How to Find and Keep Great People

Episode #393 with Dr. Erin Elliott

It’s a challenge trying to find, train, and keep great people. Is all that even possible? And where do you start? To provide some answers, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Erin Elliott to share how she discovered out-of-the-box solutions for those challenges in her office. A great practice needs great people. And to find them, you first need to attract the right ones! And if what you're doing isn't working, you can always do something different. For more tips on finding great people for your great practice, listen to Episode 393 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

Think outside the box to attract the right people.

Choose personality over experience. The dental part will come.

Firing “bad patients” is one way to reduce team turnover. 

Eliminating phone calls may keep your team happier.

Outsource the daunting and overwhelming tasks.

If you're unhappy or feeling stuck, do something different.

Quotes:

“The big thing that T-Bone taught me is that there's absolutely no way we should be doing the dentistry that we did in dental school only.” (6:56—7:04)

“I didn't think we would struggle with [finding and keeping the right people] where I live. But this whole employee thing, I still don't understand it. At the core of it, we still have the same team. We have a large team: six hygienists, five that work all at the same time, three doctors, I work with three assistants. It’s kind of a scheduling — it’s a lot of fun. Let's just say that. So, at the core of it, our assistants and hygienists have all stayed the same. But for some reason, front desk has been so difficult for us. And we have tons of people moving to our area. We are so booked with new patients, good quality patients, and I can't understand why there's not a workforce. But most of the people moving to our area are retired. So, we just don't have a workforce, even with all these people.” (10:52—11:44)

“We’re working two front desk people short right now. And just the thought of trying to find someone and train them, two new people, and then not having any dental experience, because we’re trying to think outside the box, it’s overwhelming, the thought of it. And when we did have someone no-show for an interview, it was like the sails were deflated. It’s like, ‘What do we do now?’” (12:01—12:28)

“I was answering phones, and I was like, ‘Man, I could've answered more than half of those by text.’ So, here’s when I was thinking outside the box. If the thought of training is overwhelming, let's outsource that. There's got to be like, ‘Here’s the basics of Eaglesoft. Here’s the basics of [dentistry]. You're going to sit down in our basement and watch some onboarding videos for two days before you even come upstairs,’ something to take the training out of the hands of the people that are there. Because telling someone to click there, and then click there, I don't have patience for it.” (12:54—13:32)

“The second [issue] was the phone calls. I'm not testing this till next week, so bear with me. But I found a service where if it rings three times and goes unanswered, it sends an automatic text from a phone number that I chose. And it just says, ‘Hey, sorry we missed your call. How can we help you?’ And we can text with our patient to answer questions and eliminate phone calls. When we’re working this short, the phone calls are the problem. It’s like they catch up on voicemails, and then call those patients back, and then they're full of voicemails again. So, that's where I'm at. I'm trying to think outside the box, just eliminate phone calls, eliminate busywork, and let them focus on the patients that are there.” (13:34—14:26)

“I think at the front, it’s a constant barrage of phone calls, problems, people not being nice. I don't know...