This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
First things first: Intelligent staff interaction in a harsh economy
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Welcome to the first submission of what we hope will be thousands of blog postings in the many years to come. With 30 years in the game, it's both a shock and a privilege to expand my work from the comfort of the one-way printed page to the two-way blogosphere.
And it could not happen at a more interesting time, just over a year into what is now widely expected to be a multi-year world economic retrenchment. I hope to anneal the wisdom and craft of the old way to the freshness, buzz and machine-gun pace of the new. Looking forward to your feedback and to your requests for topics to cover here and in my monthly Ocular Surgery News columns.
John Pinto, President
J. Pinto & Associates Inc.
San Diego
As a surgeon today, you spend about one-third of every working hour earning the revenue needed to support your lay support staff. That's about 700 hours a year. How well are you backing up and managing that massive investment?
Remember that good economic times can mask poor leadership habits. Although your style as an owner may have veered in the past to the gruff or absent, you are now no longer in a position to exchange endless pay raises for your attention, engagement, affection and inspirational leadership.
If as a physician you've been the somewhat shy, invisible leader of your practice (letting an administrator be your proxy), now is the time to circulate the office often, learn everyone's name and learn how they're each contributing to your success. And then keep it up every day. If this works during the still-not-yet-brutal times we're living through now, just imagine what a great leader you'll be when "The Great Recession" arrives.
Staff morale can be more positively impacted by their interaction with you as a physician, and by your specific positive comments about their performance, than by any other single influence in the workplace. Don't just praise the technicians you see every day, but also the billing staff, opticians and front desk clerks.
Now is the time to communicate avidly. Hold plenty of meetings — all-hands, departmental, even quick "team spirit" huddles in advance of each clinic session.
At the same time, do what you can to counter the negative daily news feeds, which have now reached the fevered pitch of what could be reasonably called "recession porn." Let your staff know why a career in medicine — and especially a career in eye care — is so valued at times like these. Tell your people that the perceived threat of nationalized health care, if President Obama reads from President Johnson's playbook and expands Medicare, might have the same net positive outcome experienced by eye care professionals since 1965.
Emphasize the positive in every staff communication. Be especially careful about the things you put in writing. Steer strongly toward the positive. As a doctor or manager, it's easy to dryly write about the practice's misfortunes in a way that feels good to you — getting things off your chest — but that will absolutely freak out the troops.
Balance anything negative you feel you must report with the silver lining: "It appears that we are down 7% in patient visits and 9% in collections this year. However, because of our new flex-staffing program, and the way we've been able to trim the cost of supplies, I'm happy to report we're only going to be trimming about 5% of staff hours over the balance of this year, starting with voluntary reductions. And as soon as the economy turns around, we hope to rapidly restore everyone possible to their former hours."
Fingers crossed (and eyes and toes), you and your practice are going to get through the next stormy years just fine — and certainly with far less anxiety and harm than your neighbors in virtually every other segment of the national economy.
Click on www.pintoinc.com for more information or contact the author at pintoinc@aol.com.