Secrets to Keeping
Good Employees

By Kay Hays

The cost of employee turnover is astronomical. The average cost to recruit and train one employee is estimated at 2.5 times the employee’s monthly salary. U.S. businesses spend billions annually recruiting and replacing employees.

What drives away employees? Poor working conditions and weak management skills are the main reasons. When it comes to recruiting and retaining employees, many employers fail to see their own bad habits, inefficiencies, faulty procedures and processes that drive productivity and profitability down, and frustrated employees out the door.

Workers have the ability to impact a business’s performance. Over time they build valuable relationships with patients and suppliers. Processes become refined and routine, causing efficiency. Details are maintained. With the loss of each employee, some procedures get dropped. Inefficiencies develop because the new employee doesn’t know the reasons for some actions and may take shortcuts, do away with a procedure or get rid of a file they feel is unnecessary because of their limited knowledge.

Some data may be lost, laws may be broken due to improper recordkeeping and worse, patient records may be lost because of these omissions or errors. The cost to retrieve lost information is almost always more expensive than to just keep it properly in the first place.

What to do?
• Outline responsibilities for employees. Do not overlap responsibilities. This can cause dissention.

• Have your manager develop accountability for each employee. Employees need to know what is expected of them.

• Train or arrange training for your employees. An employee who has to learn a job through trial and error is an employee under stress and the situation will hurt business.

• Keep communications open. Employees need to know someone is there to care and listen. Sometimes the issue cannot be fixed, but just listening to employees is often all they want and need.

• Keep your word.

You cannot build a great practice without great people.

1. Take time to review each employee’s performance with them quarterly.

2. Make sure not to turn over the management of your organization to a tyrant who chases away employees who show initiative.

3. Treat everyone equally and with respect. Barking orders may be expedient, but good employees will not take it.

4. Make sure your schedule is known by your employees. If your employees are left feeling stupid because they have to explain unscheduled absences or make excuses for your behavior, you are causing them stress.

5. Praise your employees often. Employees need to feel appreciated. Make it a weekly practice to try to find something about each employee to compliment.

BCMS Staffing Services provides a salary survey for most of the positions staffed in practices and clinics.

It is a free service for members. A member’s signature on each request is required so the salary survey stays private.

Fax your signed request for the 2006 Salary Survey to BCMS Staffing Services at (301) 2152 or e-mail
jeanmarie.traversi@bcms.org.

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