A happy and well-motivated staff will not only give better, more complete care to your patients, but they will also be more productive and get more patients through the door. Increasing your staff’s motivation and productivity results in a more effective and successful clinic, one that your patients like to visit. Moreover, they will also recommend it to their friends and family, once they had a positive experience. Here are 8 ideas on how to keep your clinic staff happy and motivated.

1. It’s not all about money

Whenever the topic of staff motivation and productivity is brought up, thoughts immediately turn to cash bonuses and monetary incentives. However, money isn’t always the most motivating factor. You should always keep in mind, that every team member thinks differently and values different things.

Dan Pink, author of “The Surprising Truth About Moving Others” found through his research that money is only a good motivator for simple and repetitive tasks that don’t require much creativity. Furthermore, he suggested that financial rewards can have a counterintuitive effect in some cases. [Video link]

2. Develop your staff

As it was already mentioned, every team members require the unique approach and may have different goals. By creating development plans for each of your staff, you can help them to achieve their own unique and individual goals.

You can arrange regular training sessions, either within your clinic or externally, depending on their needs to help them achieve their specific goals. Regular one-to-one meetings will help you both to come up with a plan for their own individual development and how you and the clinic can support them. The more staff feel supported and developed, the more they will go above and beyond for you and your business.

3. Be a fair boss

It’s hard not to play favourites, especially if one particular staff member is able to acquire many new clients while the other is just bringing in a lot of headaches. Furthermore, you may get along with some team members better than with others.

In order to create a positive team culture, everyone needs to feel equal and the same access to the opportunities. Treat each member of staff as equals when it comes to acknowledgement, support and reprimands.

4. Lead by example

You don’t need to motivate your medical staff just by giving them materials things. The very important way of motivating your staff is to lead by example. It basically means to do the activities/things you would like to see be done by your team (smile to your patients, nice approach to other team members, being on time, etc.)  

5. Promote & reward the right employees

A great way to keep staff is to reward and promote from within, it creates a level of job satisfaction and helps your staff plan their careers with your clinic in terms of years. Keeping good staff through this philosophy is vital, however, it keeps the bad staff too. Promoting or rewarding under-qualified or unproductive staff members simply because they’ve been with the practice for a long time is counter-intuitive to your goals of retaining great staff.

Brian White, the managing partner of Competitive Solutions, a consultancy that helps grow physician practices, reminds us that success in lower-level positions is not always a strong indicator of success than in higher level ones.

Just because a staff member has been with the clinic for a long time and knows it well, does not mean that they would do well in a senior role. This action can cause problems with the running of the business and influence other employees in a bad way.  

6. Give them a break

Make sure, that your clinic team members get up and have a break at least for a few minutes every day. It will help them with focus and their health as well. They can refresh themselves or do small training.

7. Terminating bad team members

Similar to the previous point is rewarding bad staff by continuing their employment. Firing an unproductive staff member isn’t fun and many managers avoid it for as long as possible for fear of creating a negative or stressful work environment.

However, if a staff member is underperforming in your clinic, that actually puts added strain on the rest of your team to pick up the slack. Terminating one staff member’s contract is also a way of telling the rest of your team that they’re doing a good job because you want to keep them.

8. Don’t give incentives for existing responsibilities

Incentives are a great way to boost morale and productivity, but if a member of your team needs incentives just to do their regular job then it tells you that they are not intrinsically motivated and this may not be the job for them.

Marc Lion, CPA, CFP, founder of Lion & Company, CPAs, LLP and a member of the National CPA Health Care Advisors Association says that “You’re already paying employees to perform these responsibilities, so offering incentives for doing so sets the precedent that ‘holdouts’ or poor performers can ultimately be paid more for doing the work they should have been doing all along”.

If you’ll have any positive or surprising results from following these steps, share those with us at contact@gcr.org or on your social media channels using #gcrtips