Episode 140: Leveraging Assessments to Build a Stronger Team: Part 2

Speaker 1:
You are listening to Your Practice Made Perfect. Support, protection and advice for practicing medical professionals, brought to you by SVMIC.

Renee:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Your Practice Made Perfect. I'm Renee Tidwell and I'll be your host today. This is the second part to our assessments topic. Part one covered utilizing assessments in the recruiting, hiring and onboarding process. Don't forget to check out that episode, if that's of interest to you. In this episode, we will dive into the use of assessments with your current employees, but more specifically how you can leverage assessments to help build a stronger team. I think this topic really couldn't come at a better time with the ongoing issues of staff turnover that all industries are seeing, especially medical practices, it might be a good time to focus on building a strong and positive team. Joining me today, we have executive coach Terry Humphrey. Without further ado, let's jump right in. How can I use assessments to help identify potential areas for improvement with my current staff?

Terry:
When I think about assessments, it's one of the best ways to use an assessment is with your current staff. Once you know the culture that you want to have, you can begin to think about, "All right. What works today? What's not working? Who is a good example of the type of culture that we want to build?" Oftentimes when you're bringing new people in, you put them with your best old people. You use current employees who are doing a good job, who can help you decide whether or not this person is a good fit. So, for those established employees, one of the things that you want to do is help them first and foremost understand themselves. So, you can use an assessment to help build self-awareness. For someone who is early in their career, it's a great place to start and to help them see how they can build on that for the remainder of their career.
For those who are mid-career, or later in career, it's a reminder of who we are. And, oftentimes, if there is discord or difficulty between individuals in a practice, it is simply because there's a misunderstanding about motivation, or misunderstanding about each other's style, how they communicate, what fears they might have, what stressors they might have and how they respond to that. And so, one of the opportunities is to use assessments to create a common language and a better understanding of the individuals who make up the practice.
One of the things I see working against a practice is just the speed at which you have to do your work. And, oftentimes, we don't get that opportunity to take a breath and recognize that someone might be stressed today and that's why they're behaving the way that they're behaving. Or, maybe someone isn't feeling well, or a whole host of other things. And so, building a better understanding, building a way to ask better questions. I think about physicians and the number of questions that a physician would ask a patient. That is a super helpful skill with employees, is being able to ask questions and find out what's going on with folks. So, building that language so it almost creates a shortcut in a fast-paced environment can be really helpful.

Renee:
I've been asking these questions more as a practice manager might would think about it, or a hiring manager might think about it. But, early on you mentioned generational challenges or whatever. We didn't really talk about it long, but I'd like to hit on that for just a minute. Especially when we're talking about even in the hiring, you said sometimes it's your more tenured employee that's training the newest person, who may or may not be younger. But, I guess, what I'm getting at is, is there a way to help bridge the generational gap by using an assessment to help us understand each other better?

Terry:
Assessments can help somewhat with that. The other thing that helps with that is having some conversations about what we value. And, there are assessments to assess value, what my values might be. So, if I go into a practice and I know that I'm being trained by someone who values attention to detail and quick learning because it is a fast-paced environment, then I might be able to adapt my behavior to dig in on some level of detail that I really need to pay attention to. Or, there may be a way that I can ask the questions that I have, or the timing that I need to ask those questions. And, I'll give you an example of what I often hear Renee, is worker ethic. So, baby boom generation work is the thing. Work long hours, work is valued, whereas our children who are millennials, or perhaps younger value work and want to do a good job, but also value balance.
And so, it's figuring out, having conversations about what is expected during the workday? And then, how do we best get that done? And, how do we also allow for vacations or leaving at five o'clock, or whatever the balance looks like in the office. Assessments can help with that, and learning how to have conversations to get at the root of some of these issues, rather than ... And, it's human nature. We tell ourselves a story and we create this narrative about, "Someone's different than I am, and so therefore they must value these things." One of the things I like to teach people how to do is to have a conversation so we're not guessing. We're not assuming and we're not creating a narrative that may not be the truth.

Renee:
I feel like the more we know about people's individual motivation and values, we can better blend the organization's vision and mission and find a balance there like you were talking about. Let's hop back to from the standpoint of a practice manager and what they're looking for, and how we can help them out a little bit. I know for people that are hiring, we're also looking to improve employee development plans. Are there assessments that can play a role with that as well?

Terry:
There are assessments, and there are also processes that can be really helpful. So, when I think about employee management, managing the lifecycle of an employee, part of that is going to be developing them. Part of that is going to be managing performance and also supporting growth, those types of things. An assessment can help me see where I am at this point in time. So, building self-awareness, maybe understanding where I might have difficulty with the relationship, where my values are. There are a whole host of things that we can assess for.
The other thing that I think is really important is for the practice manager to have clear metrics and expectations for each role. Oftentimes, we focus on the individual, and what we forget is the individual is performing a particular role. If we know clearly what that role is and what the responsibilities are, then we can connect what is expected in the role with how the person is performing. Then that can become a conversation like, "I really love that you develop great relationships in a short amount of time with our patients. They genuinely like you and they know that you care. One of the things that will improve on that is for you to have more attention to detail when you're charting," or whatever that might be. Right? So, it gives you the work to talk about, as opposed to, "I really don't like this aspect of your personality." And, that sometimes tends to be where we lean.

