In today’s landscape, dental leadership requires a more hands-on approach than ever before to attract and retain talent as dental practitioners weigh the risks of working in the ‘new normal.’ The frustrations of orchestrating a good team can be daunting, especially if you’re unable to attract the most qualified candidates for your positions, if any at all. A historic job market flux and largely static rates for people trying to get into the profession don’t help.
Practices across the board are reacting in contrasting ways to try and account for these issues. Some offices have let staff members go to cut costs and reshuffle their framework. Other offices are expanding their team using the dental temp model. These offices are bringing in temporary staff to fill hygienist, dental associate, and administrative roles, among others. Regardless of the approach, dental leaders constantly have to adjust to keep their practices running optimally.
Dental Leaders are Getting Headstarts in Finding Talent
Especially for dental leaders in charge of smaller teams, there is a greater need to emphasize every team member’s value. Having a smaller team means more responsibility, requires more flexibility and careful management from leaders to navigate daily operations without sacrificing productivity or team morale. Covering for missing team members can be incredibly disruptive and stressful for leaders, especially if there’s no immediate plan to fill roles, whether due to financial constraints or a lack of qualified applicants. You also don’t want to just hire the first qualified applicant that becomes available if you’re unsure whether or not they fit within your dental business framework.
Easing some of the burdens requires creating clear job descriptions and establishing performance accountabilities for the new roles that dental leaders try to fill. Doing this in the early stages of recruitment creates clear expectations for new hires, establishing a confident and collaborative work culture that new workers will feel comfortable in. Dental leaders improve their chances of hiring the best fits for their organization by creating definitive job requirements. Leaders should be calm during interviews because they know what they’re looking for rather than being desperate and putting off candidates because they have unclear needs.
Furthermore, leaders have more time to set up meetings with new hires and the dental team so they get used to each other from the outset. And, dental leaders can follow a more structured hiring system, including interviews, phone screenings and the initial job offer.
Hiring Slow and Firing Fast
Showing patience is something dental leaders must do to improve the recruitment process
Patience is hard to rest on as a dental owner because so much of the leadership role demands quick thinking. However, bringing in permanent or temporary hires through a dental temp agency requires patience to attract the ideal candidates. Team members can conduct interviews with top job prospects to determine the candidate’s compatibility. Take the time to conduct a working interview, a practical type of interview that assesses how candidates do in real-life situations, to judge how well they perform on the job and their interactions with their prospective dental teammates.
Within the first 90 days, dental leaders will know whether or not the person they’ve hired is the best fit for the team. During those 90 days, dental leaders must optimize their onboarding process, training programs, and support systems to make new hires feel comfortable in their new surroundings. Through these optimized processes, dental leaders successfully prepare their hires for long-term success. Having these processes in place also help leaders determine whether or not they have identified the right person within the 90 days.
If dental leaders have perfected the onboarding process and have second thoughts about the permanent or dental temp staff they’ve hired, it’s better to make changes as soon as possible rather than wait and hope for improvements.
Refining the Onboarding Process
Speaking of onboarding, constantly refining the onboarding process enhances the possibility that new dental team members will seamlessly fit into the framework of a dental practice. Having a solid and clear 90-day onboarding process significantly improves the chance that new hires will succeed. Many dental leaders opt for the ‘figure it out as we go along’ kind of approach. As a result, they might see limited progression among their new hires, preventing them from being strong long-term employees.
With an effective and streamlined onboarding process, dental leaders can improve their communication. This applies to new hires. As a result, they dramatically boost the size of their hiring pool. Components for a reliable onboarding system include:
- A clear job description
- A detailed employee handbook
- Having an ‘anchor’ or an experienced team member to guide new hires
- Consistent coaching feedback sessions, increasing the sessions over time
- Settling clear performance expectations within the 90-day onboarding period to compare those expectations to any performance milestones achieved
Fostering a Healthier Work Culture
A good work culture makes it much easier for new hires to succeed
Improving the work culture is pertinent to making staff feel comfortable with their new environment. Leaders want to ensure a pleasant atmosphere for staff, making it a gossip-free atmosphere and encouraging collaboration among team members.
Leaders should celebrate staff accomplishments and personal achievements like a birthday or a positive life-changing event. Also, holding regular meetings and fostering as much feedback as possible from new team members is important. Employees want to feel like their opinions and suggestions matter just as much as the existing practitioners.
Another key aspect of improving the work culture for dental leaders is commending their employees on their hard work. In addition, dental leaders should be accommodating unique working styles. Dental leaders are respecting the fact that staff members have different work styles that equally improve productivity within a practice. Different approaches to work can facilitate greater teamwork in a practice. Additionally, showing appreciation to staff will increase their motivation to produce the best possible output each workday.
Identify the right dental workers to fit your practice’s framework. The process can be eased considerably by employing dental temp agencies like TempStars. Sign up today and find the ideal temporary staffers for your dental business.
