10 ways to engage employees at your Eye Care Practice

Engaged employees are loyal employees in your eye care practice, which helps set yourself up for employee retention, patient retention, and practice growth.

A large pain point for many eye care practices is high employee turnover. This could be due to the fact most employees simply aren’t engaged. A lack of employee engagement is not only financially straining; it also can result in a poor attitude, lack of education about eyewear products or service. This can lead to a lost sense of connection between staff members and complications in completing a sale. 

According to a study by Dale Carnegie Training:

• 29% of the workforce is engaged

• 45% are not engaged

• 26% are actively disengaged

Think about that. If seven out of every 10 employees are not engaged, it shouldn’t be surprising that they don’t show loyalty and want to move on from your practice.

So how do you prevent this from happening?

While every situation is unique, there are ways to engage employees at your eye care practice — even if your turnover rate isn’t alarmingly high. Here are 10 of them:

• Establish customer complaints and customer service policies. This way, employees will have guidelines for them and won’t become as frustrated with a lack of direction.

• Define areas of improvement for individual employees. Also, establish a rewards system to motivate improvement.

• Integrate marketing automation. By implementing things like online scheduling and patient surveys, it frees up some of your staff’s time.

• Dedicate one person to insurance. That way, they can handle any complicated questions or paperwork that would distract other staff.

• Don’t manage employees; lead them. Try to empower them and give them real leadership. You can’t talk down to them and expect them to go above and beyond the call of duty.

• Designate department leaders and have regular meetings with them. Leaders can voice issues and make decisions, giving your staff a voice.

• Make sure new hires are a culture fit. You can always improve skills; it’s more difficult to change character. Staff members need to feel like they’re in a safe environment, so make sure you’re hiring people who fit your culture.

• Have the right people in the right position. People how are good at tasks should handle tasks. People who are good with people should handle people. Don’t switch the two.

• Implement open-book management. Considered by many to be one of the best ways to engage employees, open-book management creates financial transparency and gets employees acting like owners.

• Communicate. Many problems that contribute to hurdles in practice success can be due to lack of communication. Regardless of level, all staff members should communicate thoroughly and appropriately.

Engaged employees are loyal employees. By increasing employee engagement within your eye care practice, you’ll set yourself up for employee retention, patient retention and practice growth.