February 26, 2025 • 21 mins
Most new hire issues can be traced back to one thing: onboarding. In this episode, the hosts and their expert guests share proven strategies to effectively train, support, and integrate your new team members right from the beginning. You'll learn how to create a clear onboarding process that reduces turnover, minimizes training stress, and helps you build a culture where employees feel confident, prepared, and excited to grow in your practice.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Why onboarding is important in a dental practice
- Key elements of an effective onboarding process
- Onboarding challenges and solutions
- Growth and career development
- An exercise to transform your onboarding process
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Now, I know you have some all-star employees
Everybody does but wouldn't itbe great if you could have even
more of them?
Well, it all starts on day oneand the way in which we bring on
new employees onto our teams.
We need to know how to onboard,and if we don't, even the very
best hires are going to struggleat our practices.
Today, the DPH coaches and Iare going to share with you the
(00:24):
best ways to train, support andintegrate new employees right
from the start and when youstart getting intentional about
your onboarding, training newemployees is going to become so
incredibly easy and you're goingto have so much less turnover,
which makes life so much easiereven more so.
So your future self will thankyou for listening to this
episode.
Let's get to it.
You are listening to DentalPractice Heroes, where we help
(00:45):
you create and scale your dentalpractice so that you are no
longer tied to the chair.
I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author oftwo books on dental practice
management, dental coach andowner of a $6 million group
practice in the suburbs ofChicago.
I wanna teach you how to growand systematize your dental
practice so you can spend lesstime practicing and more time
enjoying a life that you love.
Let's get started.
(01:07):
Welcome back to Dental PracticeHeroes.
Thank you so much for spendingyour day with us.
We are so happy to have youhere.
I am joined by my DPH coaches,dr Henry Ernst and Dr Stephen
Markowitz, and we're pickingapart something that I think is
super important for any dentalpractice owner.
I mean, we wonder we've gotthese employees.
(01:29):
They come in and we say, gosh,I can't find the right people.
I just don't know what's goingon.
Everybody is struggling hiring,but how much do we look inward
and look at our processes foronboarding?
Because I have to say that youknow, the employees that I
poured training and training andtraining into somehow just
magically always end up to befantastic employees, and the
(01:50):
ones that I just kind of stickin my practice and say I hope
this is going to be okay, moretimes than not it's not okay.
So, henry, I'll go to you first.
Man, why is it important for usas dental practice owners to
even have a system for this?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
It sets the stage for success and that beginning
phase of the relationshipemployee and business is
critical and sometimes they canget a good feel for the practice
, they can get a negative feel,they can get inappropriate
feelings and like man, thisplace is just a crapshoot.
Here.
We've really looked at it overthe years as wanting consistency
(02:25):
.
We want consistency and if youlook at it, a lot of practices
throw you in the mix, like hereyou're going to be working with
Jane today and the way that I'velooked at it and learned over
the years Jane may not be havinga good day, maybe Jane is
really good employee, but she'snot really good at teaching
somebody else.
Maybe that's not her forte.
He's not really good atteaching somebody else.
Maybe that's not her forte.
So one of the things that wereally learned is how important
(02:47):
this is and putting the value onit.
And I'll skip ahead.
The thing that we do is we havevideos.
So we have a video library likeour own private YouTube channel
, and all of our team membershave done little and some of
these videos are like less thanfive minutes long.
How do we seat a patient in ouroffice?
What's our expectation?
How do you clean the autoclave.
(03:07):
How do you do like all theselittle things?
And when an employee comes in,they get a series of videos.
Maybe they're given like fiveor six, and then we know that
the videos are because we'veseen them ourselves, we've known
they're good, we know thecontent is appropriate and we
know it's accurate.
Not saying they're perfect, butif you look at fast food
companies like McDonald's, theyput somebody to work, they watch
(03:28):
a 15 minute video on how tomake the fries and 15 minutes
boom, they're working, they'rebeing productive.
That's the same philosophy thatwe have and if you look at our
video library, we have tons ofthem as somebody gets more
advanced.
There's ones on makingtemporaries, there's ones on all
these items that people canlearn from.
But the premise of yourquestion is it's super important
to setting the stage and in ourpractice we want consistency
(03:53):
and that's where we've done theYouTube video thing.
And if you're going toimplement this into your
practice, it doesn't have to beSteven Spielberg.
It's literally somebody getsbullet points in their head of
what they want to accomplish andyou grab that phone and just go
.
It doesn't have to be perfect,as long as it's accurate and
it's done well, where somebodycan hear it.
The content and the audio isgood.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, I've had clients do this too with the
clinical stuff, and what's funnyis that it's one of those
things that we'll talk about itone month and the next month
we're still talking about.
Is that what is keeping youfrom doing this?
Oh, I just got to sit down andrecord.
I just got to sit down and doit.
