Archive for Dental Practice Management Tips
Four Tips On How to Retain Dental Employees
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Retaining dental employees is more cost-effective and all-around better for the practice than having to hire a new one. Keeping in mind that your staff is your biggest asset, follow my four tips to retain dental employees. I promise that this will take little time, but will provide a huge benefit.
- Re-recruit annually. At the end of the year, meet with every team member for a moment. Shake their hand warmly, look them straight in the eye, and say “I am really happy that you are part of our team. Your being here makes a positive difference.”
- Hold an annual performance review with everyone. Spend part of that time discussing what’s ahead for them. Even if not much is changing, a focus on the future keeps team members connected to you because they are reminded that you care.
- Ask and learn. Sit down with your valued team members and ask each one “How likely are you to still be working here two years from now?” If the answer is anything but a solid “very likely,” then ask “what would change that for you?”
- Foster pride. When a team member does something outstanding, send a letter home telling their family what a great job their [mom, spouse, son/daughter] is doing, and how important they are to your team.
“There’s no limit to what can be achieved if you’re willing to share the credit.” ~ Wilson Wyatt, Sr.
Four Tips on Practicing Open Book Management With Your Dental Team
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Educate your team to what each line item means and how it impacts the practice profitability. This ensures that you will grow a successful dental practice and have a stronger “buy-in” from your employees.
Follow these 4 tips and action steps to engage Open Book Management into your dental practice:
- Consult with your accountant to develop financial statements that are easy to read and organized.
- Bring in your accountant or CPA to read and review your financial statements for a Lunch and Learn with your team members on a quarterly basis.
- Begin tracking important practice numbers each month and share their significance with every member of your team. Examples include: production, collection, collection percentage, hourly production for the hygienist and the doctor, treatment recommended vs. treatment accepted and the associated percentage, amount of broken appointment time, and the impact on practice income.
- Develop solutions to reducing overhead and increasing production so that profitability can be shared.
“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
How to Hold Effective Morning Huddles In Your Dental Office
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You know the importance of these regular meetings—you know that it will increase profitability in your dental office, too. So how can you hold them effectively and efficiently without adding more stress?
- Develop progress reporting. A team member will provide a report to the team stating accomplishments, obstacles overcome, results and requests for support for their respective projects.
- Create a specific agenda for your Morning Huddles and stick to a start and end time.
- Raise your standards. Expect every team member to be prepared to actively participate.
- Hold team meetings during regularly scheduled production time. Pre-block them on the schedule on a set day and time. Treat these as a patient appointment and do not re-schedule or miss them.
Are You Still Walking the Talk?
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In my last post, I talked about dental practice ethics and how it starts with you, the doctor. You know that you need to communicate your Core Values to your team in order to be successful, but how can you do that?
- Walk the talk. In your monthly team meetings, identify one or two instances where your Core Values have been supported.
- Ask yourself values-based questions when making a values-based judgement.
You might consider asking yourself the following questions posed by Rotary International:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build good will and better friendship?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Write out your practice Core Values. Identify what you prize greatly, what has a positive influence on your life, what you are willing to publicly affirm as your principles, and what are you willing to act on. Post them on your website and Facebook page.
“When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” ~Roy Disney
Set S.M.A.R.T Goals For Performance Growth
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For many of us, it is the START that STOPS us from moving forward and achieving our objectives. When we look at a big project, we immediately feel intimidated. This “bigness” or “I don’t know where to begin” leads us to procrastinate taking action to make our goals a reality. I see this happening with many dentists in my work as THE DENTAL COACH©.
Raising the overall performance of your practice begins with developing the skills of the individuals. Set goals that address improvements in knowledge, skills, or behavior. The best goals are S.M.A.R.T. ones.
Below, are my definitions of a S.M.A.R.T goal.
- Specific – Define what needs to happen or how behavior should change.
- Measurable – How will you recognize success? Is it about task completion (i.e. cleaning up filing backlog), results (i.e. 10% increase in…) or behavior (observable change)?
- Action-oriented – The best goals challenge people and require that they do something new, at higher level, or in a new way.
- Realistic – Make sure the goal is achievable. Attending a seminar, or having a discussion, or reading about a new technique is realistic.
- Time-bound – Goals should have an element of time – frequency (do this daily/weekly), or deadline (do by 4-1).
Example: “Complete a minimum of ten past-due patient follow-up calls by phone each day for the next quarter.“ This is simple, yet it is still a S.M.A.R.T goal. Why? It meets all of the requirements: It is specific (“past-due patient calls”), measurable (daily), action-oriented (requires a change in behavior), realistic (ten per day is attainable), and time-bound (“each day for the next quarter”).
