The most important asset in your practice is your dental team. Consider how every system in your office relies on your dental team — from scheduling to collections to case presentation. A well-trained and motivated team consistently provides high-quality patient care and increases practice efficiencies. In addition, you’ll find that a proficient team reduces both the doctor’s and other team members’ stress.
However, turning your diverse group of employees into an effective team can be challenging. Dental universities do a great job of teaching dentists clinical skills, but only a few schools provide practice management instruction, including team building and leadership skills. Ideally, you’d like your staff members to develop a sense of teamwork, be motivated to work hard every day and feel enough satisfaction with their jobs to work in the practice for many years — thus keeping the turnover rate low.
What can you do to build an extraordinary dental team? Here are seven essential steps for creating the dynamic and effective dental team your practice deserves:
Document each system in a step-by-step manner
Write down the step-by-step process for each practice system, including scheduling, hygiene production, case presentation, financial management, etc. This will serve as your foundation to build a successful team. By documenting systems, you’ll eliminate knowledge gaps that can occur among team members, resulting in reduced stress and decreased staff turnover.
Train the team on your systems
With your systems written out in a step-by-step manner, your next task is to train your team on those systems. Begin by writing a training script for every routine conversation in the practice. Team members without an extensive dental background will find this especially helpful. Scripting also allows you to easily incorporate changes in the practice, and train existing staff without losing all of your accumulated knowledge.
It’s also important to realize that your staff’s skills can become obsolete within three to five years with advances in dentistry. To stay one step ahead of these changes, identify specific continuing education career paths for each staff member. Set up a three-year skill enhancement plan for each team member. The more educated your team members are in their specific areas of expertise, the more they can lessen the doctor’s burden. Better educated staff will also be prepared to accept an enhanced level of responsibility.
Hire the best people possible
To attract and retain quality staff, your pay scale should be at or close to the highest level in your market area. Your practice should be willing to pay slightly more to retain your trained staff once you’ve implemented expert systems that maximize production and increase profitability. To employ the best people, your practice should do the following:
- Use effective communication in recruitment advertising to get your message to the right places. Also tap into the informal channels that reach job seekers like professional associations, networking events and word of mouth.
- Place anonymous ads periodically, even when the practice is not hiring. This allows you to continually network, interview and develop relationships you can draw on for times when the practice needs new staff.
- Promote from within when possible.
- Hire team players. Before hiring any new staff member, the dentist should ask, “How will this person fit in with the rest of the team?”
View the 90-day probation period as a training period
During the 90-day probation period, the person should be quickly and easily trained using documented systems. You can use the team member’s job description to benchmark his or her progress in learning the job. Spend 15 minutes every two weeks to review his or her progress, as compared to the job description. These discussions can reinforce the practice’s vision and motivate the staff member to continue to achieve and excel if they are already meeting expectations. If the person isn’t meeting expectations, the focus of the discussions can be on making improvements.
Motivate with performance reviews
One way to check in regularly with members of your team is with semi-annual performance reviews. These reviews can be made motivating and even fun by conducting the review at a lunchtime meeting out of the office. A set agenda for the meeting should focus on the team member’s strengths, contributions and areas of improvement. To avoid making the review one-sided, the dentist can ask for opinions and feedback from the team member. This taps into the growing expertise of the employee, and allows him or her to share ownership of the practice.
Coach the team
Staff members aren’t simply workers who show up daily to perform their responsibilities. Your team members are a group of individuals who need to be coached, supported and encouraged by a leader. When team members are doing a good job, let them know. Provide consistent encouragement and point out where team members can assume responsibility and take leadership roles.
Get buy-in through a bonus system
A strong team-based bonus program can create an ownership mentality and help significantly increase practice production. Plus, it’s a terrific method to bring people together with a sense of purpose and a challenge. Establish the bonus program based on some regular interval — one year is too long and one month is too short.
Levin Group Method recommends a bonus program based heavily on a collection model and a two-month cycle. Bonuses should be earned based on the growth of a dental practice and revenue rather than production. Post weekly progress toward the goal in the staff room, and it will help momentum and excitement grow as the team gets closer to the goal.
Summary
Building an extraordinary team is essential to achieving a high-performance practice. This can be accomplished by documenting systems, training the staff on those systems, hiring the best team-oriented people, effective coaching and team building with bonus systems. Dentistry is constantly changing, and successful practices are adept at keeping their teams up-to-speed with each new innovation.