And the fact of the matter isis when they do it, when they
actually sit down and record it,they write down the things that
they want to teach, and youdon't want to get too deep in it
(04:35):
, you don't want to do everylittle detail, but you want to
do the big stuff.
And when you write it down andyou go record it, like every one
of my clients that have donethis, they're like huh, like
that really didn't take thatlong at all, and it just doesn't
because, like you said, henry,you're not editing, you're not
doing anything like that.
To touch on your point, henry,is we used to have everyone at
the front desk and they justwander around and they ask
(04:55):
questions when they need andthey don't want.
Some people don't want to askquestions and some people really
don't want to answer questions.
And what we've noticed throughthat process of really looking
at like why is our onboardingsucking?
Why are we not training newfront house employees?
Is we realized there's somepeople on our team that don't
want to train people and thereare some people on our team that
are sweet as pie and would justlove to help, and all we had to
(05:18):
do is ask and find out who itwas, and then we could decide
you know who is the right personto do this and then give that
to them.
Steve, have you had any timesin your career where you've
noticed that your onboardingmight be failing a little bit?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Most times, but I think it starts even before the
training.
A lot of us will jump ahead totraining this person and putting
them next to this employee Justwatch over her shoulder which,
as you guys just shared, may notbe the most effective way to
train someone.
But I think onboarding startswith what makes us special.
(05:51):
There are literally in thestate of Massachusetts there are
thousands of dental practices.
Why the heck would you want towork here?
And starting them to understandlike this place is a little
different.
We feel like it's special inhow we take care of our patients
and how we take care of oneanother, and this is how we're
going to behave and this is whywe're doing the things we do.
(06:11):
And the onboarding starts withthem understanding a way bigger
picture of why we're doingthings, as opposed to how we're
doing things.
I think one of the biggestmistakes I've ever made is
hiring someone with a 20 yearsexperience.
They're going to come in andthey're going to show us how to
do it and then within a month,I'm like the way you do it sucks
(06:33):
.
That's literally everything Idon't want to happen here.
So we need to understand whenwe bring people in.
We can't just throw them intothe office.
And I know this is challengingbecause a lot of times we're
hiring and recruiting reactivelybecause Sally put her notice in
.
Now we have two weeks to fillthat spot or whatever the heck
(06:54):
it is.
So I think the onboardingprocess ties into the recruiting
and the entire HR cycle, but weneed to provide context of why
we're doing things, so the howmakes sense, and then we can
train the tasks and the littlethings that make our offices hum
better and work moreefficiently.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
The why is so important?
For, like the cultural thing,like why are we special?
And I think dental practiceowners don't spend enough time
even talking about that at all,and that's something that I've
always been big on Like, hey,this is what we're about.
This is that mission, vision,core values, brand promises,
sort of stuff that people makethe document and then they don't
ever do anything with it.
We've got to give our teammembers a reason to perform at a
(07:37):
higher level, and that's partof the onboarding too.
You know.
That made me think of when weonboard.
We have a series of 12 videosthat they watch.
They're on every single person,every position, and these are
just cultural videos.
This is about, like, ourcultures.
We talk about grace over guilt.
We talk about our history.
We talk about how you knowpsychological safety and
forgiveness and like notcriticizing and blaming and
(08:00):
finding solutions and havingcompassion and empathy.
There's all these things that Iwant to instill into my team
members that are very softskills and aren't task-focused,
so I think that's a great partof it.
I love that you broke that up.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
That reminds me just last week we had a sister that's
been with us for about a monthand there was a new patient that
was in the doctor's column andI was in the office and I heard
her come up to the doctor.
The doctor's been with us forabout two and a half years and
the assistant said this patientis a little crazy.
She only wants to see someonewho has eight years experience.
(08:36):
I don't think it's going to bea good fit and I was like how
the hell does like eight years?
Where did that come from?
That's the most ridiculousthing I've ever heard.
How, like you must've pulledthat out of her.
Like let's talk about that.
And it got me right back to likewe haven't onboarded this
person fully yet.
They don't understand.
Like when someone is askingsaying things that don't make
(08:59):
sense, it's because they don'tknow what to say, so they're
just looking for things thatthey know.
And so I was like you know what?
Is it okay if I go in?
I have a little bit more thaneight years experience, but
we'll see if this works.
So I walk in and I was likewelcome to the practice.
I'd love to hear about whatbrought you in here.
And she told me about thiscantilever bridge that lasted
(09:23):
her 30 years.
She went to this new dentistand he told her that cantilever
bridges don't work.
And I just didn't believe himbecause it lasted me so long and
I was like I'm so sorry thatyou had that experience.
But I just started to explainto her who we are and our types
of experience and she wasperfectly fine, she didn't care,
she just wanted to be heard.
(09:45):
So I think that was just anotherexample of when we bring people
on, we need to train them, notjust in how do you put things
into open dental or Dentrix orhow do you take this or do you
make it temporary, but how do wecommunicate with one another
and when we have objections, howdo we deal with those
objections?
