In this episode of The Strategic Thinker, Drs. John Meis and Jason Howell map out the important priorities when onboarding new team members. Onboarding is a process that is often neglected in dental offices, but it’s crucial to the success of new hires. Without proper onboarding, productivity suffers, the patient experience can be affected, and turnover can quickly worsen.
Watch this week’s episode to learn a simple system to create a great experience every time you hire someone new.
Dr. John Meis: Hey everybody! Welcome to this week’s edition of The Strategic Thinker. I’m Dr. John Meis and I’m here with Dr. Jason Howell. How are you doing, Jason?
Dr. Jason Howell: I’m doing great, John, it’s good to see you.
Dr. John Meis: Awesome, good to see you too. So, we thought we would talk a little bit today about driving culture in your organization. In one of the places where we have the opportunity to do that is with onboarding employees. So, I thought we would go through just a really quick matrix on how to think about onboarding employees and how to make that be as effective as possible, and set you up and set the employees up for even greater success. Make sense?
Dr. Jason Howell: Sounds like a great plan. Yes, very important.
Dr. John Meis: So, when it comes to onboarding, I always think that the very first thing that we should be talking about is really our cultural foundation. So, that’s our mission, vision, and values. So Jason, when you have somebody new coming on board, what are some ways that you do that for new people in your organization?
Dr. Jason Howell: Well, we start with even talking about the mission, vision, and values on our interview process. You know, we want to make sure that we’re letting them know who we are. An interview is… we always think about it as we want to find out more about the interviewee, but it’s a great opportunity to let them know what our organization is about. We want to make sure that they’re a fit for us, but hopefully we’re a fit for them as well. Then, we also dive right into it, when we do hire new employees, we have a packet that we’ll go through that does have our mission, vision, and values, sharing ultimately why we do what we do. And, I think that’s so important. A lot of us focus so much on what we do, but really getting down to the why we do what we do. And, I think that sets a great foundation for the growth of the employee and the growth of the organization.
Dr. John Meis: Yeah, couldn’t agree more, particularly now in this environment where team members are scarce, hard to find, and we have to make sure that we keep every one that we possible can, because there’s not another one standing on the corner waiting to jump in.
Dr. Jason Howell: Right, right.
Dr. John Meis: So, the next thing on our onboarding process, I think it’s really important to talk about expectations. And, this is a 2-way street, our expectation of the employee and their expectation of us as employers. And, I think this is a really slick way of just helping them understand the things that are very important to the organization that they’re going to fulfill, and vice versa. So, this is really a conversation.
Dr. Jason Howell: Yeah, and one other thing I would add to that is in this day and age, in this culture as you mentioned, employees are scarce. We are seeing more and more of our new hires have no dental experience whatsoever. And, when you don’t come from a family of dentists or you’re not involved in dentistry, really you don’t have any idea what you’re jumping into. And so, setting those expectations, even in the interview process, but definitely early in the beginning is so important because a lot of these new hires that don’t have any dental experience, within a couple weeks they’re so overwhelmed. So, setting expectations on what we expect from them, but also giving them the expectation of what dentistry really is, what’s involved. It’s a people business and a lot of people don’t realize that either when they get into it. And, this goes with even hiring new dentists as well, and new hygienists, brand new out of school, really helping them understand what the expectation of dentistry is, and what our expectations of team members and support for them as well.
Dr. John Meis: Yeah. And, when people reach that overwhelm, where maybe your expectations overwhelm their capabilities, it’s super important to make sure that you recognize that, because nothing will drive somebody out of an organization faster than being in that overwhelmed state for a long period of time, which brings us to the next one which is support. You know, making clear what kind of support that employee can expect and being willing to identify places where maybe this employee needs extra support in this area and this one needs less in that area and more in another area.
Dr. Jason Howell: Yeah, and I think with the support comes… it really falls back on us as the leaders of the group and the leaders of the practice. What we do with new hires is weekly check-ins, and I would suggest, even not with new hires, but with current employees at least, at the very minimum, is monthly check-ins. A lot of us have a monthly team meeting and things like that, but I don’t think that does enough to really support or check in with individuals. And so, we like to make sure that we’re checking in one-on-one with individuals and really provide that support. The other thing I would mention, as we’re growing as an organization, and as a lot of our viewers on here are trying to grow their own organizations, is right now is such a prime time to grow and expand our groups. There’s lots of purchase opportunities, lots of growth opportunities, but having a really strong support organization as the growth occurs. I’ve been involved so many times where our growth has exceeded the support supplied, and I always like to remind people that it’s great to grow as long as you grow in a responsible and safe manner. And, I know I’ve heard you say that many, many times, “We want to grow quickly, but we want to grow smartly.” And, I think the support portion is sometimes overlooked, and that is so key when you’re growing and adding new employees, new doctors, new locations.
Dr. John Meis: Yep, you grow faster than you can support it, the wheels are going to fall off that bus, and I’ve seen it happen so many times. Now, organizations have private equity money coming in, so they have more money than they can deploy well, and so it’s a lot easier to buy or build practices than it is to run them. And so, we have to make sure that we keep that in balance on an individual level but also on an organizational level. So, the next piece that I think is important is “people and places”, making sure that when we onboard, that person really gets connected to the people. And, one of the ways of doing that is making sure that they know who their boss is and also linking them up with a buddy. I had an employee one time who, after 4 days, quit and in the exit interview I said, “What happened? I thought we were going good.” And she said, “Nobody likes me here.” And it was really inaccurate, everybody liked her, everybody thought she was a great fit. And I was saying, “From what I see, I see everybody likes you, I haven’t heard a word of anything other than that.” And she said, “Well, nobody invited me to lunch.” So, all the team would go off in different groups to lunch and no one invited her, and she felt like they didn’t invite her because they didn’t like her. So, I really felt bad for that employee because even though that wasn’t true, even though I tried to talk her into staying, that was it for her. She just felt so awkward socially. So, we have to connect people with people. And, the other thing is connect people with places. So, when I think of places, I think, “Okay, here’s where you’re going to be working. Here’s where you put your purse or your coat or whatever. Here’s where we do this. Here’s where we do that,” to get them ingrained into the normal things. So, although those things sound simple, they really aren’t and they’re really important. And, if you fail to provide them, it just is one more piece of stress that the new employee has that’s unnecessary. It takes just a very simple conversation and we can lower the stress level on new people coming in, because we all know it’s stressful enough already.
