The Cost of Employee Needs

Hello CEOs, welcome to another episode of the CEO Doctor Podcast! Today, I am so excited to Welcome, Kara Kelley. She is an HR consultant who shares her knowledge of the business side of Medicine and Dentistry. She is the founder and CEO of Clinical HR, LLC an education and consulting firm for dental and medical practices.

In addition to building comprehensive HR courses for Doctors, Kara works one-on-one with practice owners to cultivate leadership skills, manage employees, established complaint HR systems, develop employee policies, and procedures, and manage turnover by implementing competitive total reward systems. She is an absolute rock star and I am so excited to have her here to share her knowledge on employee needs with us.

What are Employee NEEDS?

Compensation

 I mean a lot of times you talk about employees and you look at Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and things like that and some of those do it? To the workforce, you know people need to be able to put food on the table and pay the electricity and have a home, and things like that. So the biggest obvious one there is pay; people need to be paid. They need to be fairly compensated for the work that they're doing that can go both ways for a dental or medical practice. But that is definitely number one on a lot of people's priority list. Now. It may not be their main motivating factor and we can talk about that in a little bit as well. But as far as needs go then yes, they need to be compensated so they can provide those essential basic needs.

Sense Of Belonging

For their families. They also need to feel like they belong to a team. They need to feel like they're in an environment that is encouraging and motivating for them to feel like they're actually contributing to something bigger than just the job and most people don't really want to just show up go to work, you know do their job and go home. They want to feel like they're part of something and they want to feel like they're included and you know feel like there's a team at the culture.  I guess third is you would really want to say that they need to feel like they can trust the person that they're working.

Trust

For I am on another podcast as a regular contributor called high-trust practice podcast. And that's one of the common themes that we talked about is having a practice that is built on trust between the team members trust between the doctor or the practice of owner and the employees, you know, you don't want to have that feeling every single day that you go to work is today going to be the day that I got laid off the day they would be the day I get fired. You know my name I really do. I really belong here right being able to trust your team members benefits both sides.

Motivation

People are motivated by different things. Some people are Money Motivated and I have worked with people who are One Hundred percent Money Motivated, they will only go above and beyond if they know they're going to get paid for it. If they know there's going to be a bonus. When you have people (and I'm one of these people so I can truly understand this) who are achievement motivated. I honestly would probably consult for free for the rest of my life if my bill is just magically paid themselves because I want to feel like I'm doing a good job and I love helping people and I love helping them succeed at what they're doing and I feel great whenever a job is well done. And when a client or customer is happy a patient is happy with their business and so some people are truly motivated by the work that they're doing. And those are the kind of people, by the way, you want to work in your practice the ones who thrive on patient satisfaction, and so that's that is legitimately a need there or motivating factor. And then the third one that I can really think of off the top of my head is the people who are motivated by power or authority and sometimes that can be a good thing the ones that really want to have an upward trajectory who have a goal of maybe starting as a front desk, but then eventually want to be that COO, that they really want to learn and grow and take on more responsibility that can also be a good thing. Just depending on how that works for them. And that's one of the things that those types of people in medical practice. Especially a smaller Medical Practice doesn't have as much opportunity. A lot of times you need a different degree and I've known some that are dental assistants and they go and they go to hygiene school and they become hygienists and they do move up and that's great. But in general, there's not a lot of places you can only have so many office managers? So sometimes those can be a little bit harder to motivate in a dental practice or a medical practice just because there's not that availability of upper trajectory, right?

So, how do you help clients help their staff to fill that motivation when they are in a way kind of tapped out and they can't move up anymore. How do you keep them motivated?

There are I mean, there are other things you can do there are incentive structures and ways to feel like they are moving forward with their career you can provide additional training.

Then you can provide additional responsibilities and you know attach that to a higher pay scale and give them something to work toward even though they may not necessarily be managing people. They can still be taking on a bigger role in the practice. Maybe you have an assistant who is just really organized and super detail-oriented and that person takes on the inventory role for example, something like that to where you can give them an incentive and make them feel like they're progressing in their career. Even if they're not really managing people, right? And that's also that gives so much back to the

When you're limited on your people and you are really limited on what you can Outsource and what you can't like me sure so much back to the practice so that I think that's fantastic and cross-training is another thing even if it's not necessarily an expanded role per se but you can have them cross-trained as a front desk, you know doing what they can and in the clinical side of things. Obviously, they have to have certain licenses and there are certain pieces of training there. But as much as they possibly can to help both sides, which really helps you especially in the practices because that means if someone calls in sick, you are less likely to need to call an attempt to come run the front desk because you have somebody who can pitch in.