Because we are in a place wherepeople stinking hate.
No one loves coming to thedentist, so they're going to say
(10:07):
weird things and actuncomfortably and do things that
may not we might not like, butit's our reaction to that that's
going to allow us to create theexperience that is going to
make people feel good, and thatis the part that I find is
missing most when we train andonboard our team.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, it's more than just skills.
It's that attitude, it's thecharacter traits, it's the
ability to probe and ask,because you might have found out
, matt, well, cantilever bridgesthey only last eight years, and
if you haven't been doing thisfor eight years, you wouldn't
know that.
Maybe that's what it was.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
By the way, the Kellyer bridge was failed.
I saw an x-ray.
She came to me and was alreadyout.
I think the person handledtheir previous status perfectly,
but it was just thecommunication that needed some
improvement.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah exactly so, henry, how do you guys work at
your office I mean, we'retalking about the soft skills
and like the attitude and stufflike that but what kind of like
standards do you set, like maybechecking in with people?
How do you make sure thatyou're training them in a way
that's intentional, rather thanjust throwing them in the mix?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Well, I think, like we said before, making sure
they're put in with the rightknowledge and it's small
knowledge at a time, not givingthem everything at once.
Give them the small items, likewe talk about the videos,
giving them certain videos, notall of them, just a handful of
them.
Let them become an expert atthat.
Let them be comfortable,personality-wise, with everybody
in the office.
Let them get to know each otherone-on-one and I will put this
(11:35):
while it's in my mind here,putting it in the mind of a
dentist who's trying to growmulti-doctor practice Very
important.
I love this phrase, I heard itand it always runs through.
Dentists are suchperfectionists, like to a fault.
So I always remember thisphrase when it comes to doing
the videos.
Don't let perfect be the enemyof good.
People will do like you said,paul I can't, I'm not ready, I'm
(11:58):
not the here.
Here's the phone press recordgo.
You know how do we see thepatient?
And just I'm telling you theycome out natural and they come
out really good that way.
So don't let perfect be theenemy of good and then be
unselfish.
Again, coming from the mindsetof a practice owner trying to
grow multi-doctor practice isput the newer team member with
an experienced doctor right.
(12:19):
Don't let the experienceddoctor hog all the experienced
assistants.
You come up better that way andyou kind of all bring each
other up.
Rising tide, you know, lifts upall ships.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, I love that.
You know, something popped inmy head was a recent coaching
client of mine and I'm sure somepeople can relate to this has a
front desk employee in whichthis is the person that does
everything, this is the personthat knows everything, and
sometimes that person is so busybecause they're the only person
that knows everything, theycan't train the new people.
So then there's nobodyexperienced training the new
(12:50):
people and you can get yourselfin this cycle of getting
short-staffed but then trying tobring people in to resolve the
problem, but not having anyoneto train that new person.
And this is why I think it'simportant, personally, that
you've got to come up with somekind of 30, 60, 90 training list
.
Okay, Doesn't?
I mean, I like the 30, 60, 90,but I mean if you just have one
global list that lists all theskills, so that you can sit down
(13:11):
with this new hire every somany weeks, maybe once a month,
and say, hey, what did we learnthis month and what can we work
on?
It's about getting intentionalabout it, because I can't tell
you how many times where wehaven't done this with an
employee and they've been therefor a year, and then you'll have
an instance with them andyou're just like how do you not
know how to do this?
You've been here for a year andthe fact of the matter was is
(13:34):
we never looked at the list, wenever went back and we never
made sure that everything wascomplete.
But if you can get all of yourteammates and all of everyone on
your team to know everything onthat list, you're not going to
get shackled by one employeethat knows everything and I know
everybody's had that happen tosome extent at their practice at
one point or another.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
A hundred percent.
As the CEO of our business, itis our responsibility to make
sure we put every single personin a position to be successful.
So when someone's coming onearly on in their tenure with us
, they may not know everything.
We need to make sure we live bythat.
30, 60, 90 or whateverchecklist protocol.
Put that together and thenthose are the expectations.
(14:15):
It would be great if you couldlearn these things.
But the first 30 days we'regoing to focus on this, or the
first 30 days, we're going tofocus on this, or the first
three weeks, we're going tofocus on this.
By the end of three days, Iwant you to focus on this.
And the smaller that we canmake those goals or the more
attainable they are, the moresuccess that person will have.
And then, when we put them intopositions, the team will see
(14:38):
that they're adding value andthey'll be more welcoming of
that person because it'sactually adding value to the day
, to the patient experience.
It's taking things off theirplate and we're not just saying
here front desk business team,babysit this person, have them
take care of things.
