hospitals and their social media policy

I did not think I was going to write so quickly a follow up to my last week’s post on social media in the hospital area, but my interest was peaked this week by a poll I saw via Twitter (@reedsmith).

The polls asked the question whether the organization/hospital had a social media media policy.  The result was somewhat amazing.

72% of the people who answered (25 answers) the poll said they did have a policy.  This number is very high but due to the fact that on average only 1 in 3 has a policy.  The fact that this poll was run through Twitter probably skewed the results.  The users are already on social media and thus somewhat likely to have a policy.

Looking at some publicly published policies, the areas that are covered can be summarized as:

• Clear definition on where the medical facility stands when it comes to social media and what usage during and off work-time.
• Commenting guidelines and rules
  • Focus on positive comments
  • posts with abusive and offensive language will be removed
  • posts with personal attack  will be removed
  • All spam-like posts will be removed
• Blogging guidelines including the use of disclaimers in both directions (medical facility and the commenter)
• Identity and affiliation with the medical facility
• Use of code of ethics including all other applicable policies
• General rules of conduct (add value, be smart, be authentic, etc.)

Though it is great to see that there are good examples of social media policies being put in place?  There are in my opinion 3 major components missing in these types of policies:

• What are the clear guidelines to deal with negative comments?  What is the plan?  Who is the go-to person/department?
• What monitoring is being done to make sure this policy is being “enforced”?
• How has the policy been communicated to the employees?  Just put on the intra-net does not do it.

So as a conclusion, I think that having guidelines for your employees is great, but they need to communicated and monitored effectively so. People must know what can and can not be done and what to do in cases of emergencies.

Social media and e-learning survey results

It seems that the training and education departments can greatly benefit from social media.  But are they?  In order to see what the knowledge and acceptance is by training professionals (in the Benelux), I have conducted a market survey. Below you will find the a summary of the results.  For the full document, I would like to refer you to Slideshare where the document will be uploaded.

1. Shaping the future

Today, social media is only at the entrance gate of training departments.  The adoption rate is very small but picking up speed.  This is largely thanks to 3 trends fueled by LinkedIn, Twitter/Facebook and YouTube.

The first trend is that some social media is getting a professional label stuck on it and provides the platform to distribute content (LinkedIn).  The second trend is driven by the buzz generated for social media by platforms such as Twitter or Facebook fuelling fabulous growth to create a connected world.  The third trend is the acceptance of low(er) grade video materials.  Thanks to platforms such as YouTube democratizing video creation by the end user, people are now not expecting “not top notch” videos in a learning environment.

2. Social media and e-learning

When we look at social media and e-learning, we can see 3 different angles appear:

• Use e-learning to understand and use social media
• Use social media to create content for e-learning materials
• Use social media to distribute and offer e-learning materials

3. Overall findings

A large majority (90%) are using social media today, but mainly for private use.  Social media is seen a digital platform (40%) to connect/network (60%+)and share experiences (50%).  The use of social media today is limited (in order of importance) to business networking, personal networking and some video.  In terms of usage it seems a weekly activity (vs a daily activity) where people spend between 1 and 2h.

In terms of usage of social media, training professionals seem to think that social media is not a good vehicle for e-learning, but do see some use for getting content for developing e-learning modules.  When asked where social media could help them in their jobs, close to 60% could not see any use

Finally, when asking about the sources for content to develop e-learning materials, the training professionals tend to lean towards asking people or using specific websites. And not social media.

4. Some issues

During a number of face-to-face conversation, I have tried to get a sense of what some of the issues are that stop social media to become mainstream in the training departments.

1. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others are considered toys by “the business”.
2. Social media is seen as a “timewaster”
3. The lack of understanding and experience creates a lot of aversion to the technology
4. The general attitude within social media (=give and get back attitude for FREE) is not understood
5. The influence of negative news and stories create a bad atmosphere around the topic

None of this is new and limited to the training/education departments but also true for other departments within a company.

5. Challenges

The challenges that are awaiting e-learning and social media are:

• How to learn socially?
• How to effectively use the different platforms?
• Finding success stories?
• Defining social media return on investment for e-learning?
• Management buy-in?
• Whether to create a private social network vs. public social networks?

Social media will become mainstream in e-learning but it will take some time and some good success stories to fuel this evolution.

For more a more detailed report please go to
http://slidesha.re/bhEyks

Reaction, Comments, Feedback, etc. are welcome!  Need more info? contact me “Mic Adam”

Email: adammic@vanguard-leadership.be

Mob. +32 478 50 41 35

Twitter: @micadam

Website: www.vanguard-leadership.be

Find me also on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, Viadeo, Ecademy Netlog, etc.

Retention Management Revisited

Business meets IT.  I was at a MINOC event on the subject of Retention Management.  Interesting event but strange to see that so many players in IT market are not present.  Maybe retention management is not on the agenda due to the crisis, which I learned to be “a time to take your chances” and not to hide from the limelight.

Here are some lessons I retained from the Business part:

• HR management is fighting the same battles as CIOs.  Not part of the board due to not speaking “board language” – stop whining and do something about it – learn!
• Retention starts with approaching recrutement as a process with a deliverable for both parties- Not only candidate needs to sell himself, but HR must sell the company to the candidate which is nearly never done. Candidates have choices too!
• The CEO has to have a heart and put a fight in the retention battle: fostering development, initiative and advice if not retention will never become part of your culture.

The market survey on retention featured following highlights:

• Machine decrease in value over time (amortized), people increase value over time – duh!
• Digital communication creates and even greater gap between HR and employees – a computer as a fence to stop face to face communication- what a concept!
• Employees now get less training days and less benefits, that cost money – HR and  creativity – uncharted waters…
• Need to work smarter – decentralize when possible, thus keepîng the rotten apples out of the view and contact of the good apples – not a bad concept!