Dr. John Meis: Alright, hey everybody! I’m Dr. John Meis, here with Spark Dental Network, and this is another episode of The Strategic Thinker. So, I’m here today with Melissa Thomas, one of our team, how are you doing Melissa?

Melissa Thomas: I’m good, hi Dr. John!

Dr. John Meis: So, Spark Dental Network helps group dental practices and DSOs drive their enterprise value, we do that by using the Dental Enterprise Value Matrix and we found the things that drive value fall into these 4 quadrants. And today, we’re going to be talking about the Personnel Quadrant. It’s such a critical thing, and right now it’s never been more important because the number of people looking for employment in dentistry is down from where it was. And, the biggest problem most of our practices are having is having enough team members. And so, in the Personnel Quadrant there’s team attraction and retention, and we’re going to talk about one simple retention strategy today, and that’s team onboarding. So, Melissa you’ve done a lot of work in this area already, haven’t you?

Melissa Thomas: I have. I was fortunate enough to get to work with a lot of our practice managers at Mortensen Dental Partners and really help them to develop an onboarding process for their new team members, because we know it’s critical in really retaining your talent.

Dr. John Meis: So, what we found was when we looked at employee retention, you know, dentistry is not known for great employee retention. And, when we looked at when people were leaving, we found that the biggest chunk of them were leaving within the first year, and we believe that most of them just didn’t really get a great start. And so, they started off kind of on the wrong foot and it just never got better and we lot of employees during that first year. So Melissa, you and a team of other people went about putting together an onboarding process to make sure that people got off on the right foot.

Melissa Thomas: We sure did. And really, we defined it as the part from pre-hire all the way up until really 12-18 months post-hire, because we know that the statistics will show you it takes 12-18 months to be fully onboarded. And, what that means is really 12-18 months until you’re fully proficient in that role. And so, to your point Dr. John, when people are leaving in that first year, they haven’t even hit their full potential yet, and that’s just horrible for both the team member and the company. But, what we really tried to define is looking at pre-hire, so everything that happens when you’re recruiting that talent, trying to make sure you’re really, truly explaining the role to them. You know, my biggest focus was on the admin team members in the practice, and what we found was that they didn’t feel like they truly knew what the job was that they were signing up to do. And finding that out along the way really hurt their retention. So, that was really a crucial piece, was looking at pre-hire: do they know what they’re signing up for? Is this the role that they want? And, do we want them? And so, then moving into really what we’ll call “orientation” which is different than onboarding. And so, orientation is really orienting the team member to the company, and the company to the team member, and really helping to make sure the new team member understands the culture, the mission, the values, they know who they’re reporting to, who approves their vacations, that sort of thing. So, really helping them to understand what the company is. And then, the more meatier phases of the onboarding kind of start then, when you go into the full training program and what that looks like up until those 12-18 months. So, really trying to help define it into those key phases is helpful.

Dr. John Meis: And you know, onboarding and orientation in a lot of practices is, “There’s your room, go to it.” (Laughs) Or, “There’s your desk, go to it.” So, having really a thoughtful approach makes a big difference on how well people land. What are some of the other key things that you found that were helpful in having better retention, especially early on?

Melissa Thomas: So, the most impactful thing for me to learn through that process was to see that it was the little things that really made the big difference. And it’s funny because that always seems to be the case. But, when you really get into, “Ok here’s your room, but here’s where you hang your purse. Here’s your locker and here’s the combination. Oh, guess what? This is actually your parking spot, don’t park in that spot. Or, did you know that at this time of day, this happens outside.” All of those little things that a new team member, it just makes them feel welcome to the team and like they know what’s going on. I’ve also seen that your lessons learned are usually in your “what not to do”, right? And so, I’ve seen sometimes a new team member shows up at a practice and half of the people in the practice are going, “Who are you? I didn’t know we had someone new starting today.” And so, as much as onboarding to the new team member is to the existing team, letting them know about the new team member, “Hey, we have a new team member, Dr. John, he’s starting on Tuesday, we’d love for you to welcome him with this, we’d love for you to sign this card saying ‘Welcome, Dr. John’.” You know, whatever it is, it might be the little things that really help make sure everybody knows what’s going on. And, even going back to the pre-hire really, once that person is hired, but before they start in the practice, it’s making sure that they know exactly where to show up on that day. What time do they need to be there? Do they need to wear scrubs, bring scrubs, or will those be provided? What is it that they need to know or do on that first day? Usually it’s, “Make sure you bring your passport, social security card, whatever so we can get the HR stuff taken care of.” Just making sure that they know all of the facts, because they are going to have so many questions, so if you can just keep the basics, they’ll be able to onboard more effectively.

Dr. John Meis: So, all these things are really preventing them from having that feeling, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what’s going on.” You kind of are reducing the stress level dramatically by just giving those very simple things. One other thing that I ran across in my own practice was we had a team member who left on like day 5, which we didn’t have much of thankfully, but it was kind of a shock. And so, when I asked her, “Well, why are you leaving?” She said, “Well, nobody likes me.” And, I said, “Nobody likes you? Everybody likes you! Why do you think nobody likes you?” And she said, “Well, they all go out to lunch and no one invited me.” You know, and just those simple things, those personal things, getting some connection with somebody in the office, really almost assigning someone to be a, for lack of a better term, a buddy.

Melissa Thomas: Yeah (laughs), that’s actually, you say, “for lack of a better term,” that was the best term that we could land on, right? Because we’ve called it really an “onboarding buddy” because it’s not a mentor-mentee relationship, you want them to feel like they maybe have somebody more on their level, that they can come to and talk to and ask the questions that they’re not prepared to ask their leader or things like that. And, really just helping to feel like they have an immediate friend or someone to ask the silly questions to, so I love that, the “onboarding buddy”.

Dr. John Meis: You know, some of our practices would just naturally do all these things because of who’s there. But, really this is something that needs to be a process, right? It needs to be documented, everybody needs to do it in a similar manner so that employees have a similar experience, whether they’re going to office #1 or office #20. It really shouldn’t matter, and getting that consistency in here is going to really help on the retention. Any other key factors that you found in the onboarding time frame that were super effective?

Melissa Thomas: I think the biggest thing was having it all outlined in a checklist, because it’s easy to forget. First and foremost, when you’re hiring a new team member or onboarding them, you’re likely short staffed in the first place and that’s why you’re hiring them. And so, we found that for leaders it’s really easy to forget those little things that you don’t think will be impactful. And so, making sure there’s really a checklist of reminding yourself to do this the week before they start, reminding yourself to have a name tag ready for them, right? There’s so many things that are so great to see, especially as a new team member, when you come into a practice and you see that something’s ready for you. And so, really just helping to give you that checklist, to your point Dr. John, making sure that consistency is there. If it’s in the checklist you won’t forget it. (Laughs)

Dr. John Meis: (Laughs) There you go. And then, transferring that checklist into your calendar, because if this is an 18-month process, you know, you’re going to need some reminders. Yeah, those are awesome tips. Well, thanks very much Melissa. If you’d like to learn more about the Spark Dental Network, you can go to SparkDentalNetwork.com. If you’d like some free tools, you can go to the Tools tab and we’ve got some interesting things for you to download and help you with your practice. We’ll see you on the next Strategic Thinker.

Melissa Thomas: Thanks, Dr. John.

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