Dentist as HR manager

In a dental practice, human resources contribute significantly to a competitive advantage. If you believe your company competes for discretionary money based on implementing innovative ideas, delivering outstanding customer service, or relationship-based care, then having exceptional employees isn’t just important, it’s a requirement.

Unfortunately, however, dentists do not receive human resource management training while in dental school and everything they learn is through trial and error. It is not uncommon for dentists to feel that managing people is a big problem and time consuming. “If only I could fix the teeth or treat my patients, everything would be fine!”

HR issues and challenges occur in all dental practices, large or small. Unfortunately, most dental offices, by their very nature, are small organizations and the busy, on-the-go dentist has less time to deal with HR challenges because the doctor is doing everything else. Dentists wear many hats. Unfortunately, not all of them are a perfect fit.

Human resource management in any business involves designing formal systems to ensure effective and efficient use of human talent to achieve organizational goals. Despite the obvious differences between large multinational companies and small businesses such as a dental clinic, the same HR challenges must be managed.

There are several human resource activities that the dentist must consider and manage. Designing systems to effectively manage your team with their needs, expectations, quirks, legal rights, and high potential is challenging. By all accounts, in every dental office, the owner dentist is a human resource manager.

Consider the following seven areas of human resource management that will affect the success and effectiveness of your dental practice.

1. Planning and analysis of human resources: The people on your team can become a core competency of the practice. When your team is trained and empowered to make innovative decisions in ways that your competitors cannot easily imitate, your team can differentiate your practice from the rest. This requires planning on your part for the future supply and demand of motivated and capable employees.

two. Equal Employment Opportunity: Simply put, all team members should be treated equally in all employment-related actions. Regardless of the size of an organization, it is illegal to discriminate based on race, sex (sexual harassment), age (people over 40 are a protected class), or disability. While many of the federal laws apply to organizations with 15 to 20 or more employees, employers of all sizes must be familiar with EEO laws and regulations and ensure that their business practices are not discriminatory.

3. Staffing: The goal of the dentist’s hiring manager is to provide an adequate supply of qualified team members to fill the jobs in the practice. This involves knowing exactly what each employee needs to do, describing job specifications with measurable results, as well as successful hiring. The selection of qualified candidates becomes a critical element of your human resource management practice.

Four. HR development begins with new employee orientation in addition to job training. Additionally, an integral element of human resource development is performance management, or evaluating how employees perform their jobs.

5. Compensation & Benefits involves how the dentist rewards team members for their performance through salaries, incentives, and benefits. It is important to develop and refine the base salary and internship incentive program.

6. Health, safety and protection. This includes the traditional concern for employee safety to eliminate accidents and injuries on the job. In addition, health promotion programs that encourage healthy lifestyles for employees and safety in the workplace have grown in importance.

7. Labor Relations: It is essential to develop, communicate and update human resource policies so that the dentist and the team know what is expected. Defining policies, rules and disciplines is essential for the dentist if he is going to manage human resources.

For dentists, there is a significant labor shortage. It’s not that there are too few people, but that there are too few people with the skills required by the ever-changing demands of modern dental practice. As a result, the dental CEO faces increased pressure to hire, retain, and train assistants.

If you believe that human resources is one of your main competencies take the next steps to make your dental practice a “practice of choice.”

1. Create a practice culture where your values ​​and beliefs are shared by your team. This will positively affect the attraction and retention of competent employees.

two. Establish productivity standards and measure the quality and quantity of work performed. The more productive you and your team are, the greater your competitive advantage and the higher your team’s standard of living.

3. Make quality and service a strategy based on HR. High-quality care and excellent patient service can become a strategic competitive advantage. Design your service delivery to emphasize interaction with patients, with the ultimate goal of meeting their needs.

Four. Develop your own Human Resources Plan. Set aside time to anticipate and manage human resource demand and supply early to avoid a crisis. Now is the time to locate talent because it is critical to anticipate and identify specific needs before actual staffing is needed. Do an analysis of all current jobs to provide a basis for forecasting what jobs will be needed.

Regardless of the size of the dental practice, the owner physician is a human resource manager. When the dentist spends time in human resource planning by identifying and communicating the culture, values, and vision of the practice, he or she can create and develop the practice’s core competency…it’s people. The result is that you’ll attract better-qualified candidates for open positions and retain employees longer while increasing practice and personal profitability.