I missed the actual #hcsm conversation two weeks ago, but I had a good excuse being it was my seven-year anniversary with my lovely and very patient wife. Going through the tweet stream was great though and I felt that a particular question, Topic Two, needed to be talked about in its own post:
Can employee wellness programs effectiveness/participation be increased by social media? How can social media improve engagement?
The discussion left more questions than answers as most large organizations don’t even allow access to third party social media sites to begin with, for security purposes. Given the benefit of time to digest this question a bit, my take is that there are definitely two parts to it that aren’t addressed in the question itself. The first part is the need for a clear definition and common understanding of what the term wellness means, across the board. If there are ten different dimensions of wellness, as definitionofwellness.com states, which ones are we trying to increase engagement in or improve? Some of them? All of them?
The next question in my mind is: can people actually improve their wellness by increasing their awareness, i.e. completing questionnaires and going to screenings? Or is that just the first step?
I understand that awareness and early detection are instrumental in saving lives. It’s just that the term wellness seems to encompass so much more to me than identification and prevention. Becoming well implies the need to change your behavior if you are not currently well. This change goes beyond answering questions or seeing a doctor. They are good steps, but if nothing else is done after those steps are taken… if behavior doesn’t change, then there is no hope for increased wellness.
Behavior change is what we’re really getting at when we talk about wellness. It’s what the #hcsm question is really about, in my opinion.
So if we add behavior to the question, it reads: Can social media change employee behavior leading to increased wellness? If so, how can social media be applied to each of the definitionofwellness.com’s ten dimensions of wellness:
I think that this is the question that we all need to be asking ourselves. What do you think?
@hallicious
photo by: visualpanic
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
Quick… How can you get a whole bunch of corporate types into a room to talk about what social media means for their business?
Give up?
You can start by aligning yourself with the best thinkers in the business . . . and bringing in a renowned expert like Chris Brogan to host an all day boot camp that gets everybody in your business excited about what social can do for them.
That’s what we did last week, working in partnership with Doe-Anderson’s JasonFalls. We in the innovation center linked up with Humana’s HR and IT departments and brought Chris and company to Louisville to host his Inbound Marketing Boot Camp. Talk about an action-packed experience. I think that there was more energy in the room by the end of the day then there was when Chris got the crowd going in the morning. People were ready to move mountains.
Seriously.
If your organization needs a social shot in the arm, then here is a breakdown of our experience:
Chris Brogan – Provided off the cuff commentary on where social media is and where it is going in his signature style. Worth the price of admission alone… but wait – there’s more!
Rick Burnes, Hubspot - Ran everyone through the importance of optimizing blog posts for lead generation
Amber Naslund, Radian6 - Talked about listening and reacting to what people are saying about your brand on-line
Greg Cangialosi, Blue Sky Factory CEO – Gave a great talk on the value of direct E-mail marketing, metrics, and social E-mail
JasonFalls, Doe Anderson – Walked us through the art of Public Relations / Blogger outreach and relationship building
In addition to the direct benefits accrued from the knowledge that these individuals bestowed on the crowd, there were other, more subtle benefits to hosting an event like this one. Here are some that have occurred to me, in no particular order:
Social Media Awareness – Who better to bring in to talk about social media than an expert? And not just any expert, mind you. Chris’ draw was huge, both internally to our organization and regionally, with a packed house (right around 100 attendees) throughout the day. The Humana people I talked to after the event were all very excited to get moving with social after the boot camp and I heard nothing but great things about people’s experiences that day. If you have people in your organization who are on the fence about social media and your business, convince Chris to come to your place of business to throw a boot camp and watch opinions of social media change before your very eyes.
Outing Social Media Sympathizers – Let’s face it, whether they are engaged in social media or not, most people are at least curious to know what all the fuss is about. Throwing an event like this gets people in your organization talking, leading up the event. By identifying the people who are interested in the subject, you are able to find like minds who will eventually help your business become the social enterprise it longs to be… Extra bonus for getting them all in the same room at the same time during the boot camp itself.
Creating Community – We probably could have made it a Humana only event, judging by the interest we had, but by hosting the event and opening up the doors to non-Humana folks I think we gained a lot more as an organization. But social media is all about community and collaboration, and we wanted to share that experience with others outside our own organization. We had the chance to meet and mingle with social media professionals from other organizations, and the importance of that can not be overstated in my opinion. Social media cross-talk is key as we all feel our ways around integration into our business, and strive to support our members/customers in new and engaging ways. Huge plus.
Being the Conversation – A short-term benefit, but a benefit nonetheless, was the conversation that this event generated on Twitter. Participants used the hashtag #imbc and 76 people talked about it throughout the day, many talking about their first time experience with Humana as a company. You can find a list of those people here, thanks to Dave Lowe.
So all in all, as the title of this post states… the Inbound Marketing Boot Camp was a hit. I highly recommend it and can’t say enough about the experience. How are you bringing social to your organization?
