Your dental practice is only as good as the quality professionals you have working in it. Therefore, not being able to appeal to and keep the best candidates can be a problem.
Sadly, quite often, the work environment is to blame.
In order for clinicians to be attracted to a particular practice, they must feel that it is a culture they fit into and a place where they can see themselves able to grow.
Hence, it is important to create a workplace that demonstrates your values as a company and also your commitment, respect, and support for your employees to attract good dentists.
In hiring quality professionals and fostering their strengths, it also helps ensure your clients are listened to and receive the proper care, which also helps retain patients.
Some strategies dental consultants recommend incorporating into your practice to help appeal to top-level candidates, and keep them, include:
Create a Work Environment That Utilizes Your Employees’ Strengths
As mentioned earlier, it is difficult for a dental practice to thrive without a constructive environment that enables your employees to flourish.
Nor can it survive without team communication, which enables you to learn which office practices are effective at supporting the growth of your team and which ones are inhibiting its growth.
It also enables you to get to know each of your employees up close and personal, which allows you to also gauge their individual strengths.
In fact, each of your employees has individual talents that can greatly benefit your practice, provided these talents are realized and utilized properly.
For instance, you may learn that an employee has a strength that is better suited for another position within the practice, Therefore, you can simply transfer them to the new position where they will be more useful, which will benefit the entire office.
In return, it also helps the employee feel more fulfilled, which increases the chance that they will become a long term staff member.
Shopping your own pool of talent to fill open positions in your practice also helps eliminate time and stress hiring and training new candidates for the position, which is also good for your bottom line.
Foster Collaboration with New Hires
Operating your practice the same way over time can mean that your science-based procedures have become lax and out of date, which can cause your employees to commit various errors within your practice, such as inadequate infection control methods, and also affect your reputation.
Therefore, when working with new employees, especially those fresh out of dental training, consider that they may have recent knowledge of the latest research-backed protocols and technology that can help keep your practice compliant. Hence, don’t be afraid to let them know that you value their feedback.
This not only helps prevent you from relaying misinformation to both your new and current employees, which can cost your practice later, but it also shows your latest team members that you appreciate their input and are open to collaborating with them, even if they are new, so they feel prized from the beginning and more at home.
It also helps attract other high-quality clinicians who are looking for a place of employment that values them from the start.
You need to also alert your employee trainers and support team of your goals. This way, everyone knows and is on the same page, so the concept naturally flows throughout your entire organization, which also reflects your practice’s culture to appeal to the best candidates.
Incorporate Performance Training for New Clinicians
Chances are, your practice has more than one dentist on staff, and it is highly likely that they each have their own preference for how they like their patients’ clinical information presented to them, which can be overwhelming to new employees. This in turn can cause your new hires to feel lost and unconfident.
Couple this with the pressure they also feel to deliver good patient care, and it can really impact their performance.
However, offering new employees support through training helps make them feel more confident and prepared so they can better approach their job.
You can also have them simply observe other dentists in action to learn firsthand what the position requires, which will also help them feel prepared.
In the meantime, a few days a week, you can schedule time for the new employees and the other dentists to run-through clinical cases together to assess what worked and what didn’t as well as how each dentist wants their patient cases presented.
It’s also a good idea to, at least once a year and also monthly, review these measures to access their success.
Inspire Dedicated Employees
Most good employees perform their best when they feel that the work they do isn’t just important to the job and patients’ health but that it is also essential to the overall success of the practice, which makes them feel like they have a stake in the company.
Stakeholders are employees that are all in when it comes to the success of your practice and who truly cares about each and every step of the patient experience, which in turn helps motivate them to go above and beyond for your patients as well as for the practice as a whole.
Therefore, you want to cultivate a climate that inspires stakeholders in your practice.
The best and simplest way to do this is just letting your employees know that they are cherished and a vital part of your practice.
This can be done by simply taking time to thank and acknowledge clinicians that excel at their job, which helps motivate the desire to continue to do their best and strive for excellence in the workplace.
You should also make it a point to learn what each employee in your practice needs to feel prized, which will ensure your display of gratitude is well received.
For instance, one employee may appreciate a gift card for a free 20-minute massage chair massage, while another employee may feel that’s a big fuss and simply prefer just a “thank you” to feel appreciated.
You might also consider implementing a commission, bonus, or other rewards for employees that display exemplary efforts, which will help keep them motivated to do well, as well as also inspire other employees to perform their best.
Just be sure you are taking the necessary steps to fully convey your gratitude for your employees, which also contributes to a positive work environment that appeals to and helps retain the best candidates.
It also inspires your employees to appreciate and respect each other as a team, which also helps them collaborate better.
When your staff values each other, it helps them better communicate with each other using a language of appreciation, it also helps raise team spirit in the workplace where anybody would be more than happy to be employed and live out their career.
Research shows that satisfied employees contribute more to the workplace as well as a healthy environment, and they are also more likely to work with each other to accomplish workplace goals. They are also more likely to provide above-average patient care, which also helps get the word out about your dental practice.