Renee:
On top of that, I feel like a big topic of concern in our current climate is employee retention. We've hit on that a little bit. I think everything we've talked about can help or hurt employee retention. What are your thoughts on that?

Terry:
Retention is difficult right now, or has been up to this point, and particularly in healthcare. There are so many stressors. One, certainly shortages put more stress on the people who are remaining always. So, one of the things that I think is super important for retention is to constantly be in conversations, to demonstrate appreciation, to check in with people and make sure that the workload is appropriate, that people have the tools and resources to do their jobs. There are a couple of things. So, the Gallup organization has a survey that they provide to organizations. Has 12 questions on it, and one of the questions is, "Do you have the tools and resources to do your job?" The other thing that they ask is, "Do you have a best friend at work?" And we always kid about the best friend question, but people need to look forward to working with their colleagues. Doesn't have to literally be a best friend, but it has to be someone that you look forward to working with. There has to be some demonstration of appreciation.
So, when we talk about generational differences, we have to set aside what we think in one generation versus another generation and respect the people, the humans, how they show up for work, and recognize that if I'm working for a baby boomer, that I want to put my best effort forward. And, I also still need to have my balance at the end of the day. And, honestly, many baby boomers are getting to the point where they also want some balance as well. So, having the conversations, being respectful, showing kindness. None of that ever goes out of style. All of that is appropriate. So, I think those types of things can help. And, also, if you have an assessment ... I work with a lot of teams where we assess people to develop more appreciation for the differences, for appreciation for what works. More understanding about, "Well, okay. Now I understand why the details are so important to you," or "I understand why when I ask you 100 questions, you get frustrated." So, those are the types of things that can really improve retention.

Renee:
You have given a lot of great information. I think one thing that's sticking out to me a lot throughout our conversation today has been that assessments are great when used with good communication. An assessment alone isn't going to cut it. You've got to use it with this good communication. So, now that we've discussed the benefits of these assessments for hiring and retention, could you shed some light on some best practices for implementing these assessments into the processes? I'm sure as an employee, I don't want to just be told one morning, "Oh, by the way, I want you to take this electronic assessment," or whatever the case might be. So, can you talk to us about that for just a few minutes?

Terry:
Sure. The most important use of an assessment in all the things that we've talked about today, is to help build better understanding between people and also understanding of ourselves. So, what I would encourage people to do is, certainly as you're bringing new people into the practice, use an assessment and set the expectation early on, that as part of what we do here to develop people and to understand each other better, to build a better culture, is we use an assessment as part of understanding each other's behaviors. And, that types of setting an expectation early, that we use that to help you develop and get to know others and develop that better understanding can be very effective.
If you have someone who has been with you for a while and you're going to use an assessment, then I would explain to them, one of the things that we're trying to do is reduce turnover. We want to retain people. We are going to use this as one tool of many to help build a stronger culture and help build better understanding. And, we'd like you to participate in that. And, I know this is precious time, especially in any practice, but having a meeting where you have a conversation about these things, and also take the time to go over the assessments to talk about it, to think about how you all want to use this collectively to get to know each other better. Taking those moments will be very important in building relationships between employees and create the culture that you would like to have in your practice.

Renee:
Terry, this has been super interesting to me today. I know I've heard a few things I'm going to take back and use with my own team here at SVMIC. Before we wrap up, though, is there anything else you'd like to leave us with?

Terry:
As I was thinking about this topic today, one of the things I encourage people not to do is use assessments as a shortcut to get to an answer. I would use the assessment as a source of information, but not the information. To really take the time to plan out your hiring process. The cost of turnover is 50 to 60% of someone's salary, and that's on the low end.

Renee:
Wow!

Terry:
Yeah.

Renee:
Okay.

Terry:
So, it's significant, and it is also very disruptive to the rest of the team and very disruptive to your patient. So, take the time on the front end to really build a sound hiring process, to set expectations around development, invest in your employees. They will stay with you a lot longer if they know that they have a career path. Encourage them to also talk, to come to you with questions. If they are going to leave the practice and you have open communication, they're more likely to discuss with you when they're unhappy, or come to you and say, "I've been offered this opportunity," because it's going to happen. Burnout is real, opportunities are real. None of this is made up at this point, it is the human condition, especially coming out of COVID. So, that's probably more than you wanted, but that's what I'm thinking about this topic.

Renee:
This has been great, Terry. I think it's been very insightful for our listeners. Terry, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing with us. Listeners, thanks again for joining. We are going to link some resources in the show notes, including some assessment and hiring links. Be sure to check those out if you want them. And, as always, we're available by phone, email or through our website. So with that, we're going to say goodbye.

Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Your Practice Made Perfect. Listen to more episodes, subscribe to the podcast and find show notes at svmic.com/podcast. The contents of this podcast are intended for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Policy holders are urged to consult with their personal attorney for legal advice, as specific legal requirements may vary from state to state and change over time.