Hire Right – Target Performance to Identify the Right Person For Your Dental Team
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As the year 2012 begins, do these action steps to prepare for hiring the right person for your dental practice. You may not have to hire for a new position right now, but I guarantee that you will!
- Prepare for success. Review the list of interview questions you normally ask. Now, edit them to make them open-ended and focused on past performance. Make copies and place half a dozen copies in an Interview Guides file. Next time the need arises, you will be ready to interview on a few second’s notice.
- Target performance that matters to you. Think about the three most frequent problem situations that occur in your office. Write an interview question for each which begins, “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with [insert situation]. What did you do, and what was the outcome?”
Do This Now!
Place yourself in recruitment mode 24 x 7. If you are always on the lookout for good people, your pipeline will already be full of candidates the next time you have an opening. As you meet people in your daily life, think of who would be a great fit for your practice’s culture.
“Don’t waste time calculating your chances of success and failure. Just fix your aim and begin.” ~ Guan Yin Tzu
Right Hiring for the Dental Team
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How would you like to set yourself up for success in your dental practice? What kind of training have you had to help you to determine when to hire, how to interview, and who to invite into your dental practice? If you’re like most dentists, the answer is NONE! You have had no training on this! It’s true that the hiring process is overwhelming when caught short-handed.
It is much like treating a patient. First you determine the source of the pain, formulate your differential diagnosis, decide which treatment is most appropriate and put a prevention plan in place. Training in hiring – right hiring – helps you put a plan into action for your practice. It eliminates the stress of what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
Over the next 2-3 months, I will offer over 40 positive ideas and insights to make the process of hiring the “right” people more structured, organized and easy to follow. These tips help you manage your staffing needs proactively, and give you and your team a plan for the future. While I’m not providing an exhaustive guide covering every aspect of right hiring like I do with my Dental Contact Coaching™ clients, I will share a foundation for your hiring road map. I will offer several step-by-step outlines for developing your treatment plan for right hiring.
I suggest that you have open discussions with your team and solicit ideas on staffing needs and specific position descriptions.
This upcoming series of posts focuses on the human side of business– the human resources of your practice. A study by the Kwasha Lipton Group, a division of Coopers & Lybrand, HPA, discovered that turnover can cost a company 75-150% of an employee’s salary. As THE DENTAL COACH© clients hire me, in part, to provide this information to help them hire right, manage more effectively, and reduce stress. The end result? Saving tens of thousands of dollars annually.
“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.” – H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. General
Ask yourself: What are the right things I need to do today? What is keeping me from doing them?
Problem Solve – As a Team – To Make Your Life Easier
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Don’t be on your deathbed, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions– instead of big dreams.
What problems do you have in your dental practice today? Who can help you solve them? Your team! The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.
Give up thinking you have to be so smart and omniscient. You create an environment of openness and sharing by inviting team members to be a part of problem solving.
The teams who do this – the ones who discuss the “who, what, and how” — foster productive problem-solving communication.
Turn Conflict into Opportunities
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We dentists like to avoid conflict at all costs. It seems to be built into our DNA.
God forbid when we have an upset patient to deal with; an employee to discipline or a change that won’t be received favorably by the team. We simply avoid the conflict. We hate conflict.
Hello! With any type of team, conflict comes with the territory. You’re just going to have to deal with it!
You can resolve conflict through:
- Bargaining
- Voting
- Research
- Third-party mediation
But you can’t ignore it. When you, as the Dental CEO, begin to understand how conflict can be an opening to problem resolution, it will forge higher-quality outcomes for you.
I am going to share with you two extremely valuable tools to enable you to turn any conflict into an opportunity:
- Have available your written set of core values.
- Have a written vision statement.
Now what that means, is that you must take the time to think these out, write them down and then share with your team. Through these 2 documents, you will have the solutions to all of your conflicts.
Guaranteed.
Period.
Hold Annual Retreats
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As we approach the end of the year, this is an opportune time for you to strategically set aside a full day of planning for you and your team.
I hear many dentists tell me that this kind of planning is just a horrific waste of time.
What a huge mistake they are making in their thinking.
With an annual day of planning, there are opportunities to plan for the next year. Invite each team member to be a part of the agenda and to be responsible for one element of the retreat’s success. Hold your retreat off-site and keep it informal. A clearly written annual plan, developed with everyone’s input, will cause your practice numbers to take off! (You can check out my Annual Goal Review as a special PDF for free.)
I’d love to hear from you about how you do your annual planning. What are some of the keys to your success in laying out your 2012?
