Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Determining the ROI for wellness programs

Health insurance continues to rise at an unaffordable rate for just about every organization. That is forcing most employers to rethink the levels of coverage they can afford to offer as a benefit, and to look for ways to reduce the need for employee medical care.

The result is a focus on wellness programs, as a means of keeping employees more healthy in the first place. In some cases, the insurance providers are mandating that their client organizations put wellness programs front and center.

There is good news in this for the bean counters: according to compensation expert Robert Buckley, an executive coach and consultant in Bernardsville, NJ. Buckley says that ROI can be easily determined for investing in wellness programs, and he cites two leading employers in his area.

"Forward thinking companies like Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, NJ) and Verizon (Basking Ridge, NJ) have been offering fully-staffed on-site gyms or memberships at outside clubs for a long time," Buckley says. "The recent change however -- and what I find cool -- is the approach being taken by wellness providers. The new economic realities of our economy are behind a new corporate/non-for-profit partnership to bring wellness to the workplace."

Buckley points out that no CFO argues the benefits of wellness programs. But they often balk at cost. 

"It is here that organizations like the Somerset Hills YMCA (www.somersethillsymca.org) are tailoring their approach," Buckley explains. "SSHYMCA has retained professionals in the areas of HR and finance to analyze the internal costs of a company interested in starting a wellness initiative. By applying HR metrics with bench marked data, projections can be made against a company’s financial statements to reduce healthcare risk, lower insurance premiums and reduce absenteeism and/or 'presenteeism' -- which are those employees who report to work but under perform due to diminished health."

Buckley says "corporations -- using their actual internal cost data and industry benchmarks (that they contribute to) -- find it easier to navigate the cost obstacle. Wellness initiatives can now be expressed in project management terms, which is easy to do. This elevates wellness from an expense that lowers net income (dividends or reinvestment) available to shareholders, to an investment in human assets expressed in terms of Net Present Value that creates wealth for shareholders."

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Workday 14 puts HCM data in easier context

Workday, Inc. has already generated a lot of excitement around its software-as-a-service HR and financials application, but the recent release of Workday 14 should earn the company even more fans. With the upgrade, Workday 14 offers embedded intelligence, and enhancements to its human capital management, financial management, and spend management features – all of which make decision-making and data-slicing easier and based on broader context.

Impressive enough, but Workday says there are no fewer than 140 new features with the Workday upgrade, all of which are available to existing customers as part of a normal upgrade at no extra charge.
The most exciting aspect of Workday 14 is definitely the embedded intelligence, and it is that feature that has grabbed most of the early attention. As a devoted advocate of “context,” I see where this will really wow a lot of HR execs and line managers.
There is no need to navigate to another part of the application to access this information. This quick at-your-fingertips approach to getting at all sorts of related data should really propel Workday in this space.
Embedded intelligence actually made its debut in Workday 12, which included a landing page and a series of Worklet reports which uses could pick and choose. Workday 13 enabled users to begin building their own Worklets. With Workday 14, users can now embed Worklets in the context of business processes.
Users can open windows at any time that offer related information to a task they are attempting or forecast they are calculating. The application enables managers to adjust compensation rates -- or a variety of other HCM measures, --for any individual while putting them in context with related workers. The associated Worklet will automatically recalculate all context data for any changes you make.
Workday is taking a very aggressive approach to rethinking a lot of traditional talent management systems. And it is targeting some very large customers. With the announcement of the Workday 14 release, the company also announced it had acquired Thomson Reuters as a customer. Thomson Reuters has more than 55,000 employees in 100 countries. It will now use Workday’s HCM and payroll tools to manage compensation, performance and related HCM activities.

Monday, September 5, 2011

The continued devaluation of the written word

I read an insightful blog by Lorie Parch recently ("Forget the content farm; meet the "content garden'"), discussing the concepts of content farms and content gardens -- places where clients and the general public can harvest lots of content, including a mix of professional and not-so-professional authors.

Parch is a professional writer behind contentsuperstars.com, and she wrote about the continued devaluation of professional writing, and professional writers.

