Training pays off Enjoy improved morale and more profits


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Practice Management

Training pays off
Enjoy improved morale and more profits
By Bob Levoy

Employer-sponsored training can provide numerous benefits.
It can:

• Aid in recruitment. Studies indicate that employer-sponsored training is a major attraction for employees entering the workforce or deciding whether to remain in their current position.

• Encourage employee retention. Trained employees who have the skills to deliver needed services, feel they are contributing to the practice, and are recognized by management are less likely to look for another job.

• Spur innovation. Untrained employees seldom look for better ways of doing things. By training your employees to hone their skills and boost their efficiency, they'll be more likely to seek innovative ways of making your practice more successful.

• Be highly appealing. "Training as a perk appeals to employees who value professional development and excellence — the ones who will be especially important to your organization's success in a talent-driven economy," says Lin Grensing-Popal, author of Motivating Today's Employees.

• Justify higher salaries. Training enables employees whose salaries have "maxed out" for their current position to move up to higher paying positions.

• Project a positive image for your organization. Knowledgeable, well-trained employees are highly effective "ambassadors" for your practice.

• Improve profitability. Companies listed in Fortune Magazine's annual "100 Best Companies To Work For" provide an average of 40 days of training per employee per year. As far as impact to the bottom line, firms in the top quarter of training expenditure per employee (averaging $1,595 per year) had profit margins 24 percent higher than those in the bottom quarter (averaging $128 per year).

Hard learned lesson: Some say they can't afford to train because of the expense and because better-trained, more highly skilled employees may decide to leave for better opportunities. That's true. But training new employees and having them leave is not nearly as bad as not training them — and having them stay.

Develop skills through role-play training sessions

Role playing is one of many ways to enable your employees to learn new jobs and skills — and it is simple to do.

What does your receptionist say to a patient who replies, "I forgot my checkbook?" How does your staff respond to an irate patient? In such cases, is everyone following a similar script and is what they're saying the best response? If not, role playing may help.

Role playing is a training technique in which two participants are assigned different roles (such as receptionist and patient) that mimic everyday occurrences (such as those above).

The two act out the situation, improvising as they go, while the rest observe. Later, everyone critiques what was said and brainstorms for improvement. The roles can then be reversed or assigned to others and can include any number of scenarios such as a disgruntled, demanding, argumentative, or extremely anxious patient.

A few ground rules: Make critiques impersonal by using fictitious names or simply referring to them as "patient" and "staff member." After the role play, ask the "patient" how he or she felt about the "staff member's" response and ask the group how they might have handled the situation differently.

Vote on the best ways to respond in these situations and use them as models for future encounters.

The objective is to make everyone aware of the skill and diplomacy needed in these situations, agree on the best response, and then practice saying it in a nonthreatening environment. Done properly, it can be a lot of fun and a great learning experience.

Image Headshot Bob Levoy Bob Levoy's newest book, 222 Secrets of Hiring, Managing and Retaining Great Employees in Healthcare Practices, is published by Jones and Bartlett Publishers. He can be reached at b.levoy@att.net.

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