This is a guest post by Sam Rockman, Director of Alliances, and Matt Phillips, SVP Marketing and Sales, at OpenQ. OpenQ has over ten years experience ensuring compliance in the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry. OpenQ’s Social SafeGuard tool is a market leading software providing compliance, risk management, archiving, and policy enforcement for regulated industries.

Companies across a wide variety of industries are empowering employees to support organizational goals on social media. There is a growing recognition among business leaders that employees can be highly effective as brand advocates, and more and more organizations are making employee advocacy a major pillar of their social media strategies. However, within the world of healthcare, the significant business value of employee advocacy must be measured against the risks of compliance violations. In this blog post we will examine why employee advocacy through social media is beneficial to your healthcare organization and how to overcome any regulatory concerns.

The benefits of employee advocacy

A 2013 Nielsen report found that 84% of people trusted recommendations from people they know as the most trusted form of advertising. This is 48% greater than ads on social networks and 15% great than branded websites. The reason is obvious: recommendations from friends are more authentic.

Long before social media made these personal recommendations public and trackable, companies coveted “word of mouth” advertising as the most effective way to spread brand awareness and influence buying decisions. The power of brand advocates is perfectly summed up in this classic 1980s Fabergé shampoo commercial featuring Heather Locklear. You might remember, “I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on…”

It’s only more recently that businesses have looked inward to find an untapped source of potential brand advocates: their employees. Employees have all the right elements to be excellent promoters of healthcare companies both online and offline. They’re aligned with organizational values, they’re experts in their field, and they’re highly respected by the public. With social media, every doctor, nurse, and administrator has a far-reaching and instant platform to share good news about what their organization is doing to serve patients and promote public health.

The aggregate reach and influence of an organization’s employees on social media is far greater than the company could ever realistically address on its own. The following illustration from a Hootsuite white paper compares the maximum achievable social audience of an average Fortune Global 100 company to the maximum achievable social audience of its employees.

Addressing compliance concerns

Yet the simple truth is that most healthcare companies are not actively leveraging the trusted and reliable people within their own organizations as strategic assets on social media.

Companies should encourage employees to use social media to support company goals, but also have to be cognizant of the regulatory rules. How can employees be social, describe the great things happening within the company, and stay in compliance with regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)? Healthcare companies have a regulatory and moral obligation to maintain patient privacy and any disclosure of protected health information (PHI) must be reported. Fines can be as high as $50,000 per violation and a total of $1.5 million per year.

Nothing can be posted that leads to the identify of a patient, such as admission band, room number, or photos or videos of a patient. In addition, employees must not talk about the treatment of a patient.

5 keys to enabling employee advocacy in health care:

The best way to avoid fines is to prevent violations in the first place. Here are five keys to enabling effective and compliant employee advocacy in healthcare:

Educate

It goes without saying that employees should receive training on protected health information (PHI), as well as the organization’s social media policy. But these two subjects shouldn’t be addressed in isolation. Social media should be integrated into HIPAA privacy and security training so that employees know exactly how the rules apply to their use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. To make the social media policy more relatable, companies can provide staff with real world examples of compliant and non-compliant social media messages that are relevant to the kinds of situations they may encounter on the job. By illustrating the good, not just the bad, healthcare companies can help employees gain the confidence and comfort necessary to promote organizational goals on social media.

Monitor

There should also be a tool in place to act as a safety net in case an employee violates or neglects to follow the existing policies. Products such as our OpenQ Social SafeGuard help companies avoid regulatory risks, fines, and ensure compliance with a large workforce. Ensure that the monitoring of employees is done through a service that connects to your social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) on an API level. Social media can be accessed anywhere, but by using a compliance tool that connects to the API level, employees will be continuously monitored, and posts will be screened against violations no matter the location of the post. If a post by an employee violates regulatory rules, even if the post is from outside their corporate network or from a non-approved device, the firm is still responsible.

Archive

Regardless of whether the post is public or private an archive should be maintained. This must be done for legal holds and e-discovery. This is not just for American companies, but for global organizations as well. An automated archiving tool prevents unnecessary exposure to regulatory violations.

Enforce

Ensure that all content being disseminated is screened against a policy library. This library should have regulatory rules from all countries or regions in which the company operates. The policy library should also monitor for company specific information such as account numbers, other personally identifiable information, and profane language.

Encourage sharing of pre-approved content

Have a pre-approved library of content (photos, videos, messages, and specific notes) that can be used by your employees where appropriate. This pre-screened and approved content will allow them to quickly engage on social networks without any concern of violating regulations.

Most healthcare practitioners and staff are ready for their companies to step up with an advocacy strategy. They’re looking for ways to raise awareness of their contributions to the greater good and help promote greater public health. When they receive the technical and educational support they need, they can amp up social sharing on behalf of the organization and feel confident that their efforts are serving a higher purpose.

Analytics

Another valuable analytics tactic is to include URL parameters in the links in your pre-approved content, so you can measure how well employee advocacy is driving traffic and conversions on your website. You can use the data you collect to not only demonstrate ROI to management but also help employees see the business impact of their participation.

Learn More About the Hootsuite-OpenQ SafeGuard Integration

Already a Hootsuite Pro or Enterprise Customer? Download the App and get started.

New to Hootsuite and OpenQ SafeGuard? Get a demo of the solution today!