Retaining a long-term orthodontic team starts with creating a workplace where team members feel valued, fairly compensated, and trusted to contribute at the highest level.
By Roger P. Levin, DDS
In an era where it is becoming more challenging to maintain a long-term orthodontic team, several tactics can be utilized to help attract and retain the best employees in your practice.
1. Adopt a relationship-based approach to building your team.
The best practices have shifted from transactional employment to relationship-based employment. Transactional employment can be thought of simply as “I pay you. You work for me.” Most orthodontic practices are friendly places and benefit from taking a more relationship-based approach to employment.
In a relationship-based environment team members (including the leaders) take a true interest in each other and care for both the quality of their work life and their personal lives. This may sound like an extra burden to some orthodontists or office managers, but in reality, it is essential to maintaining the team.
Getting to know people at a deeper level, holding periodic one-to-one meetings where you can assess their level of satisfaction and enjoyment in the practice, identifying opportunities for growth and development, and expanding responsibilities are all part of relationship-based employment. This may be the single most important factor in maintaining a long-term orthodontic team.
2. Provide fair compensation.
Fair compensation means that you are paying people at the right percentile of the going market rates for orthodontic staff in your area. If I were leading an orthodontic practice, I would compensate team members at a minimum of 10% above the market rates. This way you don’t have team members leaving the practice for a small difference in financial compensation.
3. Treat your team like equals.
Historically many practices have applied a “doctor or office manager in charge” mentality. But the concept of everybody being equally accountable to know and do their job will achieve better team cohesion and an “ownership mentality.”
Consider the relationship between a physician and a registered nurse. Physicians rely on nurses almost as equals to carry out a great deal of medicine. Orthodontists should feel the same way about their teams and should work to delegate everything that they are allowed to delegate and ensure the team members have the training and background to conduct the necessary tasks and services.
Promoting a sense that everyone is equal, has a job to do, and should do it to the very best of their ability creates a culture of trust amongst the team and much higher levels of team satisfaction. You are instilling pride as well as meaning in the jobs.
Listen, team members get sick, retire, or have to move. Those situations cannot always be controlled or avoided. What you can control is how enjoyable, easy, and fun you make the job for each team member, and how you give them meaning and purpose in both their professional and personal lives. Believe it or not, if you follow most or all of the tips listed above, you are virtually guaranteed to keep your team longer. OP
Photo: ID 157294815 © Andrii Yalanskyi | Dreamstime.com
Roger P. Levin, DDS, is the CEO and founder of Levin Group, a leading practice management consulting firm that has worked with over 30,000 practices to increase production. A recognized expert on orthodontic practice management and marketing, he has written 67 books and over 4,000 articles and regularly presents seminars in the U.S. and around the world. To contact Levin or to join the 40,000 dental professionals who receive his Practice Production Tip of the Day, visit levingroup.com or email [email protected].