I could not agree more. I have watched for several years as a legion of new tuitorial start-ups and online information centers have cropped up, all offering minimum wage rates for content producers -- not writers; content producers.

The most unfortunate aspect to this trend is that the general public is in many cases being sold a pig in a poke when they subscribe to such sites. They all claim to offer only quality content. That isn't possible under this business model.

Parch is correct when she notes in her blog that content isn't king. The demand these days by many of these new ventures seems to be content for its own sake -- no matter how original, how well written, or how valuable to the reader.

As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for, and content sites that pay meager wages get writers that deserve meager wages -- not experienced writers and editors that have true subject area expertise.

To prove my point, I invite you to check out the listings on Craigslist.com in ANY city, and look under writing and editing job opportunities. Clearly it requires little if any experience to get many of these new writing gigs.

I invite other professional writes and editors to check out Parch's blog, which can be found at...

http://contentsuperstars.com/2011/08/forget-the-content-farm-meet-the-%E2%80%9Ccontent-garden%E2%80%9D/

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Social media monitoring tools can be a marketing pro's best friend


As if times weren’t tough enough, as a sales or marketing professional you need to radically rethink your craft, thanks to the explosion of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and the plethora of influencers in the blogosphere.

It is important that you understand how social media impacts your sales and marketing strategies, and how influencers factor into that equation. And it’s vital that you understand the role that social media tools can play in gathering volumes worth of information on your customers never before possible.

Social media monitoring tools can help you identify who the influencers are in social media that ou need to care about for your specific products and markets. They will help you make informed decisions on which social media venues will deliver the most return on investment for you. they will track which sites generate the most buzz about you; and the individuals that have the most to say and the most opportunities to say it.

Certainly some executives get it, and are embracing social media with open arms. They are trying to learn who is sharing opinions about their organizations, what they are saying, and how it will impact others. With social media, their audience can be, quite literally, in the hundreds of thousands.

It can be a marketer’s dream come true. But the key is to then take this data and target your outreach accordingly.

“We’ve entirely changed the marketplace and turned it upside down,” notes the director of sales at a leading national mobile commerce company.  “No longer can advertisers drone on with monologue hard-pitch presentations. They must engage and interact with the prospect and client base in an open environment where their industry and competition watch. “ 

This is not an environment for the casually committed. “This coliseum-like set of venues is an opportunity to share the best of the company, but has the potential to show weakness as well,” the sales director explains. “Each company needs to have a battle plan for managing all these moving parts. Customer service needs to be on its toes at all times. 

“The upside is unbelievably huge. The cost to communicate in social media is nearly nil. The cost to acquire new customers is ridiculous. The exposure to increase the average sale by developing customer relationships is fabulous. The ROI is like no other media. “

In the coming weeks I will be devoting several blogs to social media and marketing issues, discussing the importance of influencers, how to find and engage them, and how social media monitoring tools can help an organization get the best results from engaging in social media.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

How marketers should interact with bloggers

If you work in marketing, when it comes to bloggers there are two types that concern you – those that write for you, and those that write about you.

Presumably the former are your friends. Hopefully the latter are as well. If they aren’t, there are ways you can make them come around.

Of those that write about you, there are three things you want to watch (listen) for:

The Good: Positive comments about your organization can come in many forms, from critiques of your costumer service, to observations on news coverage about you.  Watch for positive feedback:
·         acknowledge it – reach out with appreciation to those individuals in praise of you
·         collect it – gather positive feedback from a variety of social media sources
·         promote it – just like you would treat other testimonials, cite it on your website and social media profiles
The bad: Watch for negative comments about your organization, and try to catch them as early as possible. This enables you the opportunity to respond quickly. Negative feedback can also draw out other negative feedback. So if you can diffuse the situation early, it may discourage other disgruntled customers from adding their two cents. And your quick response can also demonstrate your customer service concern, and create good buzz.
The Needy: Pay particular attention to blogs that express a need, whether it is for help or for information. This is where you can really shine with the blogger with your desire to be a helpful resource. Keywords are one way to watch for need, or key phrases such as “Where can I find…”, “Does anyone know…” or “How do I..."
The sales director at a leading mobile commerce company recommends that you “Hire, or set up, methods to monitor what is said about you and determine how to respond to mentions. Always thank and appreciate mentions and re-tweets, for instance.” 

