8 Ways Leading Dental Practices Enhance Their Staff Experience

Managing a dental practice comes with a lot of responsibilities. As the leader of your practice, patient care is undoubtedly your top priority. However, both financial success for your practice and professional success for you and your employees are equally important. A positive employee experience through a healthy and thriving work environment will ultimately help you deliver on this financial success and better patient experience.

Taking on all of this responsibility can be overwhelming, so we’ve compiled 6 ways to enhance your staff experience to create job satisfaction, improve employee retention and morale and ultimately deliver an impactful patient experience which translates into repeat visits, patient referrals and revenue.

A healthy workplace culture takes its cues from strong leadership. You can’t lead unless your team respects you and you can’t build respect unless they know you. So the first step to creating a positive employee experience and culture in your practice is to build relationships with your team.

Relationships take time and effort. You can’t be the aloof boss who eats lunch alone in his/her office. You have to be willing to eat together, have conversations about work and non-work topics, share experiences, and genuinely care about your team members’ lives.

Building relationships does not mean being best friends with everyone on your team. You can be friendly, but it’s important to still maintain some professional distance and boundaries because at some point you may have to make hard decisions regarding their employment. You don’t want friendships getting in the way of your ability to make good decisions for your business.

Communication breakdown is one of the key challenges of busy dental offices. When communication isn't fluid between staff members, every aspect of your practice can begin to suffer. You'll need to go the extra mile to make sure that the lines of communication remain open and that all of your employees feel heard and fully understand their responsibilities and your expectations.

One way to help you communicate clearly to your staff and pursue a positive work environment is to put everything in writing. This includes any procedural or schedule changes, as well as anything else that will impact your office staff. Putting your plans in writing may help prevent misunderstandings via verbal communication.

The perfect way to accomplish this is through an integrated healthcare management platform. Leading platforms support simple, seamless and effective internal communication. For example, you can communicate with your team with advanced task management and notes functions offering two way communication so they know exactly what their responsibilities are for every shift and mark tasks as completed with notes back to you so you know what has been accomplished.

You can also have a short meeting every morning to set expectations for the day where you allow employees to make you aware of any issues that may impact the day, or host a working lunch once every week or two where you can meet with your staff and take a deeper dive into solid communication.

Finally, use communication to keep the dental office light and positive. Don’t be afraid to use humor, just keep it appropriate for the workplace. Praise your team when they perform well. When there is a problem, use solution-focused language to move forward and avoid blaming people and exacerbating the conflict.

Employee recognition is huge in any workplace, but it's especially important for working environments that are innately stressful to a certain degree. The dental industry certainly fits the bill, so make sure to keep employee recognition high on your priority list.

Be sure to applaud employees who routinely go above and beyond the call of duty at your practice. This “going above and beyond” could include helping a coworker, reworking an established process so it’s more efficient, maintaining a positive attitude, taking on additional responsibilities and more.

Remember the adage, “an employee (or person) who feels appreciated will always do more than expected.” This phrase is more than mere words, it’s actually been proven scientifically accurate.

When your employees go out of their way to help a patient, resolve a conflict with another employee in a positive manner, or engage in any behavior that helps foster a positive culture, recognize them. Make sure these actions are stored and reflected in your staff's employment record within your integrated healthcare management platform for future reference during performance reviews and potential pay raises providing the well deserved recognition. You can also send a thank you email or a place Post-It note for them in their work area for quick, daily kudos. In cases where employees deserve more recognition, consider a small gift at the end of the month given during staff meetings to recognize and reward staff members who have gone out of their way to create positivity.

It's inevitable that administrative staff, hygienists or dental assistants will need to take time off and sometimes unexpectedly in the case of illness or emergency. If your current staff isn't cross trained to do different jobs, your practice (and your patients) can feel the sting of the missing employee.

Ensure your staff is cross trained to perform different jobs in a pinch, but avoid cross-training a single employee to know how to do more than one other job (or two if the jobs are closely related). Employees should feel capable of doing the second job when needed but not overwhelmed by too many responsibilities. It’s understandable some job roles require certificates and formalized training such as dental assistants; however training staff to help with administrative tasks like reception in event your receptionist is ill is crucial to a smooth running practice that consistently delivers on a positive patient experience.

If giving employees additional responsibilities through cross training, also be sure that you provide the corresponding pay. Ensuring they are paid appropriately for all they do or even generously will show them they are valued for their work and the time invested in the practice. Doing so will ensure that they feel immensely valuable to your practice.

Team members who get along and like working together will naturally foster a positive culture in your dental office. If you hire someone who is too different from the group, there’s a good chance you’ll create fractures that erode the office vibe.

Whenever you hire someone, ask yourself how well they will fit in with the group. If you can, invite a potential hire to work a few days with your team before you make your final decision (paid time of course!). Ask your team for input on whether potential new hire will fit in with the group.

If you have an employee who doesn’t seem to get along with the group, it’s critical that you remove them from the workplace. A disruptive employee who always seems to be at the center of tension – whether through their own actions or simple incompatibility – will poison your office and ultimately give good employees a reason to leave.

Leadership isn’t simple and leading well can be a challenge. However, if you want to create a positive work environment for your practice, you have to lead the way as the practice owner. It starts with you! If you want your team to behave in a certain way, you have to exhibit that behavior at all times. Your team will look to you as an example. No mission statement, value list, or standard operating procedure is as effective as your behavior.

If you want your staff to have fun, you have to demonstrate the type of fun culture you want to instill in your practice. If you tell your team that communication is important, but then fail to communicate with them at critical times, they won’t take communication seriously. They’ll question how important communication really is to you if you’re not communicating effectively with them. If you expect everyone to be a team player, even if a task doesn’t fall within the bounds of their job description, it’s important to model that. You aren’t too good to answer the phone or take out the trash.

It’s also important to have an open-door policy so your staff feels they can come to you with any questions or concerns without fear of your reaction.

Last but certainly not least, have fun! A dental practice or any place of business for that matter shouldn’t feel like a prison or invoke feelings of dread. Don’t worry though, you can still have an environment that is both professional and fun at the same time.

Try implementing some of these ideas into your practice to create a fun, light-hearted workplace that evokes positive feelings:

• Start a casual Friday or “print day” for staff who wear scrubs, allowing employees to choose a printed scrub or their scrub pants
• Let your staff decorate for the holidays or play music
• Create fun work-place challenges
• Keep your break room stocked with goodies and more
• Hold workplace wellness workshops or host wellness challenges

The overall goal is to just make your office fun and a place that your team looks forward to coming to every day.

Creating a positive dental office culture isn’t a one and done thing. Fostering a healthy culture to drive a positive employee experience is a daily responsibility, even if the culture already feels positive. You need to take action to maintain an already positive culture to avoid any issues from coming up.

Enact the tips listed above to pursue a positive work environment and experience for your staff and your patients. Don’t worry about your office suddenly becoming unprofessional simply because you are inserting a little light-heartedness into the office setting. Having fun doesn't mean being unprofessional. It simply means you’re creating a more positive work environment for all involved.

If you aren’t happy with your office culture, you know that creating a positive one takes effort and time. It’s important to start right away. If you aren’t taking your office’s culture seriously, there could be unseen issues that eat away at everyone’s job satisfaction.

For more tips on managing your practice effectively, download our Ultimate Guide to Creating Order from Chaos in Your Dental Practice.