Every journey starts with deciding where you want to go. As a practice owner, thinking of your business goals as a quest is helpful to identify your practice vision. This idea of a quest, a shared purpose, helps you set wholistic, achievable goals with your practice manager, so they and your team can realise that vision.
But first, you need to know the direction yourself. However, time-consuming, inefficient practice management tasks can take your energy away from setting your goals and direction. An online practice management platform such as PracticeHub helps with the ‘doing’ in your organisation, saving you time and effort, so you can focus on the bigger picture.
Know your practice’s vision and goals
To set your direction, it’s worth spending time exploring questions such as:
- What are my vision and goals? These inspire your team, motivating them to improve their performance and providing job satisfaction.
- Why do I want to do it? What’s the payoff? Is it important enough to give your energy to and get your team’s buy in to achieve it?
- Where am I going? As a leader, you have to inspire your team. They want to be led, with direction and effective communication.
- How am I going to do it? Work backwards, incrementally towards the goal you want to achieve. Have the end in mind. This tells you how to do it.
- What kind of workplace do I want to create? Yes, you can create the environment you want! And as a leader, it’s your responsibility.
Documenting your answers to these questions in PracticeHub gives you a centralised record that’s easy to share with your team so they feel part of the quest, and you can update it as your journey evolves.
With your vision in place, you can create policies and procedures aligned with it, such as your code of conduct and privacy policies, so staff know what’s expected of them.
Getting your team on board
Now the quest begins with getting buy-in from your team. Practice managers are key to upholding your vision and implementing your goals, through knowing what motivates your staff to inspire their best performance and ownership of their roles. Take time to regularly engage with the team to discover how their individual purpose aligns with your practice vision: are they motivated by money, a sense of belonging, or to learn and be challenged? Knowing these drivers shows you how to communicate with each team member, and how to reward great performance.
Creating a positively energetic workplace also matters. If your team is disinterested, disconnected and demotivated, it impacts your patients’ experience of your practice – and that’s not good for business.
Focus on these three aspects to create a workplace culture that aligns with your vision:
- Wellbeing – of your team and your organisation
- Fostering authentic communication
- Maximising engagement.
Wellbeing:
To create wellbeing in your workplace for all the team, you need to look at the personal and organisational aspects. Regularly monitor factors such as: Is their role challenging enough in a positive way, or are they overworked? Do they feel their contributions are valued? Are they sufficiently recognised and rewarded for good performance? (This is gold for developing a successful practice!)
It’s important to attend to staff energy and engagement as carefully as financial audits, procedural checks, and equipment monitoring. The payoffs are:
- Healthier staff
- Reduced burnout
- Increased staff retention
- More motivation.
Authentic communication:
Effective, authentic communication encompasses three crucial qualities:
- Passion: cultivating an enthusiasm to learn and be engaged, to create a positive practice energy. How can you ensure staff are engaged and keen to learn?
- Courage: fostering an open, honest environment helps tap into each team member’s possibilities so they flourish. How can you encourage your team to speak up and contribute ideas?
- Insight: regular analysis and reflection help you learn from mistakes and track the direction you’re taking. How can you share these insights with your team so you’re all moving towards your quest?
In PracticeHub, you can plan and track staff professional development and training, recording what each team member has done and how this contributes to your quest. Documenting these things, and having them visible to the entire team, is a powerful motivator.
Engagement:
Of course, authentic communication is central to engaging your staff. They want to be kept ‘in the loop’, to feel like an insider and to know they have a voice in your organisation. They want to be treated equally and thanked for their contributions and ideas in a way that’s sincere and relevant to their aspirations.
Keeping staff updated is easy with PracticeHub’s dashboard. Via the Alerts and Tasks feature, each team member can see what they’re responsible for, as well as the latest communications on the Message Board. They can also contribute suggestions that are visible to everyone, helping them feel valued. You can create a compliments register in PracticeHub so staff know you have a process to nominate good performance, which encourages a sense of recognition and reward.
As a practice owner and leader, it’s important you’re setting, focussing on and living your practice vision, as an example for your team. PracticeHub makes the ‘doing’ of your business more efficient by simplifying practice processes, so you can focus on the staff engagement and organisational nurturing that creates a vibrant environment for them and your patients.
PracticeHub offers:
- Transparency for the team. With your practice vision and goals documented, everyone knows what expectations and standards are.
- Consistency for practice managers, with processes documented so tasks are done consistently, to reduce risk.
- Control for practice owners to oversee that their vision is upheld by the team.
Find out how PracticeHub can simplify your practice management tasks so you can focus on creating a successful practice environment, phone us on 1300 469 866 or book a meeting with one of our helpful consultants.
This article is not comprehensive and does not constitute legal or medical advice. You should seek legal or other professional advice before relying on its content, and practise proper clinical decision making with regard to the individual circumstances. Persons implementing any recommendations contained in this article must exercise their own independent skill or judgement or seek appropriate professional advice relevant to their own particular practice. Compliance with any recommendations will not in any way guarantee discharge of the duty of care owed to patients and others coming into contact with the health professional or practice. Avant is not responsible to you or anyone else for any loss suffered in connection with the use of this information. Information is only current at the date initially published. © Avant Mutual Group Limited 2023.
