A dentist I know well has recently had some staffing issues.
Sometimes a loss of staff, or change in personnel, can cause some concerns.
Concerns for both the doctors, and also concerns for other team members as well.
Sometimes the team and the doctor are concerned as to how the dental office will survive with the loss of a long-term team member.
After all, all of a sudden, a regular member of the staff is now gone. And the team have concerns as to whether an appropriate replacement can be found to fit into the role that has become vacant.
This is a concern that I see regularly across my visits to dental offices around the globe.
And frankly, to me this concern is just purely and simply, a ghost.
It’s a waste of time and energy.
It’s a concern that is never grounded.
Because time and time again, every Dental Office rises to new levels of achievement with the change of personnel.
Every single time.
Undoubtedly, I can say without fear, there is improvement with replacement.
Every single time.
Without fail.
Now the change may not bring about instant and immediate improvement.
But trust me, there is and always is improvement.
And although it may be required instantly, and it may take time, let me tell you, the improvement comes. It’s really never that far away.
So whether the change in personnel is a voluntary change, where someone chooses to move on, or it’s even a forced change, where a team member is asked to leave, what invariably happens is that the remaining team lifts their performance immediately to cover for the loss.
In so doing, this “rise” in performance of the other team members is maintained by them for a reasonable period of time following on from the loss of that person.
And this “rise” in performance carries on into the arrival period and introductory time for the replacement employee.
And that’s good for everybody!
Secondly, and often more importantly, the new or replacement employee often brings added skillsets and values to the position that benefit the dental office and benefit the other employees well.
And that in itself, is always a breath of fresh air.
It’s almost like the Jack Welch Vitality model…mandatory turnover of the bottom ten percent of staff.
In our case, the self selection of those moving on, and their replacement, results in a lifting effect on that role as well as a lifting effect across the team as a whole.
And that’s a good thing!
The dentist friend of mine is very nonchalant about this sort of situation.
To him, staff change is a cleansing process.
In fact in this case, for my friend, his clients and patients have welcomed the new personnel with open arms.
To my dentist friend, all changes are good.
To him, it’s like water off a duck’s back.
He loves to quote Gone With The Wind:
“After all, tomorrow is another day.”
So be like my friend. Don’t get hung up and worked up about a change of personnel.
Let it be. Things will always work out for the better.
Always.
Better personnel management is part of The Ultimate Patient Experience, a simple easy to implement system that I developed that allowed me to build an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me: david@theUPE.com
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