It’s not fair - insert large tear stains here - nobody told you that you would have to be an office manager. (For that matter, no one told you that you would have to be a salesperson or billing company either, but that’s a discussion for another day.) You thought you would graduate from school, hang up your shingle and the patients would come flooding in and staff would magically appear, right? Unfortunately, in order to have a successful practice, you must acquire many skills including knowing how to hire, train, manage and fire employees. Even if you hire an office manager to manage the staff for you, and I don’t generally recommend it, you still have to manage the office manager. Unfortunately, it is a sad fact that many office managers end up as de facto union reps, doing a better job of representing the staff than they do you. If you don’t learn to be a good manager, you will find yourself spending more time dealing with staff issues than building your practice. So how can you learn to be a good manager? Well, I won’t be able to solve all of your problems in this article, but I can get you started down the right path with two important thoughts.

First, let’s stop calling them “the gals”, “my girls”, “the staff” or whatever you tend to call your employees. Start calling them, and more importantly thinking about them, as your team. A football team can have a great quarterback, but of what use is the best quarterback in the league without a great offensive line up front to block for him. Or what if our imaginary team has a great quarterback and a great line, but no receivers who can hold on to the ball? You get the point. Sure, you are the doctor, but without someone to answer the phones, greet the patients, schedule the patients and collect the money, where would you be? Your team members are just as important to the success of your practice as you are. The only difference is that you are a permanent member of the team and they are not.

Second, recognize that if a member of your team is functioning at a less than optimal level you can generally narrow it down to one of three factors. Let’s look at each one of those factors individually.

Attitude
Attitude is the choice of each team member. It is your responsibility is to provide a working environment that allows the team member to have a great attitude and the team member’s responsibility to choose that attitude. Attitude includes a person’s general outlook on life, their work ethic, and their personal problems or lack thereof. Employees generally bring a “glass half full or glass half empty” attitude with them when they join your team. I remember a brief discussion I had with a front desk assistant about her attitude. She told me that she couldn’t always have a great attitude and that if she pretended to be in a good mood she would just be acting. I replied that although our preference was a genuinely good attitude, if she couldn’t do that we would settle for the acting.

Ability
Ability is also something that the staff person brings with them to the office. They are either capable of doing the job, or they are not. Ability might include reading skills, math skills, communication skills, education attained, overall personality and general intelligence. For instance, certain employees have math skills, whereas others are math phobic. No amount of training will enable a math phobic person to be able to quickly and consistently balance the books at the end of the day.

Training
Training is the factor that rests squarely on the shoulders of the doctor and, in my experience, is the most common reason a team member does not perform at the level they are capable. Do you have written job descriptions, policies and procedures? Have you scheduled a specific time each day or week to train and to review procedures? Do you role play your office dialog? Do you have regular team meetings? Are your expectations clear?

Ultimately if you have a team member that is not working out, you want to make sure that you have done all that you can do before you consider letting them go.

In Conclusion
Although you can’t control a person’s attitude or ability, you can improve your hiring skills thereby increasing the odds that you will hire a person who has the attitude and ability you are looking for. Further, you must develop the procedures and systems that will help you to train your team members, so they will take the very best care of your patients possible.