When it comes to working hard to retain great staff members, medical practices are no different from other workplaces. You want to keep your best team members happy and satisfied so they stay with you for the long term. After all, hiring is time-consuming and expensive, and patients don’t take well to seeing new faces every time they come to your office. But employee retention isn’t as easy as it sounds, and can take a bit of work.
To ensure your practice gets high marks in its employee retention efforts, consider instituting these seven tips.
1. Learn Team Members’ Goals and Help Meet Them
Everyone working for you has a career goal, and each one will be different. While one staffer may want a promotion, another might be interested in learning a new skill or working a more flexible schedule. It’s up to you as the practice manager to help them figure out their goals and work together to create a plan so they can meet those benchmarks.
2. Provide Work-Life Balance
Whether they say it or not, every employee wants a great work-life balance. While the requirements of your practice may mean you can’t allow staffers to work from home or leave early, there are ways you can provide them with better balance. For instance, you can encourage frequent breaks, review employee workloads every week, or offer a high number of paid days off.
3. Offer Good Compensation
Your practice should be a great place to work, but no job is so wonderful that employees want to be there for free. They are there because they want to make a living, and if they can’t make ends meet with the pay you’re providing, they’ll leave. Review your compensation packages frequently and make sure your salaries are in line with what other practices are paying. Offer not only a great base salary, but also a bonus structure, benefits, and perks if possible to boost your employee retention efforts.
4. Support Them Every Day
Employees who don’t feel supported leave, and you don’t want to make the mistake of just assuming staff members know you appreciate them. You must show they every day that you value what they’re doing, you want to provide support to help them, and that you’re there for them if you need help. For instance, if you see patients swamping the front desk, don’t just walk by. Ask the front desk team how you can pitch in, or ask patients if you can help who’s next. It matters to patients and it matters to staff members.
5. Recognize Great Work
If you see someone do something that impresses you, no matter how minor, mention it. Talk to them directly, announce it at a staff meeting, write them a note, or post it on your practice’s Kudos Board. Showing them that you notice their hard work and you care is a great way to build morale.
6. Offer Continuous Training
Training staff members on new technologies, responsibilities or management skills will help them see that their future is important to you. This applies to your back office, front office and clinical staff. Providing them with continuing education is a great way to show them that you’re investing in their future at your practice.
7. Recognize Bad Days
Every employee has a bad day once in a while, but managers may not realize how impactful those challenging days can be. One recent HR survey found that 80 percent of employees would start looking for a new job after one bad day at work. This means you can’t afford to ignore tough days. When you see your employees struggling, recognize the issue and ask how you can help. When the day ends, meet with the staff member and ask how you can help fix the root problem so they don’t experience the same issue again in the future. This helps makes staff members more happy and helps boost your employee retention efforts.
Want more employee retention strategies? Check out the online training session, “Proven Retention Tactics Stop Your Best Staff From Quitting,” presented by Susan Childs, FACMPE. During the 60-minute training, you’ll find out how to keep staff members happy and engaged so they don’t want to leave your practice.
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