If you’re having trouble attracting top talent to your dental practice, you may need to reevaluate your business. Follow this guideline for effective strategies for increasing staff retention in your dental office before you lose another valuable team member. Your business can’t operate without sufficient and capable staff.
Have Regular Staff Meetings
Try to meet with your staff once a week or every other week to establish a good relationship, make announcements, and take care of questions and lingering concerns. While you center most of your day around patient care, you can motivate your staff by keeping them focused on the goal through meetings that express your company’s vision. Develop an agenda for each meeting to ensure they are productive.
Pro Tip: Get in the habit of talking to your staff during a morning huddle or before their shifts begin. A quick chat before the day starts keeps everyone on the same page.
Praise Your Staff
Positive reinforcement goes a long way and may motivate your staff more than monetary incentives. Daily, tell your employees that you are grateful for the work they do for your company. Increase the frequency of your staff reviews so that you’re doing them at least quarterly, and be sure to offer praise as well as areas for improvement.
Pro Tip: If you would like to give awards, reward the behavior you’d like to see. Give incentives to individuals or the entire team, but be specific when you highlight what behaviors or attitudes warranted the reward.
Hire the Right Candidates
One of the best ways to retain employees is to hire the right ones for the job. To attract top talent, you’ll need to pay competitive wages. Further, you should clearly define each employee’s role in the company, both verbally and in writing. Implement a streamlined onboarding and orientation process that acclimates staff to the company and office. Training is essential and should set your staff up for success.
Pro Tip: Allow existing staff to play a role in the hiring process. Your current employees will have the best idea of who will fit in with your company culture.
Follow Your Policies
Like with any workplace, you should operate your dental office using a set of policies and guidelines. Employees must show up to work on time so that other staff doesn’t need to cover their work. Don’t show favoritism. Your policy should include everything from harassment policies to benefits policies, including what staff should do if they need to file for disability. In addition to following your policy, make sure your benefits policies are good ones. For instance, it’s important to know what type of dentist disability insurance you are purchasing before you buy to ensure you and your staff have full and adequate coverage.
The strategies for increasing staff retention in your dental office are like those for any office. Be kind to your employees, show gratitude, and reward the behaviors you want to see. Treat your employees fairly and with the same sort of decency you would expect if you were in their shoes, and your staff will stick around.
