High employee turnover rates make it difficult for an optometric practice to function at their fullest potential. Constantly having to recruit, interview, onboard, and train new talent only for the individual to leave once the practice starts working collectively as a whole team can make it difficult to sit back and think critically to make the decisions that support your practice growth. To reduce employee turnover rates, you need to build staff loyalty in your optometric practice.

Below are four tips for building staff loyalty in your optometric practice.

4 Ways To Build Staff Loyalty In Your Optometric Practice

Improve Hiring Strategies

When it comes to gaining staff loyalty, the first step is to refine your hiring strategies to get the best talent working in your optometric practice and caring for your patients. With a high employee turnover rate, it may be tempting to hire someone fast so you can get back to business. Unfortunately, when you rush to fill the position, mistakes are made, and the wrong hire adds stress and tension to the rest of your staff.

Avoid making hiring mistakes by improving your hiring strategies to include checking a candidate’s references and doing a bit of background research.

Offer Education

Giving your staff the opportunity to develop new skills, learn more about their role outside of your practice, and take on new responsibilities will not only help your practice grow, but it will also challenge the employee and keep them from growing bored. While many practice owners may have concerns about an employee leaving after you have invested in the employee’s development, investing in your employee’s success will likely cause them to be more invested in the success of your practice.

Sending your employee to industry tradeshows, paying for certification classes, or even giving them access to a Lynda.com account are just some ways you can build staff loyalty by offering career development opportunities.

Empower Staff

A lot of decisions are made every day in an optometric practice that defines the business and drives the practice into the future. On top of having to make these calculated decisions, you also have to use decision-making skills to diagnose and treat the patients entering your optometric practice. This could lead to decision fatigue.

To reduce decision fatigue and build staff loyalty, empower your staff to make some of the decisions that builds upon practice growth. When you delegate some of this work, you free up your time to think more critically about the patients in your practice and ensure that they are given the quality care and attention they deserve.

Be Transparent

To build loyalty in your optometric practice, you have to have open communication with the staff to ensure everyone is on the same page and has the information they need to do their job. Embracing transparency in your optometric practice will improve loyalty, business alignment, and engagement.  Holding a daily standup can increase practice transparency by communicating assignments, goals, and results with the entire team.

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