Workplace Employees Are Discovering Each Other

Posted on | December 8, 2006 | Comments Off on Workplace Employees Are Discovering Each Other

I’ve been spending a great deal of time over the past few years advancing the notion of leveraging technology to expand connectivity efficiently and beyond normal geographic borders. Mainly I’ve been concerned about “health connectivity,” which encompasses three things: 1) Efficiently connecting members of the health care team, including informal family caregivers. 2) Connecting those same family members to others in the same boat to advise and encourage each other. And, 3) expanding knowledge exchange and social support, in general.

I’ve also debunked the notion that information technology has to be dehumanizing. In fact, used wisely in conjunction with the consumer movement overall, I believe we can improve knowledge, service, and progress, and expand social capital while reinforcing commitment to relationship-based care.

In light of this week’s Health Politics program, titled “Rethinking Health in the Workplace,” I’ve learned that efforts like Harvard’s Labor and Worklife program’s Worklife Wizard are doing their best to accomplish this same type of connectivity in the workplace — connecting workers and sharing survey knowledge in a useful and focused way.

Terry Babcock-Lumish, Worklife Wizard’s outreach director and a viewer of Health Politics, says the program’s efforts, launched on Labor Day 2006, have really taken off, thanks in part to partners like the AFL-CIO’s Working America, Barbara Ehrenreich’s United Professionals, Businessweek, and the Economic Policy Institute. The effort is fundamentally populist and empowering.

In Babcock-Lumish’s words, “At the Labor & Worklife Program, we are committed to helping American workers from Wall Street to Main Street, from Maine to Arizona, regardless of political stripes, gender, race, ethnicity, education, (or) income.”

Information is empowering but only if followed by action. What we’re seeing now is the consumer movement, fired by the Internet and virtual networking, morphing from empowerment to engagement before our eyes.