How to Conduct a Productive Dental Staff Meeting

If you’re not running successful and effective staff meetings, you may be unknowingly causing harm to your dental practice. You should be holding weekly staff meetings and daily huddles. These should consist of updating your staff, discussing goals of the practice, and allowing them to ask questions or make suggestions. It’s very important that you make sure these meetings do not turn into a time for you or your staff to gripe or complain.

It’s important that your team feels as though they can discuss concerns and contribute ideas that will be taken seriously and followed up on. When your staff knows that they are valued and listened to, you’ll see their motivation and loyalty to the practice grow exponentially.

Tips for Running Productive Staff Meetings 

Below are a few ways to help you ensure that your staff meetings are useful and effective:

• Schedule meetings regularly – Make sure your meetings are held regularly and last around an hour. Any longer and you may lose the attention of your team. Whether you hold meetings weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly, your staff should know when meetings will be held so that they can make any necessary arrangements to be there. 
• Have an agenda in place – In order to avoid losing control of the meeting, make sure you have a plan for the topics you’d like to cover. Otherwise, the meeting may go off topic and you won’t accomplish the things you need to.
• Don’