Finding, training, and retaining great personnel is the key to a great–and profitable–optometry practice. Of the three actions, training is the most important. Staff need to be trained in your practice’s specific way of doing things. Even if you’ve hired experienced opticians, you’ll need to train them for uniform patient care. As the CEO, you don’t necessarily have to do all of the training yourself, but through delegation you are responsible for making sure it happens.
Training Camp (this can be done on a monthly or quarterly basis)
- Introduction – Discuss the importance of training as part of your hiring process and at staff meetings.
- Doodle – Use this free online software to minimize the frustration of scheduling an off-hours training camp. This software will allow your staff to check their schedules outside of the office and then it recommends the best date for the training session.
- Outline – Observe your staff and listen for areas of patient care that could use improvement. Make a list and from that outline your agenda.
- Delegate – Labs and vendors have great educational resources available. Just remind them that you want a non-biased presentation that supports your practice philosophies and not the respective vendor. Below is the email that I send to all sales reps who will be presenting in front of our staff.
- Thank you for your interest in hosting a lunch/educational event for us at our office. The 1st Tuesday of March would be great. We ask that you provide lunch for each of the staff members and doctors. It should be ready by 12:20pm and you are welcome to call our office to place individual orders or bring in a buffet. For individual orders we like Jason’s Deli, McAlister’s, or Jimmy John’s. For a buffet, we’ve had good luck with On The Border. During lunch from 12:20pm to 12:55pm you would have the floor. If you need any AV setup please let me know. We have a television with an HDMI connection. We ask that you direct your time to educating our staff about what is best for the patient. We are not looking for how the practice can increase profits or make more money per patient. Wichita Optometry staff meetings focus on what is best for the patient and we would ask that you partner with us in communicating that to our staff. Please confirm that this will work for you and let me know if you need any special arrangements. Thank you,
- Attend – It is very easy to do the above four and skip this part. After all, you are a very busy individual and could use the break. However, that would be an opportunity missed. Your presence at the session reiterates the importance of the training and will encourage staff members to put their new knowledge into practice. You are their leader and they need you.
Profitability is difficult to measure when one plus one does not equal two, so the time spent training your staff is sometimes hard to justify. As a leader you need to keep thinking long-range and being committed to the belief that the best staff members have a thorough knowledge of product, systems, philosophies of practice, and technical components. These staff members will be the key to your office providing top-notch patient care.
