Staffing your optometric practice with skilled individuals is a challenging component of operating a successful practice. Unfortunately, sometimes you hire a candidate who isn’t the best fit for the role. When a new hire turns out to be the wrong fit for the job and your optometric practice, it could end up costing you more than your time.
Below are the effects a bad hire can have on your optometric practice and how to avoid them.
Effects Of A Bad Hire And How To Avoid Them in Your Optometric Practice
Impact Of A Bad Hire
Recruiting for your optometric practice can seem like a continuous task with the high turnover rates in optometry. However, the wrong hire can have a negative impact on your staff, your optometric practice, and your patients.
Here’s how a bad hire can impact your optometric practice:
- It Weakens Employee Morale: An employee who is not a right fit for the role often demands a lot of your attention to train. As your attention is being pulled away from other team members, it could weaken their morale and lead to productivity problems. Additionally, if the candidate doesn’t get along with the other team members, tensions will rise quickly and could result in multiple people ending their employment with you.
- It Alters Your Image: Most roles in an optometric practice are patient-facing. If your existing team doesn’t get along with the new hire, your patients will sense the conflict, and it could damage your reputation and image in the community.
- It Depletes Resources: Recruiting is a time-consuming job that takes you away from your patients. And once a candidate is hired, there will likely be training involved that will take you, or all-star staff members, away from their regular job to educate and train the new hire. Unfortunately, if that employee doesn’t work out then you may be responsible for offering them a severance package, and you’ll have to start the recruiting and training again.
How To Avoid A Bad Hire
While it's impossible to completely avoid hiring the wrong candidate, with proper precautions and the right process you can reduce the chance of hiring a bad fit. Check out these hiring tips to help you avoid hiring the wrong candidate for your optometric practice.
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