Issue 2 - January 2003

Success File by Bob Levoy
Build your practice on caring and common sense

You sense it the moment you walk in the front door of a high performance chiropractic practice: The staff welcomes you to “our office.” They speak of “our practice” and “our patients” with such obvious pride, joy and enthusiasm that you know they have their hearts in their work and that what they do is more than “just a job.”

To make it happen in your practice, you must invest in employees. Make their work interesting and meaningful. Compensate them well. And care about them as people.

Where do you start? Here’s an overview of the basic action steps.

•Be motivated to motivate. To motivate your employees, you must be motivated yourself. It’s this inner desire to do something important that lights the passion your employees want to feel. It emanates from you and has a significant and powerful impact on those around you.

•Listen, value and ask for ideas. Cultivate your employees for their ideas and feedback – especially about matters that affect their work. Your employees are a rich, untapped source of ideas, Make use of them to boost patient satisfaction, practice growth and profitability.

•Empower employees. Give them responsibility and authority. A common complaint of chiropractic staff members with whom I talk is “I’m treated as if I don’t have a brain in my head.” Give employees the power to do their job, then get out of their way and let them do it. Trust them. It will pay off handsomely.

•Give employees opportunities to grow on the job. Help them to acquire new skills and tackle tasks that require what industrial psychologists call s-t-r-e-t-c-h. The principle involved is that the competence of most people is increased when given a challenge. It requires a willingness to accept some mistakes along the way. Without risk, there is no growth.

•Give regular pats on the back. On a regular basis, catch employees doing something right and praise them immediately, specifically and genuinely. It’s the single easiest and most effective thing you can do to increase employee morale and motivation.

•Celebrate! Have parties, celebrations and plenty of public affirmations for achieving practice goals. Don’t overlook employee birthdays, anniversaries and going away or “welcome aboard” occasions. And celebrate for the surprise of it – for no reason at all. It will create an enjoyable work environment that will boost everyone’s morale.

•Invest in up-to-date equipment. Employees can do good work when they have good tools. Don’t underestimate the demoralizing and demotivational effect that out-of-date equipment has on employees – especially if repairs are frequently needed. The inference is “You and your work aren’t important enough to remedy the situation.”

•Make sure your policies reflect the real world. In today’s time-pressured environment, it makes sense to have policies that take into account the realities of your employees’ personal lives. Being an employee is, for many, only one of the roles they have to juggle. With more and more employees concerned about day care and elder care, it’s important to find ways to help them meet these and other personal needs. You can win employees forever if you view them as complete human beings with personal lives, rather than just as your employees.

•Remember that your employees are number one. Yes, patients are important, but don’t cave in to patients who abuse, insult and intimidate your employees. Step in at the appropriate moment with support – including, if warranted, asking such patients to leave the practice. You’ll be a “hero” to your staff.

•Walk the talk. If you can’t genuinely embrace one or any of these steps, don’t fake it. You won’t be fooling anyone, least of all your employees. And you’ll only stifle employee morale and productivity.

Bob Levoy is a regular contributor. He can be contacted at 516-626-1353.