Don't let staff issues railroad your practice. Learn the best tips on how to train and retain your employees.

Employers should heed the word assume when training employees: Assume nothing.

Employers often make too many assumptions about what employees know, what they have been taught, and most importantly, what they understand.

In the typical chiropractic office, new staff members are hired because of replacement or expansion. Both situations provide challenges. Either employees are thrust into a situation where there is no one to properly train them, or they must hit the ground running, which leaves no time for training.

If an employee was fired, are there other employees who remain loyal to her? If so, will they show resentment toward the new hire? Will training be provided by a loyalist who wants the new employee to fail?

If an employee is hired because of expansion, mixing a new employee in the dynamics of an existing staff can be tricky. Is there a specific job description for the new employee? Will existing staff members feel threatened or insecure, either by loss of duties or by the status of the new employee? Will proprietary feelings stem from the redistributing of the workload? And most importantly, if the staff addition is due to an increase in business, will an existing staff member have the appropriate time to train the new employee?

A Job Worth Doing
Staff training requires clear communication, written procedures and job descriptions, and adequate time for learning. There are five reasons why new employees do not fulfill their job responsibilities:

1) Employers expect too much, too quickly from their employees;
2) Employers believe they are training when, in fact, they are just talking;
3) Employers and employees do not invest in proper training;
4) Employees are afraid to ask for help;
5) Employees accept adequacy for accomplishment.

Most businesses have a 30- to 90-day probationary period. During that time, the new hire will learn her job responsibilities, and the employer will decide whether she fits with the practice culture. However, in most chiropractic offices, doctors require staff to be on their own within 2 weeks. While rudimentary skills may have been learned to perform basic tasks, knowledge and understanding has not been mastered. Unfortunately, most of the time, training ends too quickly, and both the employee and the employer lose.

Doctors and office managers who believe that they can train employees by just showing them their job duties are fooling themselves. Teaching an employee why something is done and not just how something is done is important. Robotic training (repeating a task until it is learned) is for dogs and monkeys. Real training requires an understanding of the procedures, cognitive thought, and thorough understanding. Worse than telling someone what to do is training that emphasizes learning by watching. Employees do not learn by watching, they learn by doing.

Training is a professional skill. Unfortunately, many offices assign their most experienced employee to teach new hires. However, while the experienced CA may be the best performer in that position, there is no guarantee that she can teach. If the person training a new hire is taking work off her own desk, chances are the new employee will get the tasks the trainer does not want to do.

Train the trainer. Educate the individual whose job it is to manage and train the team. Educate the entire staff with professional trainers and coaches. Management consultants, in-house training specialists, and professional-training seminars are offered in abundance for chiropractors.

Employees, especially new hires, are sometimes too hesitant or intimidated to ask for help. They fear that questions will be interpreted as inadequacy. This results in a loss of understanding. Sometimes new-hires simply cover up their mistakes and it takes months for errors to be discovered.

Trainers should always explain to new employees that they expect questions. If after that, the new hire does not ask questions, she may not understand the process.

Whether out of fear or complacency, employees stop training and stop trying. They give up and give in to the notion that adequacy is accomplishment. Often I hear comments about staff members who will not attend seminars, and their doctors who do not require that the staff do so. Perhaps the doctor is afraid that an experienced CA will leave if pushed to increase her knowledge. Perhaps the staff resist learning something new for fear their doctor will reject change. Quit accommodating your limitations. Training and learning is a never-ending cycle of process.

The Top 10 List
There are 10 tips for training your employees:

1) Invest in professional training. Either choose a single employee to train new employees and make sure that employee has completed courses that teach training techniques. Send all employees through professional training classes, or hire an in-house consultant for on-site training.

2) Have written training manuals that standardize the training of new employees. Along with good scripts and procedures, training manuals should include cognitive skills training that require new employees to think through a variety of scenarios.

3) Develop tests, both written and practical, that gauge employees’ understanding of their positions and knowledge of expected outcomes.

4) Role-play and make the new employees ask questions.

5) Have all new employees go through the new patient procedure. This not only allows a new hire to experience what patients go through, it also establishes a file for future care.

6) Allow significant time for training in a nondistracting environment. Putting new employees in the thick of things during busy patient times is uncomfortable for the employee and patients.

7) When using a buddy system as a training tool, do not introduce new employees to patients as “new” or “just learning.” Instead, use phrases such as, “observing” or “watching me today,” which sounds more professional and will give patients more confidence when the new employee takes over the care.

8) Cross-train all employees to develop a better understanding of the big picture. When staff members realize how each piece of the puzzle fits, the office will run more efficiently.

9) Support job performance skills by having written office procedures and job descriptions for all staff members, including doctors.

10) Plan on attending at least two professional seminars a year—one on procedural techniques and another on motivation. It is not that you cannot afford it; it is that you cannot afford not to.

Finding, training, and keeping staff members are the biggest challenges to running a successful business. Finding them takes luck; keeping them takes respect; training them takes talent. When you short-change staff training, you lose in the long run. CP

Ces Soyring, CA, is cofounder of the National Academy of Chiropractic Assistants (www.naca-online.com) and a chiropractic consultant. She can be reached via email: naca_csoyring@yahoo.com.