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Employee Raises |
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Raises Earned or Assumed
On the list of leading causes of high overhead, right after too many employees, is salaries too high. And doctor after doctor will tell me that they feel like they are just working to meet payroll. While I don’t want you to shortchange the power players on your team, I do want you to take a close look at whether you routinely increase wages based on longevity rather than productivity/performance.
For example, long-term employee Margaret logs another year at the front desk and automatically gets another 3% increase in salary – not that she’s increased practice profitability by 3%, but the office standard is that she’ll receive a larger share of the pie just for sticking around another year. The result: increased overhead and decreased practice profit.
Employees go along thinking they are performing just fine. There’s no reason for them to assume otherwise. And long-term employees, like Margaret, simply expect that pay raise because it’s always been there. Meanwhile, the doctor, who is often emotionally attached to the employee, feels obligated to deliver on that expectation.
It’s time to manage employee expectations and take a big step toward controlling practice overhead. Tie raises to performance, and raise – or perhaps establish - performance standards.
First step, take the emotion out of giving raises. Never give raises because you feel sorry for an employee or are afraid they won’t like you if you don’t give them a raise or it will keep them from quitting. This decision isn’t about how much you like someone; it’s about how profitable your business is. You can still recognize employee dedication and hard work without compromising the bottom line.
If an employee comes to you asking for a raise, don’t panic. Don’t respond with comments such as: “I can’t afford it right now.” “You haven’t been here long enough.” “I need to be fair to the others.” And don’t hand over more money without careful consideration.
Rather, establish a compensation policy. The policy spells out when raises can be discussed and under what conditions they are given. For example, if production decreases or remains flat, the practice cannot afford to increase salaries – plain and simple. Conversely, if the team develops a system for increased treatment acceptance and production/collections increases, the doctor may want to reward employees financially. Whatever the specifics of the policy, they are explained up front to new employees as well as existing staff.
In addition, the policy should make it clear that performance measurements will be used to determine raises. Performance measurements provide an objective and neutral means of leveling the playing field for the entire staff. While employees tend to resist the idea initially, they quickly come to realize that they have far more trust in the process when they are rated against objective measures. Most importantly, they see the direct relationship between their performance, the success of the practice, and ultimately their potential for individual achievement – a pay raise.
To establish the performance measurements, sit down with each employee and identify individual performance goals that complement practice goals, such as increasing collection ratios, improving accounts receivables, expanding production, reducing time to prepare treatment rooms, and increasing clinical skills. These are the job expectations and they should be provided to the employee in writing. In addition, the employee should be given the tools and training necessary to achieve the goals. For example, if you expect collections to be at 98%, help front desk staff to develop a strategy to achieve that rate, including collections training if necessary. Then hold them accountable. In other words, measure their progress on achieving that goal.
During the performance review, evaluate the employee’s success in establishing and carrying out the new policy and achieving the 98% collections rate. In addition, review other contributions they’ve made to the practice, such as cutting costs, increasing revenues, saving time, improving efficiency, new patients etc. Discuss problems/issues they have addressed or new responsibilities they’ve taken on since their last raise. If the employee successfully implemented a new system and improved practice productivity, that is an important factor in determining a salary increase.
Bottom line: Pay raises should be earned, not assumed.
Sally McKenzie is CEO of McKenzie Management. a nationwide dental management, practice development and educational consulting firm. Working “on-site” with dentists since 1980, McKenzie Management provides knowledge, guidance and personalized systems that have propelled thousands of general and specialty practices to realize their potential. Sally can be reached directly at 1.877.777.6151
Interested in speaking to Sally McKenzie about your management concerns? Email her at Sally@thedentistsnetwork.net
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Serve It Up!
While many dental practices are looking at the modern systems like cone beam imaging and online scheduling and all of the other components in a chartless practice, often overlooked is the infrastructure that is needed to run those systems. I cannot tell you the number of practices I’ve worked with that struggle with their high tech systems and it is almost always due to a decision to not spend on developing the proper computer support for those systems. The most critical part of that is the computer server, the “lifeblood” of any dental office network. While you can certainly work with a technology consultant to choose a server, a basic understanding of the main parts should allow you to properly configure one on your own. While the cost of a decent server can run up to $3500 or so, the practice needs to decide if the integrity and safety of their data is worth that amount (and, in my opinion, the answer is always a resounding: YES!)
Hard Drives
are many varieties of hard drives found in computers. If you’ve never configured a server before, the choices can seem overwhelming. In the past, it was a choice between IDE (slower) or SCSI (faster) drives. However, a newer standard has emerged that is usually a better choice. This is called SATA, or Serial ATA. It offers certain advantages. The drives spin faster than IDE drives and the cables, which are much smaller, allow for their use in small computers where reduced airflow is a concern. Look for drives that have at least 250 GB of storage and spin at 10,000 RPM or greater.
RAID Drives
RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, is a system of using multiple hard drives for various reasons. For desktop computers, some manufacturers create a RAID 0 array, where the hard drives are configured to share the duties of the computer. While this increases speed, it is not appropriate for a server. The server RAID system is designed for redundancy. Multiple hard drives are mirrors of each other, which creates redundancy for the server. The concept is built around the thought that if a hard drive fails (still relatively rare), there should be a minimal amount of down time for the office to get back up and running. With mirrored drives, each drives contains a complete copy the main drive. If the first drive fails, the second drive will take over and allow the office to keep functioning. The RAID systems that are most common for servers in a dental office are either RAID 1 (two drives) or RAID 5 (three or more drives). I recommend you get a minimum of a RAID 1 (two mirrored drives) system.
Hot Swap
For most desktop systems, the hard drives are housed inside the computer, where they are not easily accessible to the user. Most dentists and dental office personnel are not comfortable opening up a computer to take out a hard drive. One option with servers is to have the hard drives accessible on the front of the computer. By simply pushing a button, a faulty drive can easily be removed from a server and replaced with a good drive, even while the server is still running. This is known as hot swapping.
Memory
Most servers will use a special form of memory known as to create a more stable system. ECC, or Error Checking Code, is designed to help correct errors. ECC RAM, coupled with a proper memory controller, is able to correct memory errors instead of letting them go corrupted, possibly corrupting your data. This usually translates into less system crashes. Get at least 2 GB of RAM for a server.
Redundant Power Supplies
All the redundancy in hard drives won’t help much if the server doesn’t have power! The power supply is an often-overlooked but still important component on the system. To eliminate loss of power as a reason for server failure, many servers will be configured with a second power supply. The disadvantage to this is that not only does it increase the size of the server case, it also tends to create significantly more noise as the power supply fan is often the noisiest element of the server.
While many offices can function without all of the above features, offices that are truly paperless or chartless should invest in a server that is designed to keep the practice running at all times.
Lorne Lavine, DMD is the Founder and President of Dental Technology Consultants. Dr. Lavine holds two prestigious certifications, the A+ Certified Technician designation and the Network+ Certified Professional. These designations demonstrate proficiency in computer repair, operating systems, network design and installation. Dental Technology Consultants provide dentists a full range of services relating to the implementation of technology.
Dr. Lavine can be reached directly at 1.866.204.3398.
Interested in speaking to Dr. Lavine about your technology concerns? Email him at Drlavine@thedentistsnetwork.net
Interested in having Dr. Lavine speak to your dental society or study club? Click Here.
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