Employers are tired of watching the rising costs of employee healthcare erode their bottom line. While many have reduced their contributions to employee premiums, penalized smokers, and even cut benefits altogether, it has not been enough. What’s more, according to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, employer costs as percentage of payroll vary significantly across workers and settings, compounding the shared challenge facing policy makers, employers and employees to find an affordable health insurance solution. Health reform legislation has further upped the ante, forcing benefit plans to comply with new laws, such as removing lifetime limits and pre-existing condition exclusions for children. While some would argue that these are noble, and even necessary changes, employers are too busy working with their human resource and legal teams to figure out the ripple effect of these changes and how they need to respond.

Businesses are taking different approaches to address employee healthcare needs. According to a recent study by Mercer, a benefits consulting firm, the number of large companies offering on-site health centers has increased by 4 percent in one year. By the same token, a recent Los Angeles Times article reported that major employers across the country are realizing that employer-sponsored clinics not only improve productivity and decrease absenteeism, they’re also less expensive than traditional health care.

One of the largest employers embracing in-house healthcare services is American Express. Currently, it only offers on-site services for urgent care needs , but it’s planning to provide preventive services and screenings in the future. More and more companies are realizing there is real economic benefit to bringing health services in-house. While some employers are hiring their own clinical providers, others are outsourcing the staffing of their health centers. In fact, the outsourcing option is rejuvenating the clinical staffing and management industry. One of the industry leaders has already doubled its business in the past three years and expects more of the same as employers explore B2B partnerships to reign in their health-related expenditures.

Despite the emergence of these models, National Business Group on Health, conducted a survey of large employers which showed that many employers are still relying on a variety of cost-sharing strategies to help control health-related costs. The most common strategy, increasing the employee percentage contribution to the premium, has been adopted by 63 percent, up 6 percent from 2010. Meanwhile, the number of employers that have raised out-of-pocket maximums has increased by 10 percent in the past year. Must we really revisit the definition of insanity??

Between stimulus funding, venture capitalism and pure economic principles, employers cannot honestly hope to cost-share their way out of this conundrum. There’s a lot of innovative thinking going on out there and there are a number of B2B opportunities for creating a healthier workplace. If you want to remain viable and competitive for the long term, and if you want to do your part to bend the healthcare cost curve, as a corporate citizen, even a U.S. citizen, try something different! Suit up Chief Executive Officers, Human Resource Executives, Business Development Executives and Chief Financial Officers! It’s your turn at bat in the World Series of Healthcare.

Lawton Chiles Creative Commons

First, you must remember that a business page does not allow all of the functions that you and your online network may be able to use on personal profiles. For instance, you won’t have access to the profiles of folks visiting the page.

Since business pages cannot be found in search, you’ll have to work hard at obtaining interest. Recently, a friend sent me information about a busines page, but failed to include a link. Hard to find = not so useful.

Second (or maybe first, on second thought), be sure you want to use Facebook as compared to, say, your own website. Shel Holtz, the always dependable blogger at the intersection of communications and technology, has recently posted on this basic question. He outlines seven issues you might want to explore before making the leap.

Facebook page walls allow visitors to comment and create additional activities.  This improves the interactive aspect of what initially was a fairly static place to be, giving you much more community building opportunity. John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing posted a great take on how to use the Facebook Static FBML application which allows you to add a box to your Page to add HTML or FBML that actually helps dramatically on customizing pages for your business.

Top 10 Facebook Apps for Fan Pages by Kristen  Nicole and other sources deliver best practices on other ways to enhance the experience for your fans. And, I’m also hoping for an update on Jim Tobin’s Top Ten Branded Facebook Pages of 2009 later this year in ignitesocialmedia.com, where he is prez.

While we are great fans of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) at CRT/tanaka, I’ll have to admit some attraction to a Facebook app that allows for direct referrals on your favorite local businesses. The app is called FavRav, which claims the ability to give referrals “a place to live online.” You could do worse than attracting attention for your business in such a way.  Publicize your page, building fans by encouraging visits first and referrals second.