And when they mess up, here's alittle bit of work for you
because you're going to clean itup.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Well, it's an inconvenience for the team and I
think we need to reframe thatto the team and let them know
that, yes, this is aninconvenience only if you treat
it as such, and if you treat itas such, it will continue to be
an inconvenience the whole time.
This person's here.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Can we change that word?
Can we change that toinvestment Inconvenience,
because that's truly what it isInvestments cost, but then
there's a return on thatinvestment Inconvenience or just
a pain in the ass.
Yeah, love that I'm going toshare with my team.
This is going to be aninvestment on everyone and the
return on that is going to bewe're going to have someone
(15:33):
who's going to help us with thethings that are causing us
challenges.
We're going to be able to takebetter care of our patients.
We're to take better care ofour patients and we're going to
have less stress in our day.
That is the goal, but we needto invest in this person.
Is everyone on board with that?
We good, we good, let's go.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, the thing that my team members always tell me
with a new person on board here,they love the fact that when
they walk into our really bigwaiting room, every single
person's locker has a visionboard.
We have all of our employees dovision boards on their lockers
so we all can get to know whattheir life goals are, what their
professional goals are, and wehave the pictures of our staff
(16:06):
going to cruises and stuff, soit almost looks like a family
room instead of just a breakroom.
And the thing that we've gotcomments on too, is the I
mentioned before how ourpractice is for everybody.
Same thing with employees,right?
We have an office manager inour practice who started as an
entry-level dental assistant,worked her way up.
(16:27):
We have experienced DA2s thatstarted as entry-level dental
assistants.
We have admin team members thatstarted as assistants and we
have somebody who left ourpractice for good because she
got trained so well she becamean HR person.
So we're career focused.
We're not just like a pointwhere you're going to work and
(16:47):
you got a ceiling, because thathappens a lot in dentistry.
You see dental assistants andthey hit that ceiling and they
get so bored and they getstagnant.
There's no, we should allaspire to do something more, and
that's another thing thatpeople should see in your
practice.
If it's there, is that there'san aspiration here.
We're not just going to keepyou at this level and keep you
there because people like that.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
It's so easy to have that ceiling because for the
most part there's a lack ofpositions.
In our personal dental officeit's like, yeah, you can climb
the ranks and you can go be anoffice manager, but we've
already got one of those.
How do you project that to yourteam without kind of pointing
out that fact that there'sreally no open positions?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Well, we've done it.
For example, my office managerstarted as an entry-level dental
assistant and grew into anexperienced dental assistant and
then eventually I think it wasaround COVID time she left our
office for a little bit and thenshe came back and at some point
and this comes with a practicethat's growing and a big
practice.
I mean, I won't say we came upwith positions, but we needed
(17:48):
certain positions, as we were inleadership teams and office
manager said you know what?
I'm just spending way too muchtime on dealing with patient
complaints and this and that,and then I'm also dealing with
employee problems.
So you know what.
You're going to be director ofoperations.
You're going to be director ofpeople and this is what this
entails.
And now everybody's happy.
We needed it and we internallyjust created that.
(18:11):
So your leadership team cantell you what the problems are,
because the problem as a dentistis we're not the boots on the
ground.
We're in the back fixing teethand doing hybrids at break or
here and there.
No, but we don't see the bootson the ground.
That happens.
We don't know the problems thateach position entails.
So by having this intricateknowledge, you can create more
things as you grow to make theirjobs better.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Growth comes in so many different shapes and sizes.
It doesn't necessarily meangrowth is more money or a bigger
job title.
Growth could be like I want tolearn a new skill or I want to
answer the phone better.
Like there are so many ways,even in a small practice, that
we can grow without creating anew title or whatever that means
.
And also, if I really buildsomeone up and develop them and
(18:57):
I don't have the opportunitythat they need for their like
what a great thing I did forthat person, they can go off and
be.
You know, maybe they want to bethe CEO of a demo group.
I would love that for them.
That's so cool, and if I hadanything to do with that, that's
awesome.
So to finish this, what I wasthinking when you guys both were
talking was, like most demooffices don't have onboarding,
(19:18):
don't have an onboarding process.
Where the heck would I evenstart?
If I wanted to start anonboarding process, what does
that look like for you?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
A good spot to start, just to kind of summarize
everything that we said, wasjust to sit down and write out
the skills that we want our teammembers to learn.
What are the cultural things wewant them to know, what are the
characteristics we want them toexpress core values and then,
starting with what are theimportant skills that we need to
teach them with, and then,while at the same time talking
to our whole entire team andmaking sure the mindset is in
(19:48):
the correct place and I lovewhat you said about investment
versus inconvenience.
I mean, it is a team effort.
It's like the village raisesthe child.
Everybody has to be all in.
And coming back to what youended on, henry, is just having
an attitude of abundance insteadof scarcity, that this person's
going to get too good for youand leave you.
We want to make them the bestthey can and, like you said,
(20:10):
steve, if they get so good thatthey go on to a better
opportunity, good for them.
