One of the biggest issues that private practice owners have is getting staff who are willing to work hard and are able to HAVE FUN doing it. In this day and age it can be difficult to find the right staff and even harder to keep HARD WORK FUN.
If you are like me, one of the reasons you decided to be a private practice owner was that you wanted to enjoy work again, and be able to practice the way you wanted to without someone standing over your shoulder all the time telling you what and how to do things. But in reality we never really learned how to manage people and do it with everyone being HAPPY.
In all my years of private practice I have learned some tips on how to get the most out of my team but to do so with EVERYONE HAVING A GREAT TIME doing it. I once read that “Production is the basis for morale”. What that means to me is that it really is possible for a group to be both BUSY and HAVE FUN DOING IT.
Here are three tips that I have found work really well in my practice and have allowed us to have great success and growth despite what is going on in the economy.
- ALL STAFF NEED A GOAL TO SHOOT FOR. I think we would all agree, we don’t intentionally hire “bad people”. But what happens quite often is that we hire people who have good intentions and then they end up “not working out”. It might be hard to believe but in most of those cases where it didn’t work out it was because that particular staff member didn’t have a goal to work towards or they had one but they didn’t understand it. As the owner, it is our responsibility to not only hire good people but to get them all on the same page and build a culture. Basically, this means getting them to share the same purpose. If you have staff who are “busy” but not actually getting the outcome you are looking for, or if you have staff who are pointing fingers at each other, they are not on the same purpose. When this is happening the morale of the group starts to go down and the “funness” of work starts to go away. As the owner, you get more and more frustrated and before you know it you may become the dictator you were trying to get away from when you started your practice in the first place.
So the question is, “How do you get them to share the same purpose?”. It comes down to targets and goals. Understand that staff are setting targets and goals themselves if they are not given them. That rock star staff member is most likely someone who is able to set their own targets and they just happen to match up with what your expectations are. But what about everyone else? Well, they are setting targets, it’s just that the targets they are setting are things like: “I will make these phone calls (it doesn’t matter if they answer and schedule or not)”, “I will see the patients that show up and if they cancel, I will use that time to catch up on notes”, and more.
The problem with these targets / goals is that they don’t produce what you, the owner, need and they don’t help the practice to grow and they definitely don’t help the staff member to stay on purpose. When their purpose goes down it pulls their morale down, and before you know it they are “unhappy” in their job and it begins to spread like wildfire through the practice. Look at professional sports teams as an example. The incentives that players are given is not just to pay them more money. It is to drive them to a common purpose, playing really well, and excelling at their craft. That is what any team owner wants spreading like wildfire through their practice.
As the owner you can set the tone of the practice and set targets for staff. These would be things like:
- For the front office: Make phone calls to patients who are not scheduled for their full plan of care and get 4 of them scheduled.
- For a clinician: Follow up with anyone who has canceled an appointment in the past two weeks and get them rescheduled for that visit. Or, write 10 hand written letters to past patients and check in to see how they are doing.
- For a biller: get the AR beyond 60 days down to only 2% of our total AR
These are goals and targets that will not only help the practice but keep them focused on what it is that they are to be doing during the day. The best thing is their morale will increase when they achieve the target and before you know it everyone will be high fiving each other when the target is met.
- PLAY GAMES WITH YOUR STAFF: Everyone, even the most boring person you know, deep down likes to play games. So, lets define a “game”. In this context, a game is a challenge to meet the targets that you just set out in #1 above. The game needs to be one that they can win, but not one that they could win with their hands tied behind their backs blindfolded. Games don’t have to cost you money, and to be honest most people do not do what they do simply for a “money reward”. The game can be something like if you hit 75% of your targets for this week you can wear jeans on Friday, you can all wear your favorite sports jersey, or we will have a pot luck lunch during the next staff meeting. Or it could be recognition of the department / group that hits the most targets gets a trophy. I used to take an old trophy from when my daughter played sports (they get trophies for everything now adays so one of them won’t be missed) and made a hand written plaque that said “Weekly Winner” on it. We would award the trophy for the week to a staff member who hit the most targets and make a big deal of it at a staff meeting. Before I knew it there was this big competition to win the trophy away from each other week after week. It was a great thing to see. This kept work fun and kept them all engaged and working towards the goals I had set in #1 above. It was a win-win for everyone and best of all they were LAUGHING and JOKING (trash talking) with each other all week long. All for this crummy trophy I took off the dusty shelf in my daughter’s room (I don’t think she even knows to this day 8 years later that it went missing).
- PUT ORDER AND COMMUNICATION BACK IN YOUR PRACTICE: Many times morale goes down because “people don’t know”. Our human brain is a very powerful thing and when it doesn’t have data, it makes up its own data. This can be a dangerous thing for us as the owner. If our staff don’t have data and they start making things up we can quickly lose control of the practice, especially as we add more staff and start growing. This is where systems come in to play. We need to have a “system” for how to do things. This way everyone is on the same page and doing things the same way. So, look for areas in your practice where the outcome is not the ideal way you want it to be and ask yourself these questions:
- “what system is in place?”
- If there is a system then ask yourself “are my staff ALL following the system?”
- If they are then ask yourself “is this system working?”.
This will tell you where you need to put your attention and most of all help to keep your staff on the same page and prevent them from pointing fingers at each other.
Additionally, we need to set expectations. I don’t want to say that our staff are completely like our kids, but to an extent they are. They need to know what you expect of them. Even if it is as simple as “I need you to see 55 patients per week”. This way they know how they are doing in your eyes.
Once we set these expectations we need to improve how, how much, and how often we communicate with our staff about these things. If you are already a good communicator, my suggestion is do a little more of it. Even if it is to just acknowledge the good work they are doing. This is where it becomes so important to “check in” with your staff on a regular basis. Not only to just see how they are doing but to be able to read what is going on, how they are doing hitting your expectations and your targets, how they are doing using your systems, etc. I have a thing I do every day in my practice. I go around and ask everyone:
- “how are things”,
- “do you need anything from me?”.
I am not asking them these things because I am going to do it for them, I am asking them so that I know what the issues are they are dealing with and I can direct them on how to solve it themselves.
Regardless, communication is the solvent that keeps everyone together. Without communication, from the owner, staff start making up their own reality and before you know it every staff member is operating on their own, the morale of the group is lost and production is going down.
This is just a short summary of many, many things that you can do to help MAKE WORK FUN. Before you know it, staff are in way higher spirits and with this comes more efficiency and more production.
I would love to hear what you think about this topic as well as any others you may be interested in. Feel free to email me at mike@fortisbusinesssolutions.com.
Check us out on Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MeasurableSolutions
Check us out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/measurablesolutions/?hl=en
Check us out on Twitter:
