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The Fenway Community Development Corporation's Annual Meeting was Monday night. Now, I am a sucker for a town meeting. I love grassroots learning environments, regardless of the O2 tank-to-person ratio.Hey- old people know a lot of stuff. The focus wasn’t anywhere near creating content for the web and social media marketing, but I picked out one large gem.
The people at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital are intranet geniuses. Eric Buehrens, COO of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, explained to a room almost entirely compromised of AARP members the benefits of starting a company intranet. Buehrens said Beth Israel launched an “electronic bulletin board” in order to combat the recession. All employees had access to the “electronic water cooler” where the topic was clear: “How to reduce expenses.” Moderators only deleted posts directly attacking non-management employees and traffic reached a speed of 100 posts per hour. Management found a consensus to shield the employees in the lowest income brackets, and the staff rose over $450,000 to keep them off the lay-off list. The community found new ways to conserve and recycle commodities to save money, and tossed around ideas about furloughs, forgoing vacations, postponing 401K contributions and even dismissing meeting catering altogether.
Here are a few things to consider.
1. When was the last time you encouraged your employer to put off paying into your 401K?
2. What would it take for you to donate large amounts of money to your company to pay your co-workers salaries?
3. What motivation would you need to stop and think before you printed/used/ordered/threw away/emptied to analyze how you could share/reuse/do without it without compromising safety and privacy?
Now, I am sure Buehrens gave the PR presentation and left out any snags. But we are here, in the age when privacy-focused hospitals are successfully using online communication tools. Nicely done.
Next step? Get contributors to start creating content for the website on a hospital blog monitored for patient privacy. Imagine the possibilities.
Tags: beth israel deaconess hospital, creating content for the web, eric buerhens, fenway cdc, intranet
