New Perspectives in Wellness & Benefit Communications by Shawn M. Connors (booksvooks TXT) 📖

Plenty of organizations have stats on the benefits of breathing exercises. Few organizations try to take their employees’ breath away.

Yet somewhere in your community, local chefs would love the opportunity to discuss healthy cooking with your employees. Amateur musicians and artists would apply their creativity to your health promotion goals. Organic farmers, pet lovers, niche writers, home gardeners, and videographers would appreciate an invitation, and they’re right in your community.

Invite these folks in, and they could inspire — not just inform — your audience.

Consider for a moment a wellness-program participant with back problems. Perhaps he receives periodic phone calls from a corporate wellness coach. This setup can be valuable, but the underlying message could be perceived to be, “I’m calling because we both know there is something wrong with you.”

Now consider that same wellness-program participant as he watches a oneminute video of a skilled acrobat flipping, twirling and twisting in midair. Imagine him watching the acrobat then demonstrate five simple exercises that strengthen back muscles.

Now imagine the wellness coach having that video available to share. That creative element will present a new perspective on the challenge. And creativity is a precursor to engagement.

Dream up some compelling new ways to communicate, and watch what happens: More employees will “wake up.”

4. Less is more. Think “telegraph message.”

The average attention span of Americans today is roughly the time it has taken you to readthis sentence. “You only have a minute to gain their attention” is an incorrect maxim. You have about 2.7 seconds.

And then you have to keep their interest so they can act upon your communication? That’s not easy, to say the least. You’re trying to reach employees at the same time they’re updating some files while instant messaging with co-workers while straightening up their desks while listening to a conference call.

Do they have a minute? Actually, no.

You’re facing other communication hurdles, too. You have to get through to employees, but here’s what many of them are thinking:

What is this?

Should I read it?

I don’t have time.

What’s in it for me?

What I really want to do is delete this and move on.

Whoa — this is pretty cool!

How can you get employees to view — let alone read — your workplace communication?

“If a worker views something for a few seconds, he or she should be able to describe at least the gist of what you’re saying,” says Alison Davis, CEO of employee communications firm Davis & Company, and coauthor of the book Your Attention, Please: How to Appeal to Today’s Distracted, Disengaged and Busy Audiences. “If that can’t be done, your communication program is going to suffer a quick death.”

Many employees turn a deaf ear to anything involving topics they don’t understand fully. So when they see an email about important changes to the company’s healthcare plan, for example, their tendency is to delay reading it until they absolutely must. (Example of a teaser that would get attention: “Are your Rx prices changing next month?”)

More companies and communities are realizing the antidote is a one-two combination — brevity and clarity.

Think teasers. Think billboard. Make your messages easy and scannable. Cut your articles to 100 words. Get your videos down to one minute, max. Stick to one concept.

For years, wellness and benefits communication had been riddled with corporate-speak and jargon instead of clear, concise language aimed at a busy, short-attention-span workforce. Before you start to craft your communications, remind yourself of these three realities about your audience’s openness to your message:

They don’t want it.

They don’t have time for it.

They didn’t ask for it.

The most common problems…

Getting technical and clinical. Some organizations try to show off their intelligence by distributing long articles or emails filled with jargon and legalese. Keep your messages simple and understandable.

Covering too much. Say it quick, and make it stick. Listen to seasoned radio sources (politicians, book authors, activists, for example) and notice how they are great at getting their point across in sound bites. Decide on your main concept and focus on getting that message across. Then stop.

Failing to highlight important copy. Cut the gist of your message down to an “elevator speech” you can describe in a sentence or two. Make those words the first ones readers see. Don’t “bury” the point.

Creating brick walls of copy. Don’t make readers scroll down several screens to read an email, and don’t pass out an important internal brochure that lacks illustrations, charts, or tables. Include subheads, sidebars, pull quotes, boxes, and the like whenever possible, especially when presenting an idea that can be better understood visually on first glance.

Lecturing. Provide take-away value. Think “so what?”

“It’s such an unkind reality — yet such a critical realization — to understand that most employees need to be told why they should care,” says Sharon Long Baerny, principal of the Seattle-based communications agency We Know Words. “Whatever you’re communicating, it’s much more important to you than it is to your recipients. So to make your messages more effective, you must begin to think more like them.”

Assumptions to avoid…

Assuming you can get employees to act on your messages without telling them why and without asking them to act

Assuming employees will read, instead of simply scanning, your content

Assuming it’s not worthwhile to encourage employees to make seemingly minor healthcare changes and choices, rather than grand plans

Assuming professional-sounding language is better than simple “plain speak” in your workplace communication

Assuming all employees absorb and retain communication in the same manner and prefer the same medium

Brevity and clarity are essential components of effective communication. If your messages aren’t obvious and plain, they can’t be understood.