What a great thing we did forthem.
So we'll end it at that.
If you're thinking aboutworking with a coach and growing
your practice, dr Steve, drHenry and myself are willing to
work with you.
Check out our website atdentalpractice.
Now, I know you have some all-star employees
Everybody does but wouldn't itbe great if you could have even
more of them?
Well, it all starts on day oneand the way in which we bring on
new employees onto our teams.
We need to know how to onboard,and if we don't, even the very
best hires are going to struggleat our practices.
Today, the DPH coaches and Iare going to share with you the
(00:24):
best ways to train, support andintegrate new employees right
from the start and when youstart getting intentional about
your onboarding, training newemployees is going to become so
incredibly easy and you're goingto have so much less turnover,
which makes life so much easiereven more so.
So your future self will thankyou for listening to this
episode.
Let's get to it.
You are listening to DentalPractice Heroes, where we help
(00:45):
you create and scale your dentalpractice so that you are no
longer tied to the chair.
I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author oftwo books on dental practice
management, dental coach andowner of a $6 million group
practice in the suburbs ofChicago.
I wanna teach you how to growand systematize your dental
practice so you can spend lesstime practicing and more time
enjoying a life that you love.
Let's get started.
(01:07):
Welcome back to Dental PracticeHeroes.
Thank you so much for spendingyour day with us.
We are so happy to have youhere.
I am joined by my DPH coaches,dr Henry Ernst and Dr Stephen
Markowitz, and we're pickingapart something that I think is
super important for any dentalpractice owner.
I mean, we wonder we've gotthese employees.
(01:29):
They come in and we say, gosh,I can't find the right people.
I just don't know what's goingon.
Everybody is struggling hiring,but how much do we look inward
and look at our processes foronboarding?
Because I have to say that youknow, the employees that I
poured training and training andtraining into somehow just
magically always end up to befantastic employees, and the
(01:50):
ones that I just kind of stickin my practice and say I hope
this is going to be okay, moretimes than not it's not okay.
So, henry, I'll go to you first.
Man, why is it important for usas dental practice owners to
even have a system for this?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
It sets the stage for success and that beginning
phase of the relationshipemployee and business is
critical and sometimes they canget a good feel for the practice
, they can get a negative feel,they can get inappropriate
feelings and like man, thisplace is just a crapshoot.
Here.
We've really looked at it overthe years as wanting consistency
(02:25):
.
We want consistency and if youlook at it, a lot of practices
throw you in the mix, like hereyou're going to be working with
Jane today and the way that I'velooked at it and learned over
the years Jane may not be havinga good day, maybe Jane is
really good employee, but she'snot really good at teaching
somebody else.
Maybe that's not her forte.
He's not really good atteaching somebody else.
Maybe that's not her forte.
So one of the things that wereally learned is how important
(02:47):
this is and putting the value onit.
And I'll skip ahead.
The thing that we do is we havevideos.
So we have a video library likeour own private YouTube channel
, and all of our team membershave done little and some of
these videos are like less thanfive minutes long.
How do we seat a patient in ouroffice?
What's our expectation?
How do you clean the autoclave.
(03:07):
How do you do like all theselittle things?
And when an employee comes in,they get a series of videos.
Maybe they're given like fiveor six, and then we know that
the videos are because we'veseen them ourselves, we've known
they're good, we know thecontent is appropriate and we
know it's accurate.
Not saying they're perfect, butif you look at fast food
companies like McDonald's, theyput somebody to work, they watch
(03:28):
a 15 minute video on how tomake the fries and 15 minutes
boom, they're working, they'rebeing productive.
That's the same philosophy thatwe have and if you look at our
video library, we have tons ofthem as somebody gets more
advanced.
There's ones on makingtemporaries, there's ones on all
these items that people canlearn from.
But the premise of yourquestion is it's super important
to setting the stage and in ourpractice we want consistency
(03:53):
and that's where we've done theYouTube video thing.
And if you're going toimplement this into your
practice, it doesn't have to beSteven Spielberg.
It's literally somebody getsbullet points in their head of
what they want to accomplish andyou grab that phone and just go
.
It doesn't have to be perfect,as long as it's accurate and
it's done well, where somebodycan hear it.
The content and the audio isgood.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, I've had clients do this too with the
clinical stuff, and what's funnyis that it's one of those
things that we'll talk about itone month and the next month
we're still talking about.
Is that what is keeping youfrom doing this?
Oh, I just got to sit down andrecord.
I just got to sit down and doit.
And the fact of the matter isis when they do it, when they
actually sit down and record it,they write down the things that
they want to teach, and youdon't want to get too deep in it
(04:35):
, you don't want to do everylittle detail, but you want to
do the big stuff.
