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2020 Foresight: Let This Be the Year Your Practice Runs the Way You Envisioned
by CEDR
If you’re like the majority of office managers, your education on how to manage a team was one of trial by fire. Most dental office managers fall into the role from other positions in the dental field, which means that they’re forced to learn the bulk of their management skills on the fly.
Management can be stressful. Between scheduling, keeping on top of inventory, addressing employee performance, dealing with payroll, and everything else that’s required of you as a manager, it can easily feel like one or more pieces of the puzzle are constantly slipping through your fingers.
If your practice is or has ever been burdened by employee drama, unengaged or unproductive team members, tedious tasks that suck up your time, payroll issues, high turnover, a lack of clarity on things like employee leave, vacation, sick time, travel and educational reimbursements, or any one of the hundreds of things that plague almost every practice in the dental industry, you know firsthand how management issues can affect your bottom line.
Let 2020 be the year in which your practice finally starts running the way you always thought (or hoped) it would. Here’s how you get there:
1) Take a Hard Look at Your Company Policies
First off, make sure you have an employee handbook in place for your practice, and make sure that handbook is current, accurate, and up to date (click here to have your handbook evaluated by an HR and employment law expert for free).
A professionally written employee handbook is the foundation of your office’s team management strategy. Your handbook needs to be customized to reflect your priorities, your company culture, and the laws that apply to your business based on its location and the number of people you employ.
Good employee handbooks make expectations clear for your employees. They provide information about holiday office closures, paid and unpaid time off, how to request a leave of absence, how to dress at work, etc. They also outline the protocol for addressing problems in the office and who to go to when an issue arises.
Make sure your policies are in line with all relevant federal, state, and local laws that apply to your business (you’ll want to work with a qualified HR professional to make sure you get that portion right) and that they are clear and easy to understand. If you’re having trouble interpreting or explaining a policy, it’s going to be unclear to your employees, too.
Finally, make sure all of your employees have easy access to your handbook. Have them read the entire thing, cover-to-cover (preferably during their first day on the job) and sign the last page to acknowledge that they have read and understood all of the policies inside (this can protect you against claims of ignorance should you ever need to reprimand an employee for violating a policy and, trust me, at some point you will).
2) Build an Effective Feedback Loop
There are three basic types of power that managers have over their employees. From the most effective to least effective, those are: Relational Power, Expertise Power, and Position Power.
You might be able to get an employee to complete a task for you by asserting your position as their superior (position power), but that alone won’t be enough to motivate them to put their best effort into the project. If that employee trusts you as an expert at the task or project in question, that might be enough to make sure the job is done well (expertise power), but the best way to ensure that your employees are putting their best effort into their work is to develop and maintain their trust (relational power).
People are more excited and more willing to do things for people they like and respect than they are to execute tasks simply because they were ordered to.
Provide regular feedback to your employees, both positive and negative (we call this “coaching”). Have regular one-on-one meetings and make an effort to get to know them. Make their goals and expectations clear, and make sure those goals are realistic, measurable, and achievable.
When you ask an employee to improve a process, give them a clear path to success and acknowledge their efforts, their victories, and their shortcomings. You’ll also want to document all of the formal conversations you have with your employees -- that paper trail will serve as evidence that you did all you could to enable their success should you ever have to terminate.
Your success as a manager ultimately comes down to this: Employees who feel like their work matters to their employers are happier, more engaged, and more productive. And, though relationship building will cost you a little bit of time up front, you’ll ultimately make up for that effort by decreasing your turnover and increasing productivity and revenue for your practice.
Looking to reduce turnover at your practice? Use the onboarding tips and checklist in CEDR’s Hiring Guide to cut turnover by as much as 50 percent!
3) Rehabilitate Your Management Systems
The processes, protocols, and software you use at your business should make your life easier.
Do the programs you use to manage your team streamline your processes or make them more complicated? Is there a better way to do things than by the methods you are currently using?
Online document storage and sharing systems like CEDR’s HR Vault eliminate the need for outdated paper systems and make it easy for employees to read, sign, and reference important documents like your employee handbook on their own (Click here to try the HR Vault free for 90 days). This empowers employees to find solutions to most problems by themselves (we call this “employee self-service”), freeing you up to focus on more important tasks (or clock out early).
Digital timekeeping systems are another great timesaving tool that all office managers can benefit from (also available in the Vault). If you’re still using paper timesheets or Excel to track hours and manage payroll, consider upgrading to a timekeeping system that automatically tracks time off for your employees as it accrues and allows you to pull payroll reports in seconds. Doing so can save you hours every week, which can add up to full calendar days over the course of a year.
No matter how long you’ve been working in your position as an office manager, it’s never too late (or too early) to build a management system that supports you, your practice, and your employees. Hindsight may be 20/20, but instituting a great management strategy is visionary. Give it a try and see what a little forward thinking can do to provide a boost for your practice, both in terms of employee morale and extra time for you.
Ready to implement a winning management strategy for 2020? Start with a free strategy call with a CEDR HR expert!
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