Dr. Jason Howell: Right, yeah, and you make a very unique point that people want to feel a part of something. You know, we have new hires come in and we’re still at the daily grind, we kind of forget what it was like for our first day. You know, what we’ve done in our practices and suggest to others is that on that day that they come in, we have a little welcome banner or poster board and their locker is decorated if you have lockers, or their operatory that they’re going to work out of… things that just really help them understand that we are really excited to have a new employee join us. And, the other thing I would mention with people and places and having a buddy, is a mentor, assigning somebody to be kind of their mentor to bring them on. I know that you and I feel very strongly about mentors and mentorship, and I know that I wouldn’t be where I am without it, so anytime we have a new hygienist come in, we have one of our hygienists become their mentor. And, the same thing, usually one of our assistants will take over as the lead mentor in there. And, we do that with dentists as well, so when we have a new dentist come in we want to make sure they’ve got somebody that they can bounce ideas off of, because everywhere is different. Every time you walk into a new practice, although it’s dentistry, everything’s done a little differently. So, it’s so important to pair people up and make sure they have what we would call a “trudging buddy”, somebody’s got to help them get to where they want to be.
Dr. John Meis: Yep, so true. The next part of onboarding that I think is important is the key processes. So, really helping them to understand, not all the detail, but just understand that we have some core systems that we use in our office. They are what leads to our success, the ability to do things in a predictable manner so that we can have a consistent patient experience is very important. And, I think it’s important for new employees to understand that, that our practices are process-driven, we do have systems, and that’s how we do things. And so, letting them know kind of what the handful of really, super core processes are and why is important to help people get started. And of course, one of those processes is: What is the process for training? And so, we use the 3-3-3 system, but there are many different types of training systems, but helping them understand what their role is in the training, how much of it is self-directed, how much is going to be mentor-driven.
Dr. Jason Howell: Yeah, and as you mentioned, we all operate with processes and having some sort of training module is so important. And, what we have at my practice and I’ve done this for many years in different practices, I practice in J-Town, Kentucky and at our practice I call it “The J-Town Way”. And it’s just a simple list, instead of all the different processes we have, it’s a list of about 10 things, and it’s the 10 core things that we do every day for every person that is just our way to do it. And, it’s very simple, but it makes us a little different. And so, the first week we go through The J-Town Way. And then, I’m a big believer in, “Let’s focus on the top 1 or 2 things that are most important at a time, and let’s just nail those down.” So, usually what we’ll do is every day or 2 we’ll have 2 main things that we’re going to focus on, and we’ll do those and talk about them for a couple of days and then we might have 2 others. After a week, we’ve already knocked out the 6 or 8 or 10 and that’s fantastic. (Video cuts out)
Dr. John Meis: So, we’ve lost Jason here. And so, the last one is… Oh, there we go, you’re back now!
Dr. Jason Howell: Sorry. I’m back! Technology at its finest. (Laughs)
Dr. John Meis: That’s right. You never know when we’re going to get a little internet wobble.
Dr. Jason Howell: (Laughs) But as I said, just having those processes in place and remembering not to overwhelm the individual, but having some specific things and a good system as far as how do we knock those things out in a relatively easy, timely manner.
Dr. John Meis: Yep, awesome. And, the last thing that we think is important in the onboarding process is to have celebrations. And so, celebrations are simply identifying things that are going right and making sure that we’re giving lots and lots of positive reinforcement to new employees. All of us perform better when our confidence level is high, and when we’re starting something new our confidence is naturally not very high. And so, we’ve got to make sure we’re giving energy to this and celebrations are a great way to do it. One of the great management books talks about walking around and finding people doing things right. And, I think that’s really what I mean by celebrations is just finding any little thing that they’re doing well, doing correctly, and just making sure that you recognize the fact that they’re doing well. And, giving them that confidence which allows them to have even more extra energy because they’re not churning up with anxiety about whether they’re doing well or not.
Dr. Jason Howell: That is so important. We, in the dental profession, we are so busy and this is such an important piece that we forget to do on a daily basis. We talk to a lot of groups and it’s, “Once a month we do this. Or, we might go out for lunch or have a picnic.” But, the small little daily affirmations, just that they did a great job on a 2-on-1 hand-off, or that they really helped this patient feel more comfortable, or the celebrations of teamwork. Somebody was running behind and another person got their patient back. It doesn’t seem that large in the moment, but acknowledging that and acknowledging it on a daily basis and in a timely manner, it’s so important on the morale of the team.
Dr. John Meis: Yep. Well, very good. So, those are our tips on onboarding and how to drive your culture into new people coming on board. Jason, thanks as always, great job.
Dr. Jason Howell: So good to see you, and thank you again, as always, for having me on. Really appreciate it.
Dr. John Meis: You bet. And, that’s it for this week’s Strategic Thinker, we’ll see you next time.
Dr. Jason Howell: See you next time.
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