Last week, I promised you my ultimate secret for making new team members successful and I’m going to tell you – but – before we talk about that I think it is important for you to know about the ways practices wrongly incorporate new team members and why they often set up new team members to fail instead of succeed.
The single biggest mistake I see teams make when moving in a new team member is just throwing them into the role in sink-of-swim fashion. They then complain every step of the way, weeks and months later, that they are making mistakes or not doing well or missing things. Yet, they were never given clear, specific, outlined and detailed responsibilities that illustrated the personal accountability, role descriptions and priorities that are going to be their top areas of contribution.
Usually, this is because you are busy every day all day and then suddenly lose a team member to become down one person. Then you hire the next new person and expect them to step into the role of the former without often even knowing what that is.
This is why I have long been an advocate and strongly advised on having depth on the bench. That it is always better to hire one extra person than you need and have them do things that most practices never get around to…
– Follow-up on treatment
– Pursue reactivation
– Have impeccable cleaning
– Ensure better clinical room flow
– Visit referral sources in the community
– Work on marketing
– etc.
I can keep going if you want and that is giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are doing other things that the average (outside the scope of the people reading this), normal practice never does.
Imagine this: one person, at a reasonable hourly amount, that you keep on board so that you are always PLUS one person instead of ever MINUS one; which then allows you to always be in control of your team and personnel. You are in position to integrate someone in a proactive and beneficial way, instead of chaotic turmoil.
They will and should pay for themselves in a month for the year if you do it right and use them properly. It is really more like an insurance policy – you hope you never need it but you have it just in case so you are never caught in a tight spot.
Finally, I would tell you that the real reason so many make mistakes in bringing new team members on board is a double sided coin.
Either you let existing team members become territorial and they do not work well with incoming people (for many reasons, some obvious and some not, that are beyond the point of this article).
Or you let a person into the team when you know for sure their personality definitely doesn’t mix or their skill is way below the level of expectations you have and you just accept it.
In nearly every case you can predict the outcome of your incoming team members. What we now have to do is ensure the success of the good ones.
Which brings me to next week. My secret. You won’t believe this. It will solve every problem you have ever had with new ‘qualified’ people and it will ensure they are up to speed very quickly to become an effective team member for the long run.
Get ready, it’s coming next week…