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
Recently a colleague complained to me that I’m not following him back on Twitter. Another one posted a comment to a Facebook application, offended that my wall was not accessible to her. And another one got annoyed when comments to my online status stayed unanswered for long periods of time, although there seemed to be plenty of activity on my profile.
Which made me think about the different uses people apply to their online social networks and tools – and their personal expectations.
In general, people don’t seem to realize, that most social technologies, including Twitter and Facebook, are asynchronous communication tools. That means, that they are meant to post information now that people pick up at a later point in time at their own discretion. Consequently, the builders of those tools have built in mechanisms and algorithms which – in an attempt to manage the communication load – often arbitrarily display the newest status updates, photos, news on the various ‘friends’ you follow; the newest ones first but in no particular order and without any particular ranking. Therefore, your profile may look active today when your updates are actually from a while ago. What makes matters worse is the fact, that your profile also displays replies, posts, comments by your friends – dependent on your preference settings. So, there may be recent activity on your profile although you haven’t logged in for weeks.
What we need to remember is that people use these tools in different ways, which is dependent on how they are able to access them throughout the day. For example, due to company security restrictions, I can only access most social media sites from my iPod touch during the day and from my home desktop at night. Consequently, I try to manage my Twitter stream by:
- only following people that talk about things of interest to me (which at this point does not include when they go to the shower or watch the sun rise) :)
- only posting information and links on Twitter that I find particularly intriguing from a professional and intellectual perspective
Consequently, I don’t prohibit anybody from following me but choose who to follow based on the above criteria. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, other people use Twitter in different ways which includes building an online reputation as connectors or distributors of any kind of information, measured by a ratio of followers to followees (called tweeciprocity on Twitter) or alike.
Sorry, guys, for virtually screwing up your cyber-reputation. I hope that the intellectual and informative value that my posts provide to you compensate for that. :)
But back to asynchronous communication tools, old-fashioned Email being one of them… They allow you to access and respond in a different-place/different-time manner and thus the expectation for somebody waiting for a response should adjust accordingly. Even though you may instantaneously see my post doesn’t create the need or ability for me to immediately respond; nor does it require me to respond at all. :)
In contrast, synchronous communication gives you instant feedback but requires you to also immediately respond. This direct feedback loop, however, helps to quickly overcome ambiguity, reach agreement, minimize time, and is, therefore, a much better way to arrive at mutual consent and to make decisions.
So, why not pick up the phone if you actually want to accomplish something?
Or, if the person you want to talk to is actually sitting in the cubicle across the aisle: Why not get up, walk over, and talk to him or her?
You might actually make a real friend …
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
I’m not sure how I received the necessary nutrients to survive when I was a child. I liked to run around a lot and break things—and whenever my parents called me to eat I would tell them I was fasting and then hide under a table. I was essentially spoon fed (necessary term, despite the fact that we sub-continentals ate with our hands) till I was nine. Dinnertime was often interrupted by a brief escape prevented by the offer of Berenstain Bears at the table and a mouthful of food. The reading of children’s books at the table continued till I was fifteen. Despite my erratic and often punctuated eating habits, my mom, employing her unwavering genius, still got me to eat–usually thanks to a game.
My typical diet was a glass of whole milk (skinny kid with accelerated metabolism) with a plate of rice, meat, and potatoes. Meat came in the form of curry, masala, khorma, tikka, or vindaloo, and veggies were generally just aloo (spuds) and sometimes ghobi (cauliflower). Delicious right? Not for this child. All I wanted was candy and flamin’ hot cheetos. Years of desi umami had pushed me to desire the extremes of sweet and spicy. So Mom decided to let me eat my family members, one by one, in the order of how much I liked them, in the form of little balls of rice and meat and potato that she pushed together and called lokmahs. She would shape the food into balls so they resembled bite-sized jolly Bengali Ferrero Rochers arranged on a grid.
The big ones were usually uncles or my big brother and the small ones were cousins that I liked. She could get me through the big ones first because most of my uncles were boring and therefore deserved to be eaten quickly. If my brother had been mean that day he would be represented as one giant ball of food that I would force into my mouth and chew as I stomped around. The little friendly cousins were always last and even though I was almost full by that time I wasn’t going to be the one to keep family apart. Down they went with the rest to sing Bollywood songs in my duodenum. That’s what I imagined they were doing—because it was the fun way to think about it.
But my mom didn’t think about it that way. She was just trying to keep me alive and had stumbled on something very true: Taking fun things and making them healthy is a great way to keep people healthy. I was able to unleash monster justice on my older brother and stave off malnutrition all at once. That sort of thinking drives Humana Games for Health (HG4H). In particular, the Horsepower Challenge.
