The Communications Department

So many of the conversations about corporate communications revolve around how to do it efficiently and effectively and with impact. All critical goals, but what if we can communicate in way that can positively affect the health of the person to whom the communication is directed?

I have the good fortune to work with some friends who are committed to bringing people together to explore social conditions that are the major influences of health and illness.  (For more on their work, check out www.communitiesofhealth.org.) Working with them has given me access to some interesting thinking about the underlying causes of poor health, as well as unconventional approaches to improving health.

Recently, four articles in particular have given me pause to think about how we approach communications in an organization could potentially positively influence the overall health of an individual. (The approach also could have a negative health impact, but for this blog posting I will only focus on the positive.)

The four articles are:

“Love is Real Medicine”– In this Newsweek article Dr. Dean Ornish wrote a few years ago, he highlights studies he conducted demonstrating the positive impacts relationships have on people who had heart attacks.

“What are Friends For? A Longer Life” — A recent NY Times article highlighting a study that shows people with good friendships live longer and are healthier than those without close relationships.

“Ning Hits 1 Million Social Networks”– The one millionth social network was recently created using the build-it-yourself Ning platform.

“Whitehall II Study” — The last piece is not an article, but a study. The study was “set up by Professor Sir Michael Marmot to investigate the importance of social class, psychosocial factors and life style as determinants of disease by following a cohort of 10,308 men and women.” The study found the following:

A person’s health is influenced by the conditions in which he or she lives and works. The “Work, Stress and Health” booklet summarises some key findings from the Whitehall II study including:

• The more senior someone is in the employment hierarchy, the longer he or she might be expected to live compared to people in lower employment grades.
• The combination of high demands and low control at work predicts poor health.
• Workers reporting high effort-reward imbalance are at increased risk of coronary hearth disease and poor health.
• A healthy diet, exercise and quitting smoking all reduce the risk of disease and promote well-being.

After reading these and other writings on the connections between relationships, stress, autonomy and health, I am left wondering if health improvement could be an effective goal and measurement for a company’s communications strategy. If the anwer is yes, how could we achieve something like that? Other questions to consider include:

• With social media becoming a larger part of corporate communications strategies, is it possible to leverage them in such a way so they become a mechanism for people to form genuine friendships? What would that look like? Should an employer encourage these kinds of relationships?
• How can a company use an application like Ning to create a platform for communications that give employees a sense of autonomy and control? What kind of control would a company have to let go of to make this happen?
• How can knowledge of the benefits of relationships and autonomy influence a commuincation strategy and implementation?

I am sure there are more questions and implications from thinking about communications as a driver for improving health, so feel free to post them here. In the meantime, I will keep searching for the study that shows hanging out on Facebook has better health benefits as hitting the treadmill. You never know. This stuff is always developing . . .

Ever wonder what goes on in the lockeroom at an NBA game during halftime? We now have a brief, 140-character glimpse of what transpires thanks to Charlie Villanueva, a forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, sending a “tweet” via Twitter live from the Bucks locker room during a recent game against the Boston Celtics. Needless to say, his coaches were not too happy about it. (”Bucks Coach Calls Foul on Villanueva Twitter Post”).

While this is a high-profile example of tweeting from the workplace, the reality is that it is becoming more prevelant as the number of Twitter users continues to grow like crazy. I have read that there may be as many as 2,000 to 5,000 new users opening Twitter accounts everyday. You know it is just a matter of time before some of your employees  are tweeting from work. In fact, some may be doing so already.

What’s the Risk?
As you think about work, think about the meetings and conversations in which you engage during a typical day. Now think about how comfortable you would be if those conversations, planning sessions and/or workplace operations plans ended up in the Twitter streams of hundreds or thousands of people. Feeling uncomfortable? I have seen tweets from employees at locations where job eliminations were just announced and tweets from folks who were on conference calls. While most of the content was benign, it is easy to see how harmful or proprietary information could make it out of an organization. For one such example, read the storyof FedEx and the employee from Ketchum.

What Can We Do?
With the proliferation of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, it may seem impossible to believe anything can be done to curtail or stop these kinds of communications from your employees. However, there are some proactive steps you can take to help influence their decision-making process.

1. Create a social media policy. Many companies have created or are in the process of creating social media policies for their employees. These policies may include guidelines for the kinds of business-related information employees may discuss via Twitter or Facebook, as well as disclaimer language an employee should include with any work-related posts. Some policies also include consequences for violating the guidelines, including termination.
2. Monitor the conversations. For Twitter specifically, there are applications that allow you to monitor Tweets by key word. Tweetdeck is on example. If you monitor Tweets that include your company name, you will not only see what employees may be saying about you, but everyone else, too. From there, you will have to decide when and how you would like to intervene.
3. Have a voice in the conversation. Don’t let the only information in the social media world come from employees or customers who may be uninformed, misinformed or disgruntled. The percentage of people creating content for social media platforms is much smaller than the number of people reading and commenting on that content. You should be creating the messages on which others comment and share with their networks.

As the use of social media tools grows and posting information becomes easier due to the increasad adoption of portable handheld devices, expect to see more workplace commentary in the form of Tweets and Facebook and LinkedIn status updates. That reminds me. I have to do a workplace Tweet about my Workplace Tweeting blog entry.