In today’s employee environment, with dental practices across the country struggling to find great team members, practices need an intentional, effective approach to hiring and onboarding. When you find a “keeper,” it’s important to set them up for success and longevity. Here are three key areas of focus.
1. Strategic Hiring and Recruitment Strategies
Craft and distribute an effective job post. With many practices looking for the same team member position, your post needs to stand out. Job descriptions should be mission-focused and culture-focused. People want to work in a place that aligns with their purpose, vision, and career goals. The use of AI offerings, such as ChatGPT, can help a practice rewrite its current post to be more engaging. Having current team members share the job opening in their social media and with qualified dental peers can help ensure that the job opportunity is being put in front of strong candidates. Looking beyond the typical job post options and seeking out Facebook groups, dental and hygiene schools, and trade schools can aid in sharing your job posting with more candidates.
Manage your online presence. Potential applicants are likely doing their own homework and looking at your online presence. An appealing, up-to-date, and effective website is not only important for attracting new patients but also for being the first line of communication to potential new employees regarding who and what you are as a practice. Your website and social media presence need to present your practice in a positive light.
Develop a structured interview process. When interviewing job candidates, explore both the candidate’s experience and potential. It is important to ask questions to determine if your and their core values will align together. Assess their experience versus their potential by balancing past achievements with future readiness. Determine whether they have a great attitude for continuous development. Do they have a history of taking initiative? Do they appear to be a strong, team-focused individual? Are they passionately curious about their profession and skills development? Are they coachable?
2. Effective Onboarding and Training
Establish a formal onboarding process. A calendar should be in place that timelines when, where, who, and how the practice will train the new team member on all the important aspects of the position. The practice’s vision and expectations must be communicated at the start. Roles and responsibilities must be defined and made clear to the new team member.
Implement a consistent training plan. Steps to effective training include: defining the new team member’s role, the process, and/or the system; demonstrating the steps of the process or system; observing the new team member executing the steps; coaching them to improvement; and delegating the responsibilities to them when they appear ready.
Training progress should be effectively digitized, delegated, and tracked. While this may seem like a great deal of work at the beginning, in the long run it sets new team members up to be able to do the job correctly from the start.
3. Foundations for Long-Term Success
To facilitate long-term success with employees requires establishing the foundations of strong practice systems, effective communication, and a healthy work culture. These foundations become a reality through strong leadership, strategy, and operations across the board in your practice. Strong leadership starts with the practice owner and leaders, and extends to each team member. Strong strategy begins with a clear vision of what a great workday and workflow look like, and executing the vision consistently. Strong operations come from both how you run the practice to how the practice runs.
Great organizations, including successful dental practices, are committed to continuous improvement and engagement. Consider incorporating ways to make team meetings more effective; analyzing all of the practice’s procedures; and continuous goal setting to keep the practice moving forward.
Conclusion
The success of a dental practice is in direct proportion to the success of its systems. Training new team members intentionally helps them connect more quickly to your practice culture while also setting them up to successfully execute their role at a high level. When training is done correctly from the beginning, new team members win, the practice wins, and patients win.