And when you write it down andyou go record it, like every one
of my clients that have donethis, they're like huh, like
that really didn't take thatlong at all, and it just doesn't
because, like you said, henry,you're not editing, you're not
doing anything like that.
To touch on your point, henry,is we used to have everyone at
the front desk and they justwander around and they ask
(04:55):
questions when they need andthey don't want.
Some people don't want to askquestions and some people really
don't want to answer questions.
And what we've noticed throughthat process of really looking
at like why is our onboardingsucking?
Why are we not training newfront house employees?
Is we realized there's somepeople on our team that don't
want to train people and thereare some people on our team that
are sweet as pie and would justlove to help, and all we had to
(05:18):
do is ask and find out who itwas, and then we could decide
you know who is the right personto do this and then give that
to them.
Steve, have you had any timesin your career where you've
noticed that your onboardingmight be failing a little bit?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Most times, but I think it starts even before the
training.
A lot of us will jump ahead totraining this person and putting
them next to this employee Justwatch over her shoulder which,
as you guys just shared, may notbe the most effective way to
train someone.
But I think onboarding startswith what makes us special.
(05:51):
There are literally in thestate of Massachusetts there are
thousands of dental practices.
Why the heck would you want towork here?
And starting them to understandlike this place is a little
different.
We feel like it's special inhow we take care of our patients
and how we take care of oneanother, and this is how we're
going to behave and this is whywe're doing the things we do.
(06:11):
And the onboarding starts withthem understanding a way bigger
picture of why we're doingthings, as opposed to how we're
doing things.
I think one of the biggestmistakes I've ever made is
hiring someone with a 20 yearsexperience.
They're going to come in andthey're going to show us how to
do it and then within a month,I'm like the way you do it sucks
(06:33):
.
That's literally everything Idon't want to happen here.
So we need to understand whenwe bring people in.
We can't just throw them intothe office.
And I know this is challengingbecause a lot of times we're
hiring and recruiting reactivelybecause Sally put her notice in
.
Now we have two weeks to fillthat spot or whatever the heck
(06:54):
it is.
So I think the onboardingprocess ties into the recruiting
and the entire HR cycle, but weneed to provide context of why
we're doing things, so the howmakes sense, and then we can
train the tasks and the littlethings that make our offices hum
better and work moreefficiently.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
The why is so important?
For, like the cultural thing,like why are we special?
And I think dental practiceowners don't spend enough time
even talking about that at all,and that's something that I've
always been big on Like, hey,this is what we're about.
This is that mission, vision,core values, brand promises,
sort of stuff that people makethe document and then they don't
ever do anything with it.
We've got to give our teammembers a reason to perform at a
(07:37):
higher level, and that's partof the onboarding too.
You know.
That made me think of when weonboard.
We have a series of 12 videosthat they watch.
They're on every single person,every position, and these are
just cultural videos.
This is about, like, ourcultures.
We talk about grace over guilt.
We talk about our history.
We talk about how you knowpsychological safety and
forgiveness and like notcriticizing and blaming and
(08:00):
finding solutions and havingcompassion and empathy.
There's all these things that Iwant to instill into my team
members that are very softskills and aren't task-focused,
so I think that's a great partof it.
I love that you broke that up.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
That reminds me just last week we had a sister that's
been with us for about a monthand there was a new patient that
was in the doctor's column andI was in the office and I heard
her come up to the doctor.
The doctor's been with us forabout two and a half years and
the assistant said this patientis a little crazy.
She only wants to see someonewho has eight years experience.
(08:36):
I don't think it's going to bea good fit and I was like how
the hell does like eight years?
Where did that come from?
That's the most ridiculousthing I've ever heard.
How, like you must've pulledthat out of her.
Like let's talk about that.
And it got me right back to likewe haven't onboarded this
person fully yet.
They don't understand.
Like when someone is askingsaying things that don't make
(08:59):
sense, it's because they don'tknow what to say, so they're
just looking for things thatthey know.
And so I was like you know what?
Is it okay if I go in?
I have a little bit more thaneight years experience, but
we'll see if this works.
So I walk in and I was likewelcome to the practice.
I'd love to hear about whatbrought you in here.
And she told me about thiscantilever bridge that lasted
(09:23):
her 30 years.
She went to this new dentistand he told her that cantilever
bridges don't work.
And I just didn't believe himbecause it lasted me so long and
I was like I'm so sorry thatyou had that experience.
But I just started to explainto her who we are and our types
of experience and she wasperfectly fine, she didn't care,
she just wanted to be heard.
(09:45):
So I think that was just anotherexample of when we bring people
on, we need to train them, notjust in how do you put things
into open dental or Dentrix orhow do you take this or do you
make it temporary, but how do wecommunicate with one another
and when we have objections, howdo we deal with those
objections?
Because we are in a place wherepeople stinking hate.
