Whenever staff retention in dental practices is discussed, the buzzword appreciation is quick to appear – frequently coupled with the proverbial fruit bowl. But what does appreciation mean concretely in everyday practice life? In the episode „Fachkräftemangel oder Führungsproblem?“ of the podcast Queens & Sons of Dentistry, Dr. Nebo Stankovits, a dental entrepreneur with sites in Hanover and Bremen, and Amata, site manager in Bremen, provide remarkably concrete answers.
Money is the foundation – but not a retention factor
Dr. Stankovits does not dispute the significance of salary: money is very important and fundamental – just as patients simply expect good dentistry. At the same time, he describes remuneration as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, he wants his employees to earn very well. On the other, nobody wants “mercenaries” on the team – employees who move immediately to the dentist two streets away for an extra 100 euros. Money may be important, but not the most important point. Conversely, the same applies in reverse: anyone who wants only the cheapest employees usually does not get those who perform as one would wish. Good drinks, coffee specialities and the fruit bowl are, in any case, a matter of course in his practices.
Appreciation is demanded – but rarely defined
Revealing is an observation from job interviews that Dr. Stankovits describes: when he asks dental assistants who wish to move on why they want to leave their current position, the answer is frequently that appreciation was lacking. When asked how they would actually define appreciation, however, hardly anyone can give a concrete answer. Some colleagues, in turn, reduce the subject to the formula that the salary is the agreed appreciation. Both fall short. Appreciation instead means: talking to one another, listening actively, perceiving every single person on the team – and clearly defining one's own expectations, so that everyone knows what counts as good.
Rituals that make appreciation visible
In the podcast, Dr. Stankovits describes a series of fixed routines. These include the daily shift briefing, in which the team goes through the patients: who is coming, what is being done, what needs to be prepared, what a smooth workflow looks like. Equally part of this is greeting every single employee at the start of the shift and saying goodbye personally when they leave – small things which, in his experience, make a great deal of difference. Praise should be voiced when something has gone well, and promptly at that: in the weekly team meeting and team leader meeting, problems are raised just as much as positive developments – anyone who addresses only the negative turns it into a “caustic affair”. Waiting with feedback until the appraisal interview in six months' time he considers wrong. He is, moreover, reachable at any time himself, whether by message, telephone call or directly in the office.
Setting an example and placing no department above another
For Dr. Stankovits, appreciation also shows itself in gestures: if someone brings him an espresso, that is “a 12 out of 10” – and of course he also asks himself who would like a coffee. If a treatment team falls behind schedule, everyone lends a hand and prepares the next room, for instance. It is also important not to rank the departments against one another: whether reception, chairside assistance, prophylaxis or dentists – it is solely a matter of what makes sense and who takes on which task. At the opening of the Bremen site, by his own account, he stood at reception himself, welcomed patients and took on prophylaxis treatments in between. Nobody should consider themselves too good for a task – as an example, he recounts a scrap of paper in a car park which he picked up himself, entirely as a matter of course, in the presence of a manager. People, moreover, must never be judged by how much money they have or what they have achieved in life – encounters always take place as equals.
Not a one-way street
Amata adds that consistently good performance over many years must not become taken for granted: even when a team gives its all permanently, this performance has to be appreciated and communicated every day. And finally, Dr. Stankovits emphasises that appreciation is not a one-way street: as the boss, he too would like feedback and occasional praise from the team – for instance when a problem has been solved well. It is precisely this mutual exchange that creates the much-cited meeting as equals in the first place.