A study was recently released in Quebec that tracks the effects of TV viewing on children’s physical, emotional and intellectual growth.
No surprise – every additional hour of TV exposure among toddlers corresponded to a future decrease in classroom engagement.
TV is an exceptionally passive activity, but it made me think about how we take on storytelling in the workplace and how active we can dare ourselves to be.
Intranets are one way that companies have been experimenting with engaged storytelling methods. Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen posted his 10 best intranets of 2010. Nice to see that a Canadian company, Enbridge, made the cut this year. It’s no shock that social networking factored into the successful ones. Whether you like it or not, social networking is here to stay and while it has its drawbacks, engagement isn’t one of them.
Japanese internet content security company Trend Micro’s intranet, TrendSpace, includes employee-contributed content. Or there’s US-based non-profit MITRE’s social bookmarking service that lets employees share their favourite links.
Here’s a crazy idea. What would happen if you challenged your corporate communications team to revolutionize your company newsletter with this vision – be more captivating than Facebook.
If that makes you tremble in your boots, what does that say about your corporate culture? What would your employees say if they knew they would be heard by everyone?
You might be surprised. You just might find a passionately engaged team on your hands.
