BUSINESS 101

The Keepers...

Tips and techniques for retaining your best staff members

When was the last time you looked at your team during a staff meeting and thought, “What a pleasure to have this skilled, professional, and pleasant group of individuals with me?”

TURNOVER TROUBLES

These days, many of our clients find moments of satisfaction with their teams harder and harder to come by. The main reason is that there seems to be a lot more turnover in staff members than before. This leads to constantly being in a state of training people. As you know, even if you train the best new employee, time and energy is drained from the whole team.

The first thing to accept is that the average employment life of an optometric staff member is about two years. This means you must accept that there will be occasional turnover, and you need to put a solid training system in place from the start. This includes clarifying job descriptions and providing adequate individual, hands-on training in the office and regular performance feedback.

Once you’ve assembled and trained a great team, how do you maintain the rapport and the resulting patient experience it provides?

WAGE RATE

In a recent study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), employees were asked to rate satisfaction in various aspects of work. While “the opportunity to use skills and abilities,” was at the top, the answers were different when weighted toward hourly employees. For these non-management positions—most of your employees—wage rate was at the top.

Although this might not be what you want to hear, it actually aligns closely to what I hear when speaking with doctors and staff. No, I am not saying you’ll have a happy team if you give them a raise. Instead, you need to regularly review your pay scale to ensure you’re offering a wage and benefit package that allows team members to comfortably meet basic living expenses. If this simple need is not met, you will lose your best employees to other businesses.

Once you have provided a living wage and benefit package, then you can look at how you are effectively engaging employees in a satisfying work experience.

ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES

How do you engage employees? Consider providing paid opportunities to train online, work with reps on skills development, and attend conferences. Also, follow through with scheduled feedback and offer praise as staff continues to integrate new or improve existing skills.

If you feel HR management is not your strength and you don’t have a manager already, then you might want to groom an existing employee for this role. With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, most O.D.s are looking to boost patient volume to help offset dropping reimbursement rates. This will make it even more challenging to find time to invest in staff development.

However you choose to handle this, it is well worth devoting either yours or a manager’s time to make sure team members are engaged each and every day. An engaged employee will stick with you and buoy the rest of the team.

— Bess Ogden

Bess Ogden is a senior consultant with The Williams Group, based on Lincoln, NE.