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The Town Square: How We Roll with Social Media at Humana, Part 2

by Greg Matthews on January 7, 2010 · Comments

PragueTownSquareA few months ago, I was lucky enough to be able to write a guest post on Amber Naslund’s Altitude Branding blog that was all about how we think about social media at Humana.  At the time that post was written, our social media “un-committee” was about four months old.  Now that we’re approaching our collective first birthday, I wanted to revisit the Altitude post, and share a bit more about how we think about social media in our Fortune 100 enterprise.  This is the second of three posts on the subject.

The Town Square is a concept that says every department in the company can get a “lot” on the Town Square, and build whatever kind of building suits their business needs best.  It’s the place for Humana to understand, explore and use social media to take its business forward. It’s not about tools or technology; it’s about a new model for interaction and collaboration.  It’s for our customers, yes, but not JUST our customers.  It also applies to the way we work with doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, employers, the government and – yes – each other.

The Town Square Model

We figured that if we were going to be working in social media, we needed to apply social media principles to the way we worked.  And that means that we weren’t going to be a governance committee or an approval board.  How on earth could you have a social media governance committee (oxymoron alert!)?

There’s only one rule in the Town Square . . . but it goes with six fundamental principles.  The rule is: We share.  We share our ideas and plans.  We share what’s worked and what hasn’t.  We share vendor recommendations.  We share reference materials and resources. The fundamentals are important too, although pretty obvious:

  • Authenticity – We’re honest, accurate and thorough.  We’re not marketing; we’re having a conversation.  We don’t keep secrets or spin the truth.  We’re people, too.
  • Active Listening – We’re taking the time to stop talking and just listen.  We want to hear what you have to say – even if it’s negative.  When we enter a new space, we’ll listen first before we start talking.  We’ll listen for how we can make your life better or easier.  We are changing the way we work based on your needs.
  • Going Where They Are – People go to the places and do the things they know, trust and enjoy.  You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you.  If it’s necessary for you to come to us, we’ll build you a bridge.
  • Personal Voice – We will interact with you as people, not as a corporation.  I am accountable to you as a person, not as a corporation.  We will use language that you can understand – not just what’s convenient for us.
  • Learning through Action – Nobody has found the “magic bullet” in enterprise social media.  We will try new things.  We realize that we will make mistakes and do things incorrectly, but we will learn as we go.  We’ll be honest about what we’ve learned, and celebrate our smart failures.  We’ll get better every time we try.
  • Sharing/Open Source – We are adopting a culture of sharing, both inside and outside of Humana.  If we can’t share our successes and failures, we limit our ability to learn.  We don’t have to control, but we do have to communicate.  We will create a culture that emphasizes and values collaboration and sharing.

So now that we had a framework, we needed someone to start building around the square.  I mentioned before that there were a whole lot of people who’d begun to work in the space.  Our Perfect Service Innovation team was the first part of the company to work with an internal wiki for knowledge sharing.  Our Web/New Media team has launched a series of videos (over two million views on YouTube – pretty amazing!)  And another part of our marketing organization had launched a real social network for pre-retirees.  Our HR team is aggressively using LinkedIn and Facebook for recruitment.  And our Humana Military subsidiary has just started using Facebook to connect with their beneficiaries.

Continuing the Town Square metaphor, we needed to find a way to bring together the right people from around our business to carry the learning forward – we call it the “Chamber of Commerce.”  A group of 17 people – none above the director level – from 14 different departments of the company.  They are all either currently engaged in some form of social media or preparing to be.

Tomorrow: The social media “Chamber of Commerce” – our official unofficial un-committee.

Photo by abeeeer

Popularity: 9% [?]

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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.

Social media – how we roll at Humana

by Greg Matthews on January 6, 2010 · Comments

TownSquareWordleA few months ago, I was lucky enough to be able to write a guest post on Amber Naslund’s Altitude Branding blog that was all about how we think about social media at Humana.  At the time that post was written, our social media “un-committee” was about 4 months old.  Now that we’re approaching our collective first birthday, I wanted to revisit the Altitude post, and to share a bit more about how we think about social media in our Fortune-100 enterprise.  This is the first of three posts on the subject.

Humana made the decision to step – lightly – into social media last year.  But the interesting thing is that it wasn’t really one decision, but many . . . perhaps dozens of decisions, happening all at about the same time. And when you think about it, it’s really not all that surprising that in a company of 29,000 people operating a complex business, the benefits of using social media became obvious to lots of us.  Or, at least, too enticing not to try.

For those of you who don’t know our company, we’re one of the bigger health benefits companies out there.  Here’s a pop quiz:  How many of you love your health insurance brand?  Nobody?  OK, how many of you find your health insurer easy to work with?  Ahh, yes.  A few more, but still not many.  How many of you find the health system easy to navigate?  Crickets again.

Can you imagine why we might want to make a deeper connection with consumers?  Why we might want to collaborate better with doctors and hospitals to make sure that our members get the best care for a reasonable price?  To connect healthy people with programs that will keep them healthy?  Then you can imagine why social media started to appear on everyone’s “solution radar” in 2008.

How it started

For me, it started with a realization that I couldn’t keep telling people that social media was a solution unless I started actually living it out.  So, I started doing the usual stuff – blogging, setting up a facebook page and even a twitter account.  You can read more about it here and here .

But things really took a turn when our team got some good press from the social media campaign for freewheelin.  That led to a presentation to Humana’s executive committee, and a directive to create some kind of company-wide platform that we could use to help bring together Humana’s social media activities into a common place. After having done some pretty low risk exploration, we figured that the first thing to do would be to lay out a set of principles to live by – and the Town Square was born.

The Town Square is a concept that says every department in the company can get a “lot” on the town square, and build whatever kind of building suits their business needs best.  It’s the place for Humana to understand, explore and use social media to take its business forward. It’s not about tools or technology; it’s about a new model for interaction and collaboration.  It’s for our customers, yes, but not JUST our customers.  It also applies to the way we work with doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, employers, the government and – yes – each other.

Tomorrow: The Town Square

Popularity: 10% [?]

{ 1 comment }

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.