What Direction Is Your Practice Moving In?

Recently, we’ve looked at creating your own practice story including how to start your growth focused chapters. We recommended that you conduct an honest assessment of your financials and your staff. They are typically moving in the same direction but one of these is much easier to evaluate than the other.

Not to say that assessing your financials isn’t difficult, but the story they tell is clear. Your practice results are either growing, staying flat, or shrinking. Regardless of your findings, you have clarity of how you are performing.

Assessing your staff is much more complex so I provided some questions for you to consider as you evaluate your staff. Key among those questions is knowing what you know today, would you rehire each member of your staff?

Decisions around staffing should never be taken lightly. Employee turnover has a financial cost as well as an impact on the reputation of your practice. A practice with a reputation of professional and compassionate leadership attracts more competent candidates.

To ensure your practice reputation is attracting the right candidates, employees must be provided consistent feedback on their performance. Your staff’s efforts and successes should be acknowledged and celebrated and opportunities to improve performance must be clearly communicated. If employees are consistently recognized for their successes, it provides more credibility when performance improvement conversations are necessary.

Providing balanced feedback ensures that you are reinforcing the behaviors that you expect and addressing opportunities as they occur. Ignoring your staff’s successes or their failures will send your practice in a downward direction.

If you’re ready to move your staff and practice in an upward direction, contact me at smays@impactpracticeconsultants.com.