How does marketing help with staffing? Dealing with staffing issues in the post-covid dental practice means your company brand is very important and your digital marketing efforts can help employee retention and recruitment. Linda discusses how to position your dental practice to not only attract great new clients, but help attract and retain great employees!
Linda provides dental professionals actionable marketing knowledge they can use to grow their dental practice.
Linda Mettler: Do you want to implement the same marketing techniques to showcase the culture of your practice to prospective to members and prospective patients? So you want to use social media
Welcome to the matalin Marketing Podcast where we will talk about marketing strategies and tactics to grow your practice. I am your host, Lynda Mettler and I have worked with dental practices for
several years now. And I want to share my knowledge and experience with you so that you can gain valuable and actionable steps on how to grow your practice. We will talk about the latest and greatest
and marketing features some guest speakers so that you can hear firsthand what is and is not working and help you unravel the complexities of the digital marketing world. I work really closely with my
clients. So we will also delve into some other issues that affect your practice from time to time, such as staffing problems, COVID protocols and similar issues. Good morning, everybody. How are you?
I hope you're having a wonderful day today. This morning, I want to chat with you about something that seems to be pretty prevalent in the dental industry right now. And I was just reading an article
in the ABA journal over the weekend about it as well. And something that we're definitely seeing with all of our client offices and every state and that is the problem of staffing. That seems to be
the biggest post COVID problem right now is the staffing shortage. I feel like all of our offices are at about anywhere from 85% to 95% staffing levels. And in fact, in the article from the ADA that I
was reading this weekend said that nationally offices are at about 86% of pre COVID patient levels. However, the staffing levels are not anywhere near back to this level. So that does seem to be a
very timely problem that dental offices are having. And I've had lots of discussions with our clients, which has been interesting to me, because it's not necessarily a marketing issue. So right now, I
kind of wish I owned a staffing agency. However, I think staffing agencies are having the same problem of finding good qualified candidates. And there's a few reasons for this problem. You know, COVID
itself really affected people. So there's those people that actually felt, you know, unsafe to come back to work. And, you know, a lot of people couldn't come back to work because they just were
quarantined, you know, so much due to family members having COVID, or their daycare providers having COVID. And it just made it very tough for people to come back to work due to the COVID virus
itself. Then you have the had the segment of people who decided maybe maybe they'd been in the dental industry for a while maybe those assistants or hygienists that had been, you know, working for 15
or 20 years and decided they didn't want to go back and deal with all the PP equipment and all the problems
of, you know, the COVID office, so they decided to retire and get out of the dental industry. So you have those segment of people. And then unfortunately, we have the segment of people who maybe took
advantage or decided to just stay out on unemployment a little bit longer. With the pandemic unemployment assistance, you do have those those people who just decided, hey, we're not going to go back
to work and, you know, take that risk when we can stay at home on unemployment. So all of that has led to a huge staffing shortage in the dental industry. And in fact, it's a little bit like the real
estate market the labor. Right now, the labor market has definitely changed in the past year, or few years, probably it's taken a couple years to get this way. But instead of being an employers
market, right now, it's a job seekers market. And these job seekers are, you know, able to pretty much get what they want. My clients are telling me that, you know, pay rates have definitely gone up
and that I have one client that has told me that just to get somebody to show up for an interview for an admin position for a front desk position. They have to pay a minimum of 25 an hour just to get
people to show up for an for an interview and that's a minimum. I'm seeing dental assistants getting 25 To 30 an hour and hygienists are currently getting 45 to 50 an hour. And interestingly enough,
the front desk positions and dental assistants, I think are the hardest positions that dental offices are having to fill right now, at least with our clients. hygienists, they do seem to be able to
find but assistance and front desk people. And the turnover has really been a problem. I'm wondering if if you offer dentists or dental professionals listening to my podcasts are seeing the same
thing. And if you are, I'd love to hear from you. So So please, you know, check our website and hit me up on email or even give me a call or DM me because I would love to hear if this is a problem
with other offices as well. I'm thinking it probably is in you know, part of the problem with it too or not, not the problem. But one of the side effects of this problem is the cost of recruiting. So
if you're using a staffing agency, one of the top agencies, you're definitely paying a lot of fees for that. But even if you're just using indeed, or LinkedIn or Facebook, to advertise your open
positions back, there's a cost to that as well, you know, you've got to pay those online ad fees. So, you know, that's a huge cost and turnover is a huge cost. I'm hearing offices say that once they
do find people, that part of their frustration is that within, you know, even as little as two months, they're losing those staffing, those new staff hires, because maybe they're looking at other jobs
that pay three to $5 an hour or more. And those people are out the door. They're they're leaving. So there doesn't seem to be a lot of
you know, loyalty or commitment on these job seekers. So it is a big problem that I'm seeing in dental offices, if you're having the same problem, I'd love to talk to you. Because I'd love to hear
either how you're dealing with it, or what if you're doing anything unique that we can share with our clients. Or, you know, maybe I can share some some of our clients, information and tips with you.
So please reach out to me on this. But that kind of brings me back to your marketing, and why your marketing is more important for than just new patient acquisition. It's important for staffing, it's
important for people for you to attract people that want to that you want to come and work in your office. Your brand is a reflection of you. It's a reflection of your office, your culture, and who
you are and how you operate your dental office. And that's important for staffing because you want to attract the best and brightest team members, not just new patients, obviously everyone wants to
get new patients, but you need to attract the best and brightest team members. And right now, your brand has never been more important. In order to do that. You want to implement the same marketing
techniques to showcase the culture of your practice to prospective team members as you do prospective new patients. So you want to use social media, you want to highlight things that your existing
team members have going on special events, you want to showcase what a warm and wonderful culture you have in your office, and you want prospective job seekers to really want to come to work for you.
