Veteran dental business coach, Chris Barrow, shares his advice on how to cope with what he describes as a recruitment and retention cycle.
We’re going through a recruitment and retention cycle, not a crisis. So, if we’re in a cycle then at some point the wheel will turn and things will start to get better. I believe that we are beginning to exit this cycle now. Some of my own clients are beginning to tell me that they have put the feelers out for new team members and they are receiving some attractive CVs. So, the narrative is changing from six months ago when adverts would yield no replies.
How best to recruit?
The way to attract new staff is to create a practice that’s worth working within. There are two aspects to this. The first is pay and the second is environment. With regards to pay, in the last year across my client base wages for PAYE staff have increased by between 30 to 40%. Wages are up and if you are going to attract the right people, you can no longer subscribe to a 50-year-old mantra, ‘we pay as little as we possibly can in order to get receptionists, nurses and others to work in the practice’. Things now must change.
Instead of trying to get by paying minimum wage, we have to pay competitively to get people to want to stay in the sector. And we need to pay competitively to get people to apply to our practice. However, it’s not all about money. We have to create an environment in which people feel appreciated, where they feel that there is a career pathway if they choose to pursue one. Somewhere people feel they can earn more money based on improved qualifications, improved responsibility and improved tasking. A place that’s exciting to work, where people can progress.
If I’m invited into a practice to do a team training session, it takes me 20 seconds to determine what the atmosphere is like. You can tell the energy in the team, or you can tell the absence of the energy in the team straight away. And so, owners and managers have responsibility to create that energy. Work takes a lot of our lives and we have to work very hard at it, so it has to be worth it financially, emotionally, and spiritually.
Look to your patients
Whenever I’m asked, how do I recruit? The answer I give applies to both clinical and nonclinical team members. Step one is to use your existing patient database. That is because Professor Robin Dunbar, who came up with Dunbar’s Number, has taught us that every human being in the planet is connected to another 150 other people. And so, across a patient database of 1,000, you are one degree of separation from 150,000 people. Across a patient database of 2000, that’s 300,000 people. So, the first thing to do is contact your patients through an email newsletter and say: “There are opportunities available in our practice. And if you have any family, friends or colleagues that you know and think would be interested in this opportunity, we’d love to meet with them.” So that’s step one.
Network
Step two – social media. Everyone knows about the power and reach of social media. Use every social media channel to get the message out to say you are hiring. Step three is to get your team to ask their family, friends and colleagues for potential candidates. Step four is talk to every dental rep who has visited your practice. They’re the people you need to be telling that there are positions available within your practice because they will be able to tell you who’s looking around and on the move. Also, your laboratory. And speak to your Practice Plan regional sales manager and ask if they know anybody who might be looking for a new role or a new position.
No need for ads
You’ll notice that print media is not mentioned. That’s because recruitment advertising has largely been replaced by recruitment networking. And that’s how people get hired nowadays. Not through an advert in the local free press or the BDA Journal, but via digital networking and by word-of-mouth.
I’m optimistic for practice’s chances of recruiting great staff. It’s a fantastic time to be in dentistry. I have never been more excited in 26 years in the industry than I am now. It’s a fabulous opportunity to be building a practice, to be opening a private squat or to be taking great quality private dentistry to the marketplace; a marketplace that’s ready and willing to buy. And I see no change in that.
Come whatever economic, political or weather cycle we face next, you can’t avoid a very simple truth. And that is that the United Kingdom is full of people with teeth, gums and wallets, and I could not be more excited about what’s going to happen next.
About Chris
Chris Barrow has been a trainer, consultant, coach and mentor to the UK dental profession for over 25 years. He combines a wealth of knowledge with the originality and independence needed to resolve the thorniest of problems.
Chris spent the first 17 years of his working life in the corporate sector and followed this with 30+ years of business ownership. The different dynamics of both worlds have given him the valuable gift of knowing how to operate and communicate in both.
His own day-to-day work as Coach Barrow with The Extreme Business programmes focuses on strategic coaching with the owners of dental practices and micro-corporates.
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