an explosion of empowerment and interest in healthy living.

What happens when an aging public becomes more concerned about its health and employee benefits, more