Today, dental professionals prefer to have flexible staffing. Gone are the days of conventional rigid staffing practices that put permanent and temporary workers under stress. Here are some best practices for flexible staffing. Besides, the hallmark of every efficient dental practice depends on how it serves its clients and workers.
COVID-19 and Dental Staffing
However, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create more staffing problems for dental practices. Whether it’s the need to fill essential positions or the fear of losing momentum, it is easy to get swept by the overwhelming staffing issues amidst the coronavirus crisis.
With COVID-19 dangling over dental practices, flexible staffing has never been more relevant. In fact, dental team members and practitioners continue to navigate the new challenges at work. Although there have been initiatives like virtual appointments and short clinical workflows, the focus is still on increasing flexible staffing to secure the future of dental practices.
Flexibility to Fill Dental Positions
It is true – filling out short and long-term position gaps can be arduous for any dental practice. But the answer lies in a flexible and agile staffing solution. For instance, a strategic staffing approach would take into account your specific requirements and provide dental staffing services.
Filling the right position at the right time can help your dental practice accomplish short-term and long-term goals. From dental specialists to dental assistants to dental hygienists, flexible staffing can match your dental practice needs in real-time. Besides, direct and open communication among dental practitioners makes more sense.
Here are some of the essential flexible staffing solutions that dental practices need to adopt:
Clear Communication
Dental practices need to establish clear communication protocols with their temp workers before the confirmation of the shift and timings. In fact, clear communication leads to a safe work environment for temp and permanent staff. You should also be clear about lunch breaks, PPE offerings, and parking right from the start. The more direct and open communication means a better experience for workers.
Inclusivity Matters
Diverse times require diverse needs. Inclusive perceptiveness allows you to view your staff members essential to your dental practice team. For instance, it could be something as simple as bringing donuts on Monday morning for the temp staff.
It is vital to understand that your temporary staff craves respect and attention just like your permanent staff members. Therefore, your goal should be to get more involved with your temporary workers and get to know their work experience.
Don’t Hesitate to Evaluate the Schedule
There’s no such thing as a permanent schedule when it comes to dental practitioners. Naturally, you want to make the work responsibilities of dental practitioners easy and without extraneous tasks. So, make sure to review and revise the patient schedules before each day.
For instance, you can make a thorough list of dental procedures certain patients will have to undergo on a specific day. Small details matter and that means you should include notes for your clinicians about each patient’s preferences. Constant revisions and rescheduling, however, can create havoc for the temporary and permanent dental professionals.
Therefore, schedule the patients that have complex dental needs with permanent dental practitioners. For the sake of instant schedule adoption, you have to make sure your patients are comfortable with each procedure.
Workflow Optimization
How you optimize workflow in your dental practice can make a huge impact on the staff. To optimize your clinical workflow, you have to mitigate the pressure from your temporary and permanent staff members. It might sound straightforward, but there is more to it than the eye meets.
So long as you continue to optimize clinical workflow, you can expect temporary and permanent staff to adapt to your dental practice environment. For instance, you should analyze the traffic flow in the sterilization room, front desk, and in the hallways for a start.
Repetition of Temp Staff
If you want to have a flexible clinical work environment, don’t hesitate to deploy the same temp staff for repeated tasks. Consequently, it will make communication between temporary and permanent staff better. Ultimately, it works in favor of patients who can receive seamless and continuous care.
However, you may have to consider rotational shift days for temporary workers to make such repetitions. Once you ask the same clinicians for specific dental tasks, you can count on a more stable and robust work environment.
Anchor for Temporary Staff
As a dental practice, you need to assign a guide or anchor to your temporary team members. However, you have to think of more than just in terms of giving them a quick tour. Instead, continue the assignment of anchor until temporary workers learn their job responsibilities completely.
In the long run, it will help temp workers perform their clinical duties more effectively and without delays. However, the overlap in anchor assignment is quite common. For instance, a permanent dentist can be an anchor to a new and temporary dentist.
Your objective should be to encourage the simplification of clinical tasks to make temporary workers more comfortable. Also, don’t subvert or play tricks on your temporary workers through permanent dental practitioners. In any case, you should listen to the questions, concerns, and grievances of your temporary workers.
Always Plan for the Future
Since the dental industry is going through a tumultuous period, it makes sense to prepare for the unexpected. For instance, you can fill out extra shifts for one or more sick team members. When you plan ahead of time, your dental practice can make the most out of flexible dental staffing and anticipate challenges related to schedules.
Once you start to understand the needs of your temp and permanent workers, you will realize that planning months or weeks of schedules in advance is a viable solution. It renders the added flexibility dental practitioners need to perform their duties with the utmost professionalism.
Make Relevant Follow-Ups
If you want to maintain the morale of your dental practitioners, you should make brief follow-ups. In fact, gestures like acceptance and thankfulness can lead to positive feedback. For instance, you can ask what more you can do to improve their work experience.
If you receive a negative response or criticism, don’t make an aggressive argument. Instead, exercise empathy and try to understand the point-of-view of the staff members. Essentially, follow-ups allow you to create a more hopeful dental practice for practitioners and patients.
The Need of the Hour: Flexible Dental Staffing
IF you want to mitigate and thwart dental staffing confusion, your dental practice needs a flexible dental staffing solution. A solution that can help you adapt and evolve over time. No matter how unpredictable and dire the current circumstances may seem, you can still thrive and adjust your dental staffing needs.
Your Premier Dental Expert Staffing Portal
At Strategic Dental Staffing Solution, your dental practice can have the most flexible and realistic dental staffing. As the recruitment needs continue to evolve, we can help you enlighten some of the best flexible approaches. We can help you fill key positions that cater to your clinical needs.
When it comes to flexible dental staffing, it all boils down to eliminating as many delays as you can. It’s time to adopt a holistic dental staffing approach that would ensure your dental services are operational. Strategic Dental Staffing Solution opens up more staffing opportunities for dental practices and fills in specialized positions without delays.
