Making Sure Your Staff Meetings Are Productive

The ability to run an effective staff meeting can have a very positive effect on the way your dental practice works day-to-day. Staff meetings or morning huddles should be productive and effective. Avoid letting your meetings turn into gripe sessions, as this will frustrate your employees and serve no function.

If your staff finds the meetings to be uninformative, they’ll check out completely, rendering the meetings useless. Your team members need to feel like they can contribute ideas and raise concerns that will be taken seriously. This will boost loyalty and motivation.

Tips for Productive Staff Meetings

Below are a few ways you can make sure that your team meetings are useful and productive:

• Schedule – Your meetings should be held regularly so your employees know when to expect them. We recommend holding meetings weekly or every other week, and they should last around an hour.
• Have an agenda – In order to avoid losing control of the meeting, make sure there’s an agenda in place. Have a plan for the topics you’d like to cover for each meeting, and what the meeting should accomplish.
• Ban gripe sessions – It is important to make sure your staff feels like they can communicate with you. However, it’s also important that your staff knows that meetings are not the place for rumors or gossip. 
• Provide praise – Meetings shouldn’t only be held to address negative things or areas that need improving. This will cause your staff to leave the meetings feeling defeated. Instead, share positive reviews or compliments from patients and let your team know what they’re excelling at. This will provide motivation to your employees.
• Training – Lastly, you can use staff meetings to conduct training in any areas that your practice may need improvement on. Role-playing exercises have been shown to help staff members improve in certain areas.

If you’re having difficulty motivating your dental staff members or if you need to boost employee morale, please don’t hesitate to contact a dental consultant at CTC Associates today.