The phrase ‘talent management’ is being used a great deal at the moment as companies in general and dental practices in particular struggle to ensure they have the appropriate staff in place to deliver and grow their dental services. What is talent management?
For those of you who have worked with me, you will know that I am not a fan of the word ‘manage’ when it comes to people. Who wants to be managed? Control things, lead people. Part of leading people is to control things that will help lead people in the direction of contributing to the success of your dental practice.
What are we actually trying to do when we talk about talent and dental practices? Ultimately it is that both now and in the future we will consistently have great people wanting to do great work in all the roles that we will need to deliver and grow the services that we want to provide.
If you read around a bit in terms of the phrase talent management, it refers to it slightly differently in that it looks at identifying the specific roles and people that are critical to the success of the organisation. This should be aligned with what is critically important for the organisation moving forward. It is not about having a plan and position for everybody but it is about the identification, development, engagement and retention of the most important people and positions in your organisation.
How is this applicable to dental practices? Can you identify individuals and roles that are most important? What is the impact of each role? If you imagine and try to quantify the impact of each person leaving and that role not being filled for let’s say 3 months, what would it be? Asking this question will give you a view on the most critical positions within your dental practice. Typically the numbers of people involved with dental practices are relatively small and so the impact of any one person leaving is quite high. Does that mean you do actually need a plan for every person should they leave?
Many practices will look at their overheads and rightly try to keep these as low as possible. At the same time, for me it is about managing the risk. With the overall environment being tough at the moment for recruiting and retaining talent it is more likely that somebody will leave. As a result it makes sense to build in some backup should this happen. It we look at any sporting team they will always have a squad of players. Whilst you don’t necessarily need a massive squad I think it makes sense to have some overall cover. Ultimately there will be many other things potentially for that person to do, so build some, dare I say it, ‘slack’ into the system.
Where I think this gets particularly interesting within dental and orthodontic practices is in the case of practice principals. It is a pretty obvious thing to identify that you and your position is super critical to the future success of the practice. If you were not able to work for 3 months, what would be the impact on the business? It would be extremely significant. Whilst it is likely that you are engaged and unlikely to leave you can start to think about having another person or persons to fulfill your role should this occur. E.g. a dentist to do the clinical work and a team member to take on more of running and leading the practice.
To start developing your talent pool:
- Be very clear on your vision, your values and your key strategic focus.
- Identity the people and positions that are critical for making this a success.
- Create a plan for developing, engaging and retaining those people.
- Create a pipeline of talent that can backfill into these roles.
This takes time and effort, but it will ensure that you have the people both now and in the future to provide and develop your services. It will also ensure that those individuals are becoming better and more engaged in what they are doing, improving the overall performance of the practice.
