What Gets Measured Gets Achieved

According to Pendant Health co-founder, Dr. Michael Guirguis, the key to a successful practice is a happy staff.

So how can you create an environment that is conducive to a happy staff? Over the next few weeks, we will look at a number of hard and soft ideas to create that atmosphere of success.

Today, we will touch on employee compensation. When you look at your total compensation for an employee, there are a number of factors to consider. There are the very obvious components, like base salary and incentive compensation...and then there are the silent compensation components like employee benefits, perks, trips, training, and beyond.

We will today, focus exclusively on incentive compensation.

Every job in the world should have a percentage of pay based on incentives. Incentives can draw out that extra 10% from employees that makes all the difference in the world.

Remember...the devil is in the details.

Many dentists have a bonus system to focus the teams efforts on a particular practice objective. Even though your staff may love you, you want to create a way to thank them for going that
extra mile. Institute short-term goals for 1 day, week-long and month-long goals.

If production is scheduled, completed and paid, consider sharing your success with each staff member by providing certain rewards (gas cards, dinner gift cards that they can use for anniversary, birthday or other special occasions, etc).

With medium-term goals, add $/hour to their base. For instance, if the practice sets a goal of $100,000 for the month. Provide a tiered structure where all employees would enjoy a month-long pay raise. If you hit the target, increase their hourly rate for hours worked that month by $2. if the office produces AND COLLECTS, $120,000 add an additional dollar for all hours worked.

This may seem complicated or extreme, but you are only paying based on dollars you didn't have before.

Example: If your staff is booking and collecting $10,000/month more with 5 employees. If you pay them each $2/hr worked more for that GREAT month, your cost is $1,600. Meanwhile, the office just netted an additional $8,400. Seems like a win-win to me!

More on employee compensation to follow.

Best,

Nick Partridge
Pendant Health
nick@PendantHealth.com