No one loves coming to thedentist, so they're going to say
(10:07):
weird things and actuncomfortably and do things that
may not we might not like, butit's our reaction to that that's
going to allow us to create theexperience that is going to
make people feel good, and thatis the part that I find is
missing most when we train andonboard our team.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, it's more than just skills.
It's that attitude, it's thecharacter traits, it's the
ability to probe and ask,because you might have found out
, matt, well, cantilever bridgesthey only last eight years, and
if you haven't been doing thisfor eight years, you wouldn't
know that.
Maybe that's what it was.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
By the way, the Kellyer bridge was failed.
I saw an x-ray.
She came to me and was alreadyout.
I think the person handledtheir previous status perfectly,
but it was just thecommunication that needed some
improvement.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah exactly so, henry, how do you guys work at
your office I mean, we'retalking about the soft skills
and like the attitude and stufflike that but what kind of like
standards do you set, like maybechecking in with people?
How do you make sure thatyou're training them in a way
that's intentional, rather thanjust throwing them in the mix?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Well, I think, like we said before, making sure
they're put in with the rightknowledge and it's small
knowledge at a time, not givingthem everything at once.
Give them the small items, likewe talk about the videos,
giving them certain videos, notall of them, just a handful of
them.
Let them become an expert atthat.
Let them be comfortable,personality-wise, with everybody
in the office.
Let them get to know each otherone-on-one and I will put this
(11:35):
while it's in my mind here,putting it in the mind of a
dentist who's trying to growmulti-doctor practice Very
important.
I love this phrase, I heard itand it always runs through.
Dentists are suchperfectionists, like to a fault.
So I always remember thisphrase when it comes to doing
the videos.
Don't let perfect be the enemyof good.
People will do like you said,paul I can't, I'm not ready, I'm
(11:58):
not the here.
Here's the phone press recordgo.
You know how do we see thepatient?
And just I'm telling you theycome out natural and they come
out really good that way.
So don't let perfect be theenemy of good and then be
unselfish.
Again, coming from the mindsetof a practice owner trying to
grow multi-doctor practice isput the newer team member with
an experienced doctor right.
(12:19):
Don't let the experienceddoctor hog all the experienced
assistants.
You come up better that way andyou kind of all bring each
other up.
Rising tide, you know, lifts upall ships.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, I love that.
You know, something popped inmy head was a recent coaching
client of mine and I'm sure somepeople can relate to this has a
front desk employee in whichthis is the person that does
everything, this is the personthat knows everything, and
sometimes that person is so busybecause they're the only person
that knows everything, theycan't train the new people.
So then there's nobodyexperienced training the new
(12:50):
people and you can get yourselfin this cycle of getting
short-staffed but then trying tobring people in to resolve the
problem, but not having anyoneto train that new person.
And this is why I think it'simportant, personally, that
you've got to come up with somekind of 30, 60, 90 training list
.
Okay, Doesn't?
I mean, I like the 30, 60, 90,but I mean if you just have one
global list that lists all theskills, so that you can sit down
(13:11):
with this new hire every somany weeks, maybe once a month,
and say, hey, what did we learnthis month and what can we work
on?
It's about getting intentionalabout it, because I can't tell
you how many times where wehaven't done this with an
employee and they've been therefor a year, and then you'll have
an instance with them andyou're just like how do you not
know how to do this?
You've been here for a year andthe fact of the matter was is
(13:34):
we never looked at the list, wenever went back and we never
made sure that everything wascomplete.
But if you can get all of yourteammates and all of everyone on
your team to know everything onthat list, you're not going to
get shackled by one employeethat knows everything and I know
everybody's had that happen tosome extent at their practice at
one point or another.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
A hundred percent.
As the CEO of our business, itis our responsibility to make
sure we put every single personin a position to be successful.
So when someone's coming onearly on in their tenure with us
, they may not know everything.
We need to make sure we live bythat.
30, 60, 90 or whateverchecklist protocol.
Put that together and thenthose are the expectations.
(14:15):
It would be great if you couldlearn these things.
But the first 30 days we'regoing to focus on this, or the
first 30 days, we're going tofocus on this, or the first
three weeks, we're going tofocus on this.
By the end of three days, Iwant you to focus on this.
And the smaller that we canmake those goals or the more
attainable they are, the moresuccess that person will have.
And then, when we put them intopositions, the team will see
(14:38):
that they're adding value andthey'll be more welcoming of
that person because it'sactually adding value to the day
, to the patient experience.
It's taking things off theirplate and we're not just saying
here front desk business team,babysit this person, have them
take care of things.
And when they mess up, here's alittle bit of work for you
because you're going to clean itup.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Well, it's an inconvenience for the team and I
think we need to reframe thatto the team and let them know
that, yes, this is aninconvenience only if you treat
it as such, and if you treat itas such, it will continue to be
an inconvenience the whole time.
This person's here.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Can we change that word?
