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Dr. Ron’s Six Top Tips to Retaining Team Members

How to be an Employer of Choice
Six Top Tips to Retaining Team Members
(Series 1)
by
Ronald F. Arndt, DDS, MBA, MAGD

Finding quality team members for a dental practice is a challenge. Retaining the “right” talent requires skill and diplomacy. Clients tell me that one of the main issues facing small business today is finding and keeping good employees. For the foreseeable future, one of the greatest challenges facing a dental practice will be finding and retaining employee talent

A solution to the critical staffing shortage in dental practices is keeping the good employees you already have. Staff retention is a critical challenge facing the dental care industry. To minimize staffing shortages, it us imperative to keep the productive employees you already have.

According to Dale Dauten in his book, The Gifted Boss, the best way to retain employees is to be the best place for the best people. How do you do this profitably and without being an expert in human resources? Consider the following Top Six Tips to Retaining Team Members as a way to be an employer of choice and attract all the talent you will ever need in your practice.

1. Create a magnetic environment. In order to do that you will need to be a different kind of employer. The gifted boss is free of having to watch over their employees. They give up on the role of controlling. Instead they trust their employees. Rather than thinking they have all the answers, they have questions. Instead of offering good jobs at competitive wages, the gifted boss creates a magnetic environment by sharing a vision of a practice that people want to be a part of, where they can be exceptional. The gifted boss has few rules and high standards. Rather than telling people how to do things the gifted boss establishes standards and lets the team work to this standard. These standards provide a definition of excellence…which is different from perfection.

2. Set clear expectations. Knowing what you want, where and by when is as important as the outcome. Being clueless is no longer an option in the new work environment. The gifted boss makes outcomes and time lines specific and measurable for all employees. Indeed, the employees of successful practices are part of the process of articulating their own performance and behavior expectations. Retaining quality team members requires a clear vision and direction with clearly delineated objectives and outcomes.

3. Train and develop employees. Learning doesn’t last as long as it used to. The basic cost of doing business in today’s economy requires a generous training budget. This will be one of the investments that will enable your practice to not only survive but thrive. The new attitude is “we’ll help you grow in your career, if you’ll help us grow the practice.” This involves training and developing the whole person, not just the clinical skills. Getting employees excited about learning is made possible by carving out some time in their work schedules for training and development. The use of tapes, books, shared magazine and journal articles are inexpensive ways to encourage learning. Conducting in-house workshops, downloading information off the Web or taking employees to trade shows is a way to keep people challenged and encourage them to stretch.

4. Provide positive and constructive feedback to your employees. Every dentist CEO has the task of disciplining, correcting or encouraging the behavior of a staff person. The way the feedback is delivered determines if it is a positive or negative experience. When delivered appropriately and in a helpful way the results can be positive and an effective learning experience.

Provide feedback on the behavior and not the person. Be specific with your feedback. Behavior that gets recognized and rewarded gets repeated. Offer incentives to develop the behaviors you need and want. Above all, demonstrate your confidence and offer to Coach them on a regular and timely basis.

5. Declare your standards and boundaries. A standard is the behavior that you naturally want for yourself. Standards are not should’s or could’s. Standards are about doing what’s right for you, your team, and patients. Your practice standards specify areas for behavior, knowledge, or expertise. Your standards are used to promote improvement. They provide opportunities to learn and improve performance levels. Boundaries are about how you permit others to treat you. They help your practice define what it is and what it is not. Boundaries communicate what is permissible and what is not. They keep you from being taken advantage of and help patients know where they stand. Boundaries bring balance, peace and confidence into our practice lives. When you establish boundaries, you minimize failure and discourage those patients, who have no boundaries, from taking what they want, when they want it.

6. Encourage your employees to come up with solutions. The more effectively employees are led; the fewer rules will be required. If you get your employee’s hearts involved in their work, managing behavior becomes a non-issue. The old command and control model of management needs to give way to developing people. In order to keep up with the competition you need to encourage your employees to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Give them a cause. Give them a reason to be with your practice. When they feel the passion for your vision, they become committed to resolving challenges.

Dr. Ron is the only Master Certified Dental Coach (MCC) on the planet. He has blended 20 years of clinical dental practice with executive roles in financial planning and investment management along his graduate business training to provide his clients with the tools, support, and accountability to accomplish more. About Dr. Ron, "I count you as one of life’s best finds", says Dr. Gary Imm of Reisterstown, Maryland. He has authored many articles; manuals; ThinBooks ^tm; TeleClasses and if you visit http://www.drarndt.com you can receive one of his FREE reports, "9 Painful Mistakes Dentists Make in the Hiring Process"

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One Response to “Dr. Ron’s Six Top Tips to Retaining Team Members”

1. Joe Bulger Says:
   January 29th, 2007 at 9:11 pm

   Regarding patient boundaries, as mentioned in Point#5, team members often mistakenly think that “accomadation” is a wonderful thing. Like a permissive parent, they can unintentionally condone and reinforce a patient’s negative behavior.

   Great patients don’t show up that way. They must be specifically trained to be great by a proactive team. Most patients are more than willing to play by fair rules. They just want to know what the rules are.

   In my new patient package I include a document call “Keeping Promises.” It a patient charter that outlines what we will strive to do for them, and what we expect of them in return.

   The document is available at http://www.yoursmileteam.com/new-patient.htm (see document #4).

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