So you need to have that come across in your marketing in your website and hugely in your social media. Because those job seekers people that are going to answer your ads or send you their resumes,
they're going to check you out. They want to see what's happening in your office, they want to know, is this a high drama office or a low drama office? What's the culture like does does the doctor
promote, you know, a really caring wonderful, warm and welcoming culture in that office? Or is this just a job? And if you're an office where they perceive you as just a job, you're not going to
retain that employee, not in this market at all. I have a client in Arizona, who does such a wonderful job with their culture. They they really do put their staff members first. And it shows he's got
team members. I think the least the least seniority there's eight years and the highest is 14 years. That's almost unheard of in a dental office to keep staff for 14 years. Actually I have another
client, a newer client in Colorado that actually their hygenist has been there. 30 years. That's It's incredible. So those types of offices are families, it's a family environment, and they treat
their staff like family, they make a big deal on their birthdays, they give them time off if their kids are sick, you know, they do an annual trip of retreat where they take all of their staff
members, maybe to the beach, or, you know, out on an on an outing.
They promote continuing education so that their staff can continually learn new things. But they also promote just such a sense of caring and well being for those staff members. And then that comes
through with their marketing, people actually seek their offices out to go work for them. So if your marketing needs some help, or if you're wondering why your marketing is so important, it's not just
for new patients, it's also for new staff and new team members that you need. And right now I know everybody needs them, and everybody needs to retain them. That's huge. Just think about how much
brain damage you go through to and costs to acquire that, that new team member to put those ads together to read through resumes to spend time interviewing people, you want to retain that staff, once
you get them there, just just like a new patient, you go through a lot of cost and a lot of effort to get those new patients in the door. So you want to create that same wonderful experience, and
environment to keep the team members as you do the new patients. So let's talk a little bit about the actual process to get those those new team members in the door and get them to submit a resume. So
to attract that, that highly qualified person, you've got to create an experience for them. And what I mean by that is, from you know, the very getgo, you've got to write a really terrific job
description, you've got to tell them everything about your office, why they should want to work there. But you've also got to let them know what the job entails and what you need from them, because
you need it to be a good fit. You need them to give you all the attributes that you need. But they need to have those attributes from you as well. So in that application experience, you you want your
online application to have an automated response, that automated response needs to be immediate. So from the time they submit their application online, you need to have an automated response that
thanks them for that application submission and lets them know when you're going to be reaching out to them, and you need to reach out to them within 12 to 24 hours. So and when you do, you need to
really sell yourself, sell that sell your office, you need to communicate to that potential to that job seeker, the benefits of working in your office, why they should come and work for you, you and
you also want to communicate the core values of your practice, because you want to make sure that that's in alignment with what that job seeker is looking for. And when you are screening your
candidates, whether it's via interview or online, virtual, there are a few key questions. There's a lot of questions you want to ask them, of course. But there's some key questions when interviewing
that I think would be good for you to ask. And one of those questions is this is what is the one thing you would like to do better? And what's your plan for improving? That question? If you ask that
question of an of a job seeker, they have to think about that answer. And then you're going to give a little insight as to who they are. With that. Another question along that same vein would be Tell
me about the relationships you've had with people you've worked with? Describe the good and the bad relationships. That question again is going to, you know, require some insight and some thought from
that candidate. So you're going to get, you know, not just a yes or no answer or not just oh, I worked here five years, are there three years, you're gonna get a little more thought and insight into
who that person is. You can also ask them something like what is their definition of hard work?
And ask them to describe the boss who would get the very best work from you. And then, you know, one, one question that I would definitely ask is, what is it about this opportunity that excites you
the most And of course, like I say, those are just a handful of questions, I can send you a list of about 20 of them if you'd like. If you want that list, just DM me, and I'll send that right over to
you. I'm certainly not a staffing or recruiting expert. But I do read a lot about this and study this and work with some staffing agencies and dental associations. So I do have some resources, if you
need some help with that, and I'm happy to share those resources with you. Again, I'd love to hear what you're seeing in your dental practice in your office. And if you have some tips for our clients
that could help them in the staffing arena, I'd love to be able to share those and would love to share any of our tips with you, that could help you with staffing as well. So one thing you definitely
want to be really mindful of while you're looking for new staff members, is your social media. Because those job seekers are absolutely going to check you out on social media. No, no question about
100% of them are, they're going to look to see what kind of culture you have, what kind of things are going on in that office, they're going to even do their homework and find out who your other staff
members are. They're going to check them out on social media. That's how far they're gonna go. It's It's true. You may not believe it, but they are. So you know, work on your branding. Make sure it
reflects who you are, who your offices, not only for new patient acquisitions, but for attracting those new team members that you want to have on your in your office working for you. And make sure
your social media is really reflecting of your culture. That's my number one tip. And please, please reach out to me I would love to hear from you. I'd love to find out what's going on in your
community and your practice with staffing, and see if we can collaborate and make it easier for you and maybe you can help some of our clients even because it is definitely a job seekers market. But
we want your practice to run smoothly everybody does. And I'd love to just you know, collaborate and hear your ideas and see if we can can share and make make staffing and life better for everybody.
Alright, well I hope you have a great day and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Ed Bejarana: Are you committed to the growth of your practice Mettler marketing can help at medtner marketing. We help dental practices gain new patients increase referrals and maximize patient
retention with customized Marketing Solutions tailored to fit your needs. Visit www dot medtner marketing.com to schedule a free consultation and learn how we can help grow your practice. Thank you
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