STAFF MANAGEMENT - What should we do with mediocre staff?

“I’ve tried everything, but she just doesn’t seem to get any better.

Do you think I should I let her go?”

It’s always a hard decision.  All new hires need training to become a productive and integral member of our team.  Some more than others. But when have we done enough?  In what situations is additional training a waste of our time?

There are so many factors to consider.  If we let her go, what happens if we can’t find anyone to replace her?  Surely, having someone in that position is better than having no one at all!

On the other hand, what is the risk of keeping someone who “doesn’t seem to get any better”?  What do we do with someone who doesn’t meet our standards of performance?

Our “standards” are NOT determined by what we say;

they’re based on the level of mediocrity that we tolerate in our least capable employee.

 That’s the baseline.  All the other staff members know that as long as they’re better than HER, they’re “safe” by comparison.  So, it’s not simply a question whether she’s “good enough” to stay. It’s more a question of how good do we want the rest of our team to be.

So, let’s look at the four situations is which additional training will ultimately fail.  And more importantly, how can we know that we have the wrong person on our team?

1. Training won’t work for people who DON’T CARE

• Several years ago, unknown to us, a married receptionist of ours started having an affair with the father of one of our patients. Eventually, she planned to divorce her husband and move out of state with her new lover.

As this relationship developed, her performance, which previously had been good, began to deteriorate dramatically. Puzzled by this change, we discussed her declining performance several times at her Performance Reviews.

Nothing seemed to make a difference.

Suspecting that the problem was not a performance issue but an attitude problem, we started our third review session with one simple question: “Do you CARE about getting better at all this?”

In a moment of genuine honesty, she said, “No, not really”.

Having confirmed our suspicions, we told her, “In that case, there’s no point for us to discuss this any further. You’re fired.”

Not surprisingly, she wasn’t in the least bit upset. Our concerns weren’t important to her anymore. She planned to quit anyway.  She had already checked out, not physically, but emotionally.

All too often, we focus most of our attention on an employee with a poor attitude and neglect the others who are doing well.  The effort Is misplaced.

Our job as a leader is NOT to make our staff care about each other and the practice.  Our job is to find people who already care about excellence and give them an opportunity to get better.

The time we waste on the people who DON’T CARE

 is stolen from the time we could spend on the people who DO.

2. Training won’t work for people who LACK THE NECESSARY INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

• One of our clinical assistants loved riding horses and spent her weekends working in a barn taking care of the animals. One day, she walked up to the front desk and, with patients in the reception area, said, “What the f**k are you guys doing?”   What may have been acceptable language on the weekend was definitely not appropriate in our office. This was clearly out of line! For this reason and other issues with her behavior, she was eventually dismissed.

Some people don’t know how to act in a professional office, others don’t know how to be a contributing member of a team.  Some have issues with authority, others are too independent minded.  In any of these cases, training doesn’t work.

We need staff with “good hearts” - people with a clear sense of how they should treat each other and an innate degree of professionalism.  These attitudes are not something we should try to teach - the employee either comes to us with these skills or they don’t.

If we find ourselves spending time teaching someone basic interpersonal skills, it’s the wrong person!  Leave that to the professionals; we’re dentists not therapists!  Let them go.

If we hope to have a high-performing team, we need people who, by their very nature,

know how to get along with others and act in a professional manner

3. Training won’t work for people who LACK THE NECESSARY PERSONAL SKILLS.
   

• One of our chairside assistants just couldn’t get it. Others in her position were able to learn new things quickly, but every attempt to teach her something new always failed. Nice person, but she just couldn’t retain any instructions we gave her from one day to the next.  We heard that she had been a well-loved kindergarten teacher’s assistant, but she couldn’t seem to grasp the most basic concepts in our office.

Each of us is endowed with certain strengths and weaknesses. Some of us are good at math, others with organization, yet others in working with our hands.  Some mental and manual tasks we can do effortlessly, others, are a constant struggle.

Each person has a unique combination of skills that allows them to succeed if they can find a situation that matches their abilities. They may become a great parent, an effective teacher, a star athlete, an empathetic social worker or a skilled surgeon. The trick is to find a job that makes use of those strengths.

We need staff with “good heads” and “good hands” – the ability to learn quickly and eventually perform the task at hand.  Usually we can teach the technical skills required master any position in our office.  So, the odds are good that a caring and capable employee can improve.

Unfortunately for us, some people may not have the mental capacity, the manual dexterity, or the organizational skills to work in a professional office. Those skills are simply not in their personal “toolbox”.

In these cases, we should give them several opportunities to improve or look for another practice position in which they may excel. But, if the person does not “make measurable progress in a reasonable time”, then further training is futile, and regrettably the person should be dismissed.

If we hope to have a high-performing team,

we need people who are CAPABLE of high performance.

4. Training won’t work for people who have INTEGRITY ISSUES

• The receptionist in one of our satellite offices was responsible for collections in that office. Before the practice had adequate oversight in place, she decided to improve her collections “performance” by taking overdue patient accounts, creating a false insurance account, and transferring any overdue balance into the false insurance account.  If the patient ever paid the overdue bill, she would deduct it from the insurance ledger.

And since she made sure that the false insurance account balance was not overdue, her overdue account reports improved, and her collection reports were stellar.

As we developed better management of our insurance accounts, we discovered $12,000 in such transfers.  Even though she never technically embezzled the money, she was dismissed.  It was an integrity issue that violated the trust we had placed in her.

We can’t train integrity issues;

someone either has integrity or they don’t.

So never believe that any integrity issue is an isolated event.  Anyone caught lying, cheating, or stealing needs to be fired immediately.  If something like this is discovered, there’s no discussion, there’s no second chance or additional training, they’re gone!

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Therefore, when faced with the decision about an employee who doesn’t seem to improve, we know we have the wrong person on our Team . . .

• If they don’t CARE,

• If they don’t have the necessary INTERPERSONAL SKILLS (a “good heart”),

• If they don’t have the necessary PERSONAL SKILLS (a “good head” or “good hands”),

• And, if there are INTEGRITY ISSUES.