Last week I talked about surgery costs and in previous weeks we have talked about ‘a principal’s percentage of gross, adaptive selling and clinician revenue analysis.
One of the hardest things in leadership of a dental team and running a practice is the issue of pay rises. We’ve agonised long and hard about these over the years.
It’s one of the hardest aspects of your Human Resources because, although it’s not the most important factor in any employees mind (apparently it’s about fifth down the list) it’s very emotive and very significant if you get it wrong.
One of the worst things that can happen to a Principal in dental practice is for a member of staff to come to them half way through a busy day and ask for a pay rise. Some years ago in our practice we halted all of that by informing staff that pay rises would only be discussed as part of their appraisal process. We developed a significant and robust appraisal and performance review process which is a two way discussion of peoples performance and requirements to do their job better next year. We review previous targets and previous performance and have an open and frank discussion with members of staff regarding how they’ve done, where they said they would be and whether they’ve got there or not. Based on their performance throughout the year we tailor pay rises into groups which are listed as exceptional, good, average or poor.
A poor appraisal is not great, an average appraisal is not that great, good secures a reasonable pay rise and exceptional secures an excellent pay rise.
We’re able to calculate our pay rise budget based on the turnover of the practice and the overall P&L as we’ll show on our master sheets within the course. This means that we know we’re not overspending and are able to divide pay rises into bonuses and ongoing pay rises depending on the appropriateness of the situation.
It now gets to the situation where I never get asked for a pay rise outside of appraisals in the practice and it never causes any difficulties. I have now managed to delegate the majority of appraisals and pay rise meetings to my Practice Manager therefore I don’t have to be involved apart from early discussions as we set up the meetings.
If you would like to know more about how to do this then book a place on our course!
The Business of Business Course
This course is a year long business course with six two-day modules.
It is anticipated that Practice Principals will attend with their Practice Managers (although this is not exclusively the case).
The cost of the course includes a place for two people to attend with additional places available on separate modules for people with those skills within the practice.
The course includes access to an online discussion forum and four detailed online exercises to be carried out on a time limited basis. It also includes five working course dinners and a celebratory dinner, all at exceptional venues around Nottingham.
The cost of the course (inclusive of VAT) is £12,000.
If you’re interested please contact Tom Reason, The Campbell Academy Manager – 0115 9823919 | info@campbellacademy.co.uk
Blog Post Number: 1142
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