Last week, we started a discussion on building the culture you want in your practice by setting expectations with your staff. Let’s talk about training this week.
In optometry practices, most of the training focuses on technical skills—anything from how to perform frame adjustments and pretesting to how to submit an insurance claim. From an operational standpoint, these skills are important, but your staff’s soft skills define the patient experience. Patients expect you to know what to do, but how you do it (ie, communication, behavior, and attitudes) will keep them coming back.
For training purposes, let’s think beyond operations and consider the soft skills. For new hires, we can call this culture onboarding. Sometimes the frustration with new hires is that the culture they experienced in their previous role may be different than the culture you’re striving for, and old habits will continue if they are not addressed during culture onboarding.
Cultivating the right soft skills can be similar to your current training, but it has a different focus. Here’s a 3-step process to try:
- Education. Start by sharing expectations around the soft skills you want, either verbally in one-on-one discussions or as part of ongoing training during team meetings or retreats. You can also provide reading materials or video modules to convey these expectations.
- Role play. Present the new hire with different conversations or service scenarios and ask them how they would respond. Provide feedback that enhances their communication, collaboration, and service mindset.
- Ongoing feedback. Provide real-time feedback based on actual scenarios. For example, if you notice a staff member experiencing a challenging patient interaction, you can say, “That patient seemed upset when they left. What are some ways we can prevent that in the future?”
We’ll explore the next part of culture-building next week.
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