Common Misconceptions About Employee Needs

When it comes to the needs and wants of employees. The first thing I can think of obviously is pay I think that that's a big one on both sides. So like for the provider and for the employees, but what are some other ones you can think of pay is definitely one and I've seen both sides of this and I have some clients who are just absolutely fantastic and they want to reward their team. They really appreciate what their team members do and those are the fun ones for me to work with because I get to develop some really cool benefits for them. I have a dental practice, for example, who I've recently implemented a vacation stipend and volunteer time off policy, which was something that I had one of their team members come up to me after I presented and she was like, I've never seen these benefits in a dental practice ever and I've been in dentistry for 25 years. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. So those are awesome, you know kinds of things I get to do whenever they really understand how to motivate people and it's advised people with pay the other side of that is I have some practice owners that they really just think that their people are there to draw a paycheck and go home and I pay them. I don't really need to do anything else for them. So that is really a big one quite honestly is a misconception as to how people you know understand pay and what they're really there for. Yeah, they need to take home a paycheck. But like I said, some people are achievement motivated and they really aren't just there for a paycheck they're there to contribute to society. They're there to take care of people and help patients and feel good doing that. So I think that right there is a huge misconception that everyone's just here for a paycheck and you know, I don't really need to do anything past that I see that often enough. The other thing on misconceptions is I think benefits and I think that stems from doctors being 1099 contractors whether they should be or not as a whole different topic, but I think that A lot of associate agreements where they're not W2 employees or if they are they're not getting paid time off. They're not necessarily getting 401k or any of the benefits that some of the other employees are getting. I've had doctors say to me. Well, I didn't get benefits whenever I was working. Why should I give my team any kind of benefits? Well, why don't we try to be better than the places we've worked before that's a good place to start there for one but producers ROI for the practice, you know having people take time off. That's a good thing they come back refreshed and rested and like with this vacation stipend policy one of the stipulations to using it as you have to take off a full week to be able to earn that benefit because this practice understands that relaxed and rested employs people who have the time disconnect are more productive when they return then they would be if they're burned out just taking little bits of time here and there so that's one is employees need to be able to step away from work sometimes even if they love it. 

Boundaries and Expectations

Most people thrive with boundaries when they know their limits, they know that area that they're supposed to work in, most people honestly thrive with boundaries when you just have like I have it open range it. I mean that's a mess all by itself anyway, but people in their role really do thrive when they have boundaries and they have been clear expectations clarifications. That's one of the things it's one of the first lessons. I learned from a business mentor of mine. He had three pillars of management. 

1. Make your expectations clear.

2. Give them the tools to do the job.

3.  Hold them accountable.

You have to have all three of those things in place. So the whole system falls down great and I would say that that's an employee need. How will you measure my success? How do you see the success in this role? That's absolutely a need that an employee needs to have. What is my target to reach for? And then and you know, what are my expectations? What do you want me to do? What am I doing in this role? And you don't have to micromanage it you don't have to hold their hand through the whole thing.

Let them own it. Let them take it freedom and being able to make exercise independent judgment is something that a lot of employers will need. Not everybody. Some people are a little more hand-holding and they want that encouragement that reassurance that they are doing things. Right but there are plenty of people out there that are perfectly capable of hate being adults and doing their job with saying, okay great. I have my checklist. I'm going to follow it. Let me go ahead and get that done and sometimes letting those people just run with it and own that makes them a better employee makes them feel more valued.

The practice makes them feel like part of the team and a lot of times they have great ideas that can actually improve systems that you would have never thought possible as the Doctor who is seeing the patients in the back and not really understanding what's going on at the front desk. Right? Those people are the ones with the way to improve the system. They are they absolutely are and it makes the practice so much more valuable.

Only about 20% of the problems the supervisors are aware of, the front line supervisors might be aware of 75% but the people who are aware of 100% of the problems are the ones who are doing the work; the technicians the assistants, the ones who are actually on the front lines and seeing how those systems actually function. They are aware of just about a hundred percent of the problems that are going on in the practice and the problem is getting that information to the c-suite. 

New Era Of Collaboration?

Coming in that's really allowing this space of collaboration or do you think that there's something else that's going on? That's really creating this better environment and practices. 