Can we change that toinvestment Inconvenience,
because that's truly what it isInvestments cost, but then
there's a return on thatinvestment Inconvenience or just
a pain in the ass.
Yeah, love that I'm going toshare with my team.
This is going to be aninvestment on everyone and the
return on that is going to bewe're going to have someone
(15:33):
who's going to help us with thethings that are causing us
challenges.
We're going to be able to takebetter care of our patients.
We're to take better care ofour patients and we're going to
have less stress in our day.
That is the goal, but we needto invest in this person.
Is everyone on board with that?
We good, we good, let's go.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, the thing that my team members always tell me
with a new person on board here,they love the fact that when
they walk into our really bigwaiting room, every single
person's locker has a visionboard.
We have all of our employees dovision boards on their lockers
so we all can get to know whattheir life goals are, what their
professional goals are, and wehave the pictures of our staff
(16:06):
going to cruises and stuff, soit almost looks like a family
room instead of just a breakroom.
And the thing that we've gotcomments on too, is the I
mentioned before how ourpractice is for everybody.
Same thing with employees,right?
We have an office manager inour practice who started as an
entry-level dental assistant,worked her way up.
(16:27):
We have experienced DA2s thatstarted as entry-level dental
assistants.
We have admin team members thatstarted as assistants and we
have somebody who left ourpractice for good because she
got trained so well she becamean HR person.
So we're career focused.
We're not just like a pointwhere you're going to work and
(16:47):
you got a ceiling, because thathappens a lot in dentistry.
You see dental assistants andthey hit that ceiling and they
get so bored and they getstagnant.
There's no, we should allaspire to do something more, and
that's another thing thatpeople should see in your
practice.
If it's there, is that there'san aspiration here.
We're not just going to keepyou at this level and keep you
there because people like that.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
It's so easy to have that ceiling because for the
most part there's a lack ofpositions.
In our personal dental officeit's like, yeah, you can climb
the ranks and you can go be anoffice manager, but we've
already got one of those.
How do you project that to yourteam without kind of pointing
out that fact that there'sreally no open positions?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Well, we've done it.
For example, my office managerstarted as an entry-level dental
assistant and grew into anexperienced dental assistant and
then eventually I think it wasaround COVID time she left our
office for a little bit and thenshe came back and at some point
and this comes with a practicethat's growing and a big
practice.
I mean, I won't say we came upwith positions, but we needed
(17:48):
certain positions, as we were inleadership teams and office
manager said you know what?
I'm just spending way too muchtime on dealing with patient
complaints and this and that,and then I'm also dealing with
employee problems.
So you know what.
You're going to be director ofoperations.
You're going to be director ofpeople and this is what this
entails.
And now everybody's happy.
We needed it and we internallyjust created that.
(18:11):
So your leadership team cantell you what the problems are,
because the problem as a dentistis we're not the boots on the
ground.
We're in the back fixing teethand doing hybrids at break or
here and there.
No, but we don't see the bootson the ground.
That happens.
We don't know the problems thateach position entails.
So by having this intricateknowledge, you can create more
things as you grow to make theirjobs better.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Growth comes in so many different shapes and sizes.
It doesn't necessarily meangrowth is more money or a bigger
job title.
Growth could be like I want tolearn a new skill or I want to
answer the phone better.
Like there are so many ways,even in a small practice, that
we can grow without creating anew title or whatever that means
.
And also, if I really buildsomeone up and develop them and
(18:57):
I don't have the opportunitythat they need for their like
what a great thing I did forthat person, they can go off and
be.
You know, maybe they want to bethe CEO of a demo group.
I would love that for them.
That's so cool, and if I hadanything to do with that, that's
awesome.
So to finish this, what I wasthinking when you guys both were
talking was, like most demooffices don't have onboarding,
(19:18):
don't have an onboarding process.
Where the heck would I evenstart?
If I wanted to start anonboarding process, what does
that look like for you?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
A good spot to start, just to kind of summarize
everything that we said, wasjust to sit down and write out
the skills that we want our teammembers to learn.
What are the cultural things wewant them to know, what are the
characteristics we want them toexpress core values and then,
starting with what are theimportant skills that we need to
teach them with, and then,while at the same time talking
to our whole entire team andmaking sure the mindset is in
(19:48):
the correct place and I lovewhat you said about investment
versus inconvenience.
I mean, it is a team effort.
It's like the village raisesthe child.
Everybody has to be all in.
And coming back to what youended on, henry, is just having
an attitude of abundance insteadof scarcity, that this person's
going to get too good for youand leave you.
We want to make them the bestthey can and, like you said,
(20:10):
steve, if they get so good thatthey go on to a better
opportunity, good for them.
What a great thing we did forthem.
So we'll end it at that.
If you're thinking aboutworking with a coach and growing
your practice, dr Steve, drHenry and myself are willing to
work with you.
Check out our website atdentalpractice.
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