Finally, remember that attracting fans on Facebook requires lots of work on your part. If you are not posting new videos, customer cases, contests and other ways to get visitors involved and to return, then you won’t achieve your business objectives related to increased awareness, changing attitudes and attracting full engagement. Don’t start unless you are able to make sure you keep it fresh.

The key to attract the mob is to engage, build and create value and worth for attending. Using services like Foursquare are beginning to merge the line between real world business and virtual community. To build this kind of promotion, just keep in mind that has proven worth, has a lot of behind the scenes work:

• Research the user-base to ensure they are Foursquare users – Duh!
• Confirm Foursquare lists the venue properly
• Communicate what to expect at the event via the appropriate networks
• Record the event so that for use in post-event promotions
• Use incentives to drive sales during the event
• Live tweet/video stream the event
• After it’s over – use all media created during the event to continue promotion

And because we all like video, here are some other examples of successful flash mobs in action:

H&M Kids Fashion Flash Mob in San Francisco

Frozen in Grand Central Station

Beyonce 100 Single Ladies Flash-Dance in Piccadilly Circus, London

By Mike Mulvihill

Photo: Courtesy Optical Illusion 

First the good news – business loves social media.  A January 3 update to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research annual survey on the adoption and practice of social media by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., found that more businesses are experimenting and engaging with social media.  Among the survey respondents, 91 percent of companies report they incorporated at least one social media service or tool in 2009. Literacy and awareness was also on the rise with roughly 75 percent stating that they were now “very familiar” with social networking. Conversely, there was an impressive drop in Inc 500 companies that did not use social media at all, which plunged from 43 percent in 2007 to 9 percent in 2009.

Among smaller business, the trend lags. A November 2009 survey  produced for area Chambers of Commerce in North Dakota and Minnesota asked about their use of popular social media platforms for maintaining either Personal and Business connections.  For business leaders in four Midwestern markets, Facebook is the social media platform of choice. Facebook is the platform most frequently mentioned as the site used by respondents (70 percent personal use; 43 percent business use). LinkedIn was the platform next most frequently mentioned as the site used by respondents (23 percent personal use; 41 percent business use). Twitter (17 percent personal use; 19 percent business use) was about even with Blogs (15 percent personal use; 20% business use) as the third most frequently mentioned platform used by respondents  Three others in the survey lagged significantly in use by respondents – My Space, MSN Live Space and Wikis.

As Larry Weintraub covers in his Smart Marketing blog, these businesses have likely zeroed in on the four reasons to use Social Media for your business – Marketing, PR, Market Research and Customer Service.

Now, here’s the bad news.  Control is still a major issue, especially at larger companies. According to a nationwide survey conducted by Robert Half Technology, 54 percent of 1,400 companies surveyed completely restrict employees from visiting social networking sites. Another 19 percent restrict use for business purposes only.

Businesses are increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for marketing purposes, but those same companies don’t want employees logging on during work hours.

The Robert Half spokesperson said employers find social networking a waste of time. “It takes away from primary responsibility. When socializing on sites such as Facebook, we lose track of time.”

A secondary concern companies mentioned is the potential for employees leaking confidential information or sharing thoughts that may reflect badly on the company.  The spokesperson said that many of these companies are still trying to set boundaries.

 So while business increasing embraces the desire to “push out” info using social media, they still have not gotten over the fact that they have engage communities by trusting people to have conversations with customers, suppliers and their many other stakeholders.

 I’d love to see a survey of how many of the 91 percent of companies using social media are failing miserably because they still just don’t get the fact that every employee is an ambassador, whether at the supermarket, a cocktail party, the kids soccer match or when active on a social media site. They trust their salesmen to represent the company unsupervised, but can’t trust their employees to use social media responsibly. Seems like there’s still a lot of growing up to be done in 2010.