How Committed Are Your Employees - Practice Tip Of The Week

10/03/2011

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There is an old proverb, "ask and you shall receive". These days, the proverb might be more aptly changed to, "give and you shall receive". In today's working environment, organizations must increase their dedication to staff and levels of leadership if they wish to achieve employee commitment. Employee commitment is not bought with a salary (nor is it expected), but rather earned through the actions of the people who lead the organization."

For employees, commitment is based on a number of factors:
  •     Sufficiency of pay, benefits and rewards
  •     Family oriented policies and actions
  •     Quality of the supervisory relationship
  •     Favorable developmental training and experiences
  •     Promotions
  •     Clearly stated guidelines defining appropriate work behavior and job demands
  •     Participation in goal setting
  •     Receipt of performance feedback
  •     Supportive communications with immediate supervisors and upper management
  •     Procedural justice in performance-appraisal decisions
  •     Evaluative and objective measures of performance

When these things are in place, employees are willing to work harder, perform duties beyond requirements, remain in their organization for a longer period of time, and even have fewer absences from work.

Employee commitment is defined as staff being continually motivated to achieve results and satisfied to see their future with the organization over time. The benefits of such commitment are clear. But how do organizations gain and support the commitment of its people?

In order to ensure that company ideology remains the living breath of the organization, it is vital to be able to measure commitment, taking on board feedback and gauging subtle organizational changes. Without measurement, an organization cannot find the gaps in commitment and improve.

With this in mind, we have an Employee Commitment Questionnaire that assesses employee commitment. This will serve to give you a better understanding of what your employees need to be more effective in their position, how you can improve your working relationship, and how committed they are to their role in your clinic.

Click Here To Download The "Employee Commitment Questionnaire"
File Size: 7 kb
File Type: pdf
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Improve Employee Retention Through Training - Practice Tip Of The Week

09/19/2011

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Improving employee retention through training is a strategic management tactic that is frequently overlooked. All too often a business assumes giving people a salary raise or more vacation time will create job satisfaction. Instead, what happens is the staff adjusts their standard of living to consume the raise and are away from their jobs longer due to the increased paid leave time. They remain dissatisfied while at work.

It is difficult to do any job when you don't have access to the right training. Struggling through a job, or spending time doing a job wrong, results in frustration and often leads to conflict between employees, and employees and managers. The employees feel as if their employer really doesn't care enough about the quality of the job being done if they refuse to invest in training. The result is the staff and the employer are unhappy with the results.

Employees who sense an employer will not invest in adequate training will seek other employment. Staff turnover is an expensive proposition for a business. Anytime an employee leaves and must be replaced, there is a learning curve for new staff during which productivity will drop. In addition, the manager must spend an inordinate amount of time making sure the replacement staff has enough information to do the rudiments of the job. Then the cycle starts all over again.

Increasing employee retention is possible by providing staff training. But it cannot be training just for training's sake. Most people have, at some point, sat through a seminar wondering why they are being forced to listen to information not relevant to their job.

Staff training must be focused, and it must be focused on providing the tools and knowledge staff need to do their job. The training must be relevant on many levels.

* Promote the chiropractic mission and culture
* Increase customer relationship management
* Teach communication skills
* Instruct in use of technology
* Encourage creative thinking
* Develop potential managers

This probably sounds like an ambitious agenda. But an effective training program that is well designed and addresses the very real day-to-day issues employees must be able to handle to do their jobs well, will result in increased employee retention. The reason is quite simple. Well trained employees take ownership mentally and emotionally of a company when they are treated as valuable assets.

Developing an "Our" Organization Mentality

Staff who do not take some level of ownership of their place of employment are normally dissatisfied employees who always keep their jobs at an arm's length so to speak. They never really feel as if they need to be as productive as possible or need to put forth the extra effort good job performance always requires. Eventually, it is inevitable these employees will seek another job.
Employee training builds staff confidence, competence, and a sense of job ownership. The result is a workforce that is knowledgeable and has a high level of job satisfaction. When someone is satisfied, they will stay right where they are, on the job.
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3 Steps To Effective Facebook Marketing - Practice Building Tip Of The Week

08/15/2011

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In this tip of the week I will share with you how to effectively use your time to market your practice on Facebook to local residents in your area, without getting sidetracked by all of the flashy objects and distractions.

Step 1. Be productive, not distracted.
Many Doctors spend hours upon hours on Facebook answering questions, checking out flashy objects, and wasting time.  Facebook is designed to be distracting so more people will spend more time on their site, but in the end, all of the flashy time wasting objects can actually hurt your practice.  So understanding what's productive, verses distractive, will help you take the first step to utilizing Facebook in a way that will help you generate more brand exposure and potentially pull in more new patients.

Step 2. Setup your business page for your practice, and don't mix business with personal.
Not everyone knows that Facebook allows you to have a personal profile and a separate business page.  In your personal profile, you can talk about personal things like vacations, ideals, and events, but try not to get too personal.  You have to remember that your prospective patients, and current patients, will see your personal profile along with your business page, and if you are talking about personal issues that in no way bring value to your prospective patients, then the overall perception of you as a Doctor could be diminished.  Keep it light, and focus on adding value.  You can setup your business page by going to Facebook.com, and then clicking the small blue link at the bottom that says "Pages."   In your business page you want to input as much information about your practice as possible, and offer a subscription to your newsletter or an attractive offer to entice your prospective clients to come into your office and meet you and your staff.

Step 3. Market your business page, not your personal profile
The goal of the business page is to get prospective patients in your local area to go to your page and click the "like" button.  The more people who click the "like" button, means the more opportunity you have to spread your message about your practice further out into the community.  One way to get people to click your "like" button is to offer them something valuable for clicking the "like" button, and then market your business page on Facebook using the Facebook Ads, which can be found at Facebook.com, and then clicking the "Advertising" button at the bottom of the page.  With Facebook Ads you can geo-target your ads to a specific city so you know you are investing your marketing budget in your local area.

Remember, Facebook can be distracting and take you away from what you should be doing to help more patients.  The good ol' speaking engagement or patient orientation class will produce more results in a shorter period of time, than a facebook campaign will, but if you spend a maximum of 10 minutes per day on Facebook, you can build up your brand and web presence over time, ultimately reaching out and potentially helping more new patients get better through chiropractic care.
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