Short and scannable. An economy of words. Get visual. Go!

5. People understand real risk, not relative risk.

Flip a coin. Call it. Heads or tails? You’ve got a 50% chance of being wrong (or right). And that’s about the extent of what most of us understand about risk (chance).

People don’t understand risk factors.

In fact, there are so many problems with “risk factors” as a basis for wellness programs, it’s hard to know where to begin. One of the biggest problems is that we communicate in terms of relative risk (% of what?) rather than real risk (4 out of 1,000 people).

Here is an excerpt of an unpublished editorial sent in by the coauthor of this eBook, Shawn M. Connors, to USA Today about an advertisement:

<Drug> reduces risk of heart attack by 36%.

This was the headline in a full page ad that recently ran in USA Today. In smaller print below we learn that 3% of patients in a study taking a placebo (sugar pill) had a heart attack compared with 2% of patients taking <drug>. A better way of saying this: Out of 100 people, 97 who do not take <drug> will not have a heart attack. And out of 100 people, 98 people who take <drug> will not have a heart attack. <Manufacturer> does understand… because when you turn the page and read about the risk factors of taking <drug>, it states, “fewer than 3 people out of 100 stopped taking <drug> because of side effects.”

Let’s put some of that clear communicating in the headline.”

Even a lot of docs don’t think past relative risks statements. If someone tells you that you have a 40% less (or more) risk of something, ask them, “Compared to what?”

If they can’t answer, then there is no basis for a decision on a change in behavior or medication.

Although we’ve used an example of a prescription drug, any discussion of risk presents the same communication challenge. It’s best to avoid the subject unless it’s communicated in real terms (X out of 100 or X out of 1,000).

We do believe real risk factors can play a meaningful role in the dialogue we have with people. But risk factors should not be the foundation of a wellness program. Clearly, a population that lowers its risk factors saves money for the group. We just maintain the only effective, sustainable way to actually lower risk factors is to talk about them much less often.

Let’s focus on the things in people’s lives that create happiness, fulfillment, and connection to other people to create change — for example, family, renewal, personal growth and hope, instead of an abstract concept of relative risk factors. After all, we’re only allowed a short time to get our messages across. Do we really want to burn up that time on a highly complex and problematic health concept?

Talking about things differently will enable communication that drives people to action, leading to behavior change and culture change (lasting change!).

Source: Helping Patients Understand Risks, 7 Simple Strategies for Successful Communication, John Paling, PhD

6. Headlines are critical.

Employees are literally surrounded by communication. On their desks, memos and faxes await response. On their computers, unread email messages mount, and instant messages ding. Corkboards have sticky notes, cell phones have missed calls, and … what? You have an important health or benefits message to send?

Of course you do, and you want employees to read and react — to pay close attention, understand the message immediately, and respond accordingly. But realistically, how can you get their eyes to see (and their neurons to fire) when their heads are spinning?

It’s hard to get your communication strategy in line when your messages are in line — single file, waiting their turn, behind a bombardment of others.

Truth is, people don’t read. They scan. We are a populace versed in instant gratification: Give us the good stuff, and do it now!

A single-mode experience — listen to the radio, or watch TV, or bowl — has been replaced with diversions in the form of a deluge. We process information and experiences multi-modally. We can blog, text, chat, watch a video, and bowl all at the same time.

So, in a world where attentions wander, many important workplace messages are “lost” on employees because they simply can’t be found. They’re missing in brick walls of text.

It’s more important to emphasize elements such as headlines, subheads, image captions, and call-outs, and to include bullets, lists, charts, and graphs.

These “scannable” elements should represent at least half of the effort put into a communication piece. They’ll actually be read; the rest will be seen based on individual interest. So before sending a message, apply a quick “scan test” — can the average employee scan it in seconds and understand the topic and main point?

For quick tips on writing articles, memos, or posts that will get read, see Resource Section Item #4.

Relish the role of making your health and benefits communication simple, not just essential.

7. Print communication will not disappear.

Imagine for a moment that we occupy a completely digital world, one in which no one has heard of printing. And then someone makes a discovery: There’s a way to grow a substance that can be converted into a portable communications tool. This tool can be used, shared and — get this! — recycled later into a bench.

Renewable? Recyclable? Portable? Is this magic?

It’s paper.

But in today’s real world, print is degraded for being environmentally hazardous, and it’s downgraded for being un-cool. But it has been the world’s No. 1 communications medium for so long, we tend to overlook its power.

The print medium isn’t dead, it’s just changing. To maximize its effectiveness, you need to make print more timely and customized.

Whenever new technologies come to the forefront, some people assume the “old” technology will immediately be displaced. That’s not generally the case. Radio didn’t go away when families started watching TV, just as movie DVDs didn’t go away after Internet streaming. Likewise, print isn’t going away during this age of new media.

People trust print. It’s credible. They