It's actually a little bit backward -  there are a lot more of the younger dentist and younger doctors coming in that are potentially more accepting and more comfortable working with their employees. Just kind of depending on their demographic but at the same time if they've come in and they've acquired a practice where maybe it was in practice for 30 years and they've always been doing something wrong like misclassifying employees for example with classifying them as contractors or exempt when they should have been or not using time clocks or whatever the issue is they acquire that and they don't know any difference. So they have to go and actually seek that education out or take that advice out from a consultant and attorney whoever it is that they're working with.

Will to change that and sometimes they don't know to do that. They just accept it as this is the way it's always been done and I have to keep doing it or my employees are going to leave or something's going to go wrong. You know, this practice was successful. That's why I bought it. So let's just keep doing what we've always done and sometimes not it's not the best way I do think now honestly, one of the things I think that's changed a lot of things is social media being able to be so connected and being able to be put on blast for every tiny little thing and it's not something you can prevent.

I think that the high visibility of today's environment is really making practices take a second. Look at how they operate things because they know that if they do something wrong everybody's going to know about it, right? It's shining a light a lot brighter than it used to it really is and that's what you think. That's great that transparency is fantastic. I know this means a consumer I want to go to a practice where people are treated well and people are happy. You know, I want to be at that practice who's giving all this.

Bottom Line:

So a lot of things that I see that the end up affecting the bottom line is non-compliance obviously value to the company, especially your producers and I see producers that are you know elevated in a practice and sometimes the admin team isn't as appreciated in there really should be because it really medicine as a team activity and everybody contributes, but those are the people making money, you know again medicine is a team activity. You cannot answer the phone and schedule people and do treatment planning and do height here. We can't do all of this yourself. You have to have your team there. You're not going to have a practice if you don't and so it sounds cliche but your human resources are your most valuable resources and you really should understand and appreciate that and show them that you appreciate that and then as far as like I was saying non-compliance, that's one of the things that I see costing practice is a lot of money is whenever they're making a mistake.

The IRS the Department of Labor and your state board are not going to accept ignorance as an excuse. Whenever you're not paying people correctly or whenever you've done something you not have timesheets and not paying for overtime when somebody should have been non-exempt and you've cost them as exempt something like that. Those are things that there are actual rules about that at the federal level and you don't get to just say oops. I didn't know about it. You're going to be writing a check and I had seen what that check looks like and it's not fun and that can put some small practices out of business pretty quickly or at least

Make them take a really hard hit to their bottom line for sure. Absolutely and same with employee turnover. That's a high cost. That's one of the things that I hear as a misconception about training doctors and dentists will get kind of little bit upset about the price of paying people for training and that's one of the things I'm actually gonna go speak in April to agree about paying for CE; I'll hear something like well I paid for the course and I paid for their travel in their hotel in the meals. I don't need to pay them for their time.

Yes, you do you really do and you should because that is a huge investment in your practice. You shouldn't be afraid of training and growing your team and their professional development because that has a tenfold benefit to your practice. And I know there's always a concern about them leaving and yeah, you can mitigate that with certain rules and certain agreements with them, but you shouldn't be afraid of somebody leaving.

Richard Branson's quote that says, "that you want to train your people well enough so that they can leave. Treat them well enough to where they don't want to."

You should not be afraid of training them and having them leave to go use that skill somewhere else. You should treat them and motivate them to want to stay and continue to grow them professionally because that benefits everybody. It's so important to make sure you're taking care of your team in a professional aspect as well.

Recipe For Success

I wouldn't say there's any one recipe; a lot of things kind of depend on what type of practice you have. If you're a fee-for-service, it's going to be a little different than if you're an insurance-based practice, but overall being a decent human being and exercising good reasonable judgment is a pretty solid recipe for success and you can apply that in any practice anywhere just, you know to be kind to people treat people the way you want to be treated, Golden Rule. That's not anything that is brand-new or any kind of a thought leader type thing, but it's one of those things that sometimes weirdly enough has to be reminded of that. Your people are valuable and you should treat people the way you want to be treated. You know, they have the same needs that you do as a practice owner and I know they don't have the stress of owning a practice but they all have their own lives and they all have their own stresses and reasons for wanting to come to work or things that are going on outside of their work-life that we all have to be reminded of that and exercising good reasonable judgment things are not black and white and being able to understand that.

Special thank you for Kara Kelley for joining me today! You can connect with her on Facebook or on her website.