The Horsepower Challenge (www.horsepowergame.com) is a pedometer-based game that focuses on combating obesity by taking something fun – playing a video game that’s both competitive and collaborative – and powering it by walking. We’ve launched challenges in schools and colleges and are gearing up for a nationwide challenge starting later this year. Participants are given high tech pedometers that sync wirelessly with special routers to upload steps to the Horsepower Game website. Once online the walkers can access their own Horse avatars that can be customized with virtual swag they purchase using points earned from walking. The kids’ classes and schools are represented as horse-filled school buses in a race around the world. The kids’ collective steps move the bus from country to country, and each landmark has detailed information about its history and culture. Teachers can tie the info into the curriculum and teach kids about healthy living. A sample game is available online at horsepowergame.com where you can see what the ex
perience is like for both teachers and students. While you’re there, you can check out our ‘behind the scenes’ section for Youtube Videos , Flickr Photos, tweets, blogposts and more. You can even follow your favorite student’s progress with our Horsepower Challenge Facebook application. We’re taking health and making it social.
I still love it when my mom feeds me; it makes me feel immature and blissfully youthful again. I don’t have any trouble finishing her scrumptious cuisine any longer, and I still read stuff at the table, but I’m a lot more thankful now for the force-feeding I went through as a kid. I don’t think I would be here if it wasn’t for healthy games.
Follow me on Twitter @naimul
Photo By Flickr User Kali.Ma
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
It seems like everyone just can’t stop talking about social media. Just last week my wife received the American Council on Exercise’s (ACE) bimonthly newsletter and sure enough the cover story is “Marketing Your Fitness Business with Online Social Media”. (So yes, she now has homework to do!) It’s no wonder that sole-proprietors in the service industry have caught on. Times they are a changin’, and this economy is a catalyst for finding new ways of doing business.
But if you’re new to social technologies, as I was not so long ago, it can seem seriously overwhelming—not unlike those remote controls above. Blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, aggregators, feeds, sharing, and privacy issues, does it ever end? There’s a flurry of these tools and it seems like a new one catches my eye every time I fire up my laptop or iPhone. My first experience came when I finally gave in and created a basic MySpace page last year. The first time someone “dropped by” my page to “leave some love” was my cue to skedaddle out of there. I deleted my first invitation to Facebook and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to read the ranting and raving of us common folks in a blog. I just didn’t get it at that time.
I started in the Innovation Center in January of 2008. Since social media was on our horizon, I decided that it was time for me to tiptoe in again. I am happy to report I’ve found what I consider to be the right tools for my needs. This might help if you find you’re overwhelmed.
First things first: limit your time online on any social media/networking site. Set a limit and stick to it. I spend no more than 30 minutes online and usually at night. Some of these actually allow me to be more productive.
Facebook – Sign up, build a profile, add a photo, find friends, and share. It’s that easy. Thankfully, it has enough privacy settings to lock your profile down like Fort Knox. We ought to know—Fort Knox is just down the street. AllFacebook has the must-read, skinny on privacy as well as how to get the most out of the social networking flagship. (Thanks @chimoose)
Google Reader – you can search the blogosphere for blogs centered on topics of interest to you and then read them all in Google Reader. First get a Google account and then simply look for the RSS feed on a website or a blog and click subscribe. I don’t browse to news sites anymore. I let them come to me in the reader. I can share the articles I like with my Gmail contacts.
Blogs – there are several ways to start blogging. You can create your own blog, or contribute to other blogs by posting comments. There are about a dozen of us who are taking our blogging baby steps right here on Crumple it Up. I have found Guide to Blogging very useful.
Twitter – this micro-blogging tool is the latest rage in social media. Messages are limited to 140 characters yet millions of people are using this. As far as I’m concerned, the key to Twitter is that it’s all happening in real time. Want to know what people are thinking about a brand right now? Check. You’ll find out. Also check out what our social media guru @naimul wrote about the rise of the health tweeple.
LinkedIn – this is an online resume and networking hub all in one. If this economy has you down, LinkedIn must be part of your solution to get back up. I hear it’s being used as a really inexpensive recruiting mechanism. It’s ideal for networking and connecting with hard to reach people. You really never know who’s in your network. In my experience, your profile on this page should be kept professional. Save the socializing for other sites.
Delicious – if you’re like me, you have a computer at home, a computer at work, and now a mobile device with a browser. Delicious is social bookmarking. What I love about it is it doesn’t matter which computer or device I am on because all my bookmarks are stored here. I can share them or keep them private.
SlideShare – this is like YouTube but only for presentations. The first three times I used it I found what I was looking for within two minutes. Priceless.
There’s no shortage of social media tools. I haven’t mentioned any video sites like YouTube or 12seconds.tv because I haven’t had much use for them other than entertainment. The theme here is utility. Hone in on what you need, try out a few tools, and keep the ones that make your life easier.
For further reading, our social media buddies Jason Falls, @jasonfalls, and David Finch, @davidfinch, have written extensively about all these topics on Social Media Explorer. Their motif is to embrace possibilities, and these guys know their stuff. Regardless of whether your desire is to build a personal brand or to learn something new, don’t be afraid to wade in.
What did I miss and more importantly, how are you using these tools to make your life easier?
Popularity: 9% [?]
DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
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