She stresses that organizations should always “Handle criticism with class, and be quick to make things right. Remember your competition is likely watching and will jump at the opportunity to take advantage of the situation. One tool I use is Google Reader. Set up an Alert for your company name and keywords. You never know what you’ll find. We actually detected a non-client misusing proprietary copyrighted product materials that way.”

And what about bloggers that are all talk, and no buy? If there are bloggers or influencers who are regularly talking about your products and services (but may not be buying them for themselves), you could extend an offer code or incentive to them to provide to their followers and fans.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Making the business case for social media still eludes many companies

Influencer marketing has been around forever, but the face and medium of the influencer has changed dramatically.

The term influencer has dual meaning in social media. It refers to those social media venues that generate the most conversation about you. And it refers to the individuals that are behind the greatest amount of that buzz.

Increasingly, consumers are younger, more informed, more connected, and more influencial. In short, marketers face a new world order that is customer driven, rather than business driven.

Need proof? Consider the results of recent research on social media and marketing by research firm Aberdeen Group. In June and August 2010, Aberdeen Group surveyed more than 500 business executives to learn the primary drivers of their marketing programs.

"The data revealed that marketing efforts within 77% of those businesses are under considerable influence of changing consumer demographics. And the findings indicate that social media plays a greater role than traditional media in marketing campaigns targeting Gen Z and Gen Y consumers versus traditional marketing mediums ,” according to Aberdeen senior research analyst Chris Houpis.

“Most companies understand the rising use of social media and plan to increase their investments in the medium accordingly,” Houpis continued. “However, most organizations are struggling to develop and adequate business case and strategy to leverage social media adequately in the marketing mix. In fact, a majority of organizations do not have executive support to undertake such efforts.”



Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Are 2011 educational technology forecasts coming true?

As a business and technology journalist, I have had several opportunities to write about the use of technology in the classroom.

Keeping up with all the trends and advances in educational technology is no less daunting than tracking it in the corporate environment. Still, there are predictions made each year on what the top trends will be.

In December, 2010, educator Bridget McCrea made the following five K-5 technology trend predictions for 2011.

I would love to hear from others their thoughts on how accurate the list has been, now that we have passed the half way mark for the year.

1. There will be more momentum for mobile devices in classrooms with an eye toward affordable alternatives to traditional 1:1 rollouts.

2. Web-based instruction will gain more traction at the K-12 level.

3. More tech-based monitoring and assessment tools will be incorporated into to the instructional mix.

4. The cloud will help ease the financial burden on schools while helping to expand technological capabilities.

5. Teachers will have access to expanded professional development programs.

(Source: "5 K-12 Technology Trends for 2011: Education technology experts discuss their top technology trends for the coming year," by Bridget McCrea.)
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/12/02/5-k12-technology-trends-for-2011.aspx?sc_lang=en

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Bigger paychecks still the best benefits strategy

With the job market still refusing to recover, one might think that unusual benefits perks are a thing of the past.

Not so, says Jan Mercer, a partner and human capital market business leader with research firm Mercer.

"Interesting employee perks are still around, particularly in sectors where skilled workers are in short supply," Rose says.

Rose offers the following as examples:
  • "In some high tech firms, employees can take classes or get coached on how to raise venture capital."
  • "An increasing number of high tech firms allow employees to spend up to 20% of their work time on their own dream projects."
  • "A hedge fund permits workers (mostly Millennial-age) to wear shorts and sandals every day."
  • "An advertising firm provides free beer and ice cream on Fridays."
  • "Sabbaticals, time-off for charity, and flex-time are still prevalent."   
All of these examples are certainly nice-to-have perks and privileges, and reflect creativity, flexibility, and tolerance on the part of employers. But they may not hold as much value as they seem.

"While these perks attract attention, they are not primary drivers of engagement," Rose says. "Survey research from Mercer’s 2011 What’s Working research series indicates that employees have a strong preference of base pay over other types of rewards.  This research is a warning to organizations that they could be investing in reward strategies that will not have the impact they expect."

Friday, August 12, 2011

Identifying influencers in social media selling

In the realm of social media, almost anyone can build a following and establish themselves as an influencer in a specific market or industry. Complete unknowns can become virtual celebrities overnight. And viral marketing can create new trend influencers in the blink of an eye.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing for marketing professionals.

The downside is that individuals with no real credibility can have an awful lot of influence over others on how your products or services are perceived. 

The upside is that with the right effort, a lot of individuals can have influence over others on how your products or services are perceived. Engage those individuals, convert them to your cause, and you will have a lot of disciples carrying your message far beyond what your limitations are. 

The way influencer selling works is that organizations track the mentions of them on a variety of social media sites and platforms (usually termed “listening”). This includes blog mentions, news mentions, tweets, forum postings, social networking site mentions, web hits, etc. 

Tracking tools are essentially search engines directed to follow specific sites and types of content, looking for keywords and mentions, as directed. They identify and gather all such references, creating an enormous database of viral commentary, with associated information about the source of each commentary collected. 

Using a social media analytics tool, you can slice and dice the information in a variety of demographic views or geographic views. You can zero in on keywords that are of special significance for breakdowns that way. If gathering information from social networking sites, you can do additional demographic breakdowns, depending on the collective data in the profiles represented, such as the known educational levels of all collected Facebook consumers.

Again, you are gathering information on influencers as both venues, and individuals. 

In terms of individuals, once you’ve collected all the conversations, it might seem daunting to sift through it all to identify who the top influencers are. But it really only takes a little bit of detective work (again, the analysts tools come into play here), and some common sense. Just like trying to identify the authority figures in a crowded room, look for the ones that others look to.  

For example, you can filter by product name, industry, and sentiment scores to identify who is talking about you and your products, markets, and in what context. From there, you can dig into the analytics and determine who has the most followers, tweets the most, comments the most, posts the most content on their blog, drives the most traffic, etc. to determine where to focus your efforts in terms of influencing the influencers. 

In other words, when listening in on social media conversations (and you should be doing a lot of eaves - dropping), pay attention to: 

·         who has the most to say
·         who gets the most responses to what they have to say
·         who seems to be accepted the most, and challenged the least, by what they have to say 

Odds are that those are your top influencers.



Thursday, August 11, 2011

Pet insurance: the purr-fect benefits perk?

Employers that want to add a no-cost, but high-return benefits offering to employees may want to consider pet insurance.

The same health maintenance and medical care coverage that we all want is also available to our pets, and is growing in popularity as an employee benefits perk. The best news for benefits administrators: your employees will happily pay the bill, if you can provide the plan at group discount rates.

Consider the example of the Liberty Hotel in Boston, which recently signed up for pet insurance with Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI), the largest provider in the market. Hotel general manager Rachel Moniz says she learned that pet insurance would be a very popular benefit item after talking with hotel "associates" at the hotel's weekly Yappier Hour.

Yappier Hour is the weekly social time in the courtyard of the Liberty Hotel (the former exercise yard for prisoners in the city jail). Hotel guests, and employees alike, are invited to bring their pets every Wednesday afternoon for fun, frolic, and special Muptails and Puptini drinks. The event caught on quickly.

Already pet-friendly, Moniz says the hotel was delighted to be able to offer pet insurance along with the hotel's other benefits items. Liberty Hotel took out a group plan with VPI in order to be able to pass along a group plan rate. Each employee that signs up for the benefits pays 100% for their coverage. Of the hotel's 250 staff, 8% have opted for pet insurance.

"In this industry, you work hard, and the hours are very demanding," Moniz says. "This was something we could do to say thank you."