Should companies offer women paid menstrual period leave?
Where would you find America’s hardest-working employees?
Is that lump on your noggin left by a wild swing of your buddy’s golf club more than just a harmless bump?
Answering such questions are the disability insurance company Unum and its subsidiary Colonial Life, which have joined the brand journalism stampede with twin websites, WorkWell and WorkLife.
This week the two launched those sites full of stories about workplace issues, career development, benefits packages and healthy living tips. Combining newsjacking strategies with benefits information, the insurance companies seek to create content for an audience of consumers, journalists and sales representatives.
WorkWell and WorkLife—which co-publish many of the same stories—were created amid dynamics familiar to others who have started corporate news outlets.
Downsizing newsrooms
As traditional newsrooms downsize, it’s harder and harder for organizations to get their messages out through reporters, says Dawn McAbee, corporate communications manager at Unum. Similarly, consumers often don’t have the information they need.
“A lot of our content in the past has been geared toward brokers and employers,” McAbee says. “We saw really that there was a disconnect in reaching consumers, both in understanding their benefits and their brand awareness of both of our companies.”
The articles are also distributed to about 10,000 independent salespeople throughout the company. “They’re always looking for information, articles they can share on their own social accounts and through email out to target customers they have,” says Chris Winston, managing editor of Colonial Life’s WorkLife.
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The companies launched the publications after lengthy preparation that included talking to at least 15 other organizations that run similar websites. A vendor built the site for WordPress to make it easier for communicators to manage.
Seven people manage and write the content for the sites in addition to their other duties. WorkWell and WorkLife also have a partnership with a site titled HR Bartender, and they contract with a freelancer for stories.
For those looking for information on insurance and benefits, there are plenty of articles with titles such as “What exactly is disability insurance?” and “Too healthy for disability insurance? Think again.”
Newsjacking
There are also articles on other aspects of wellness and healthy living. The sites rely on a healthy dose of newsjacking to scoop up Web traffic. “Should companies offer women paid period leave?” followed a story about a British company that is letting its employees do just that by offering days off to women suffering from menstrual pain.
The story on head bumps cited reports that retired U.S. women’s soccer player Brandi Chastain plans to donate her brain for research on concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The story follows a growing interest in concussions in sports, particularly football but also soccer, in which players frequently strike the ball with their heads.
The piece allowed Unum to offer an executive as an expert on a day the topic was heavily trafficked.
Dr. Edward Alvino, chief medical officer for Unum, told WorkWell, “A head injury can involve not only the brain but other structures, such as the neck, that may result in headache; damage to the ears with symptoms related to dizziness or hearing; or visual symptoms that can make you sensitive to light or affect your ability to read.”
The story on the hardest-working cities—Anchorage, Alaska, was at the top—allowed WorkLife and WorkWell to newsjack a report from Wallethub ranking the 116 largest U.S. cities based on factors such as number of workers with multiple jobs, average weekly work hours and commute time.
“The least-hard-working?” the story wryly stated. “Burlington, VT. But we’re not going to judge.”
Writing about customers, not products
Some of the most successful corporate storytelling highlights people, not products. WorkLife and WorkWell are seeking to help readers get to know the people behind the brands. One brief story is accompanied by a video of a speech by a policyholder, who tells a Colonial Life audience how the company supported her and her daughter when the girl had leukemia. The girl joins her mother and the chief executive onstage at the end of the talk.
Colonial Life Testimonial from Jamie Fredrickson from Colonial Life on Vimeo.
In another piece, a physical therapist reflects on recovering from her fifth knee surgery to repair damage caused by degenerative joint disease. The story mentions Unum and her disability benefits only once—in the third paragraph from the end.
Both sites are similarly designed and have sections titled “Benefiting You,” “Healthy Living,” “On the Job,” and “Leading the Way.”
Among the most popular stories is one about a familiar workplace complaint: poor break room etiquette, McAbee says. “Reheating last night’s leftover fish and burning popcorn in the microwave are just two of the major faux pas co-workers commit in shared break spaces,” the story states.
“People want to know how to better navigate the workplace,” McAbee says.
Other stories describe “ simple office exercises to strengthen your core” and ways to keep March Madness from killing productivity.
“Those are much more engaging and much more likely to be shared by email or social media than just articles about disability insurance or accident insurance or life insurance, which people frequently don’t like to talk about as a part of their normal, everyday discussions in life.”
New eyeballs
The brand journalism approach is bringing eyeballs to the site. Although the official launch came this week, content has been up for over a month. In those first four weeks, more than two-thirds of the visits to each site came from outside the company, meaning it was either employees visiting the site from elsewhere or customers from outside.
For more than half of all readers, it’s their introduction to the brand; they had never before visited a Unum or Colonial Life website, Winston says.
“What we’re finding is that our employees are finding it interesting enough to share on social media,” Winston says. “That’s where it’s reaching a bunch of people we’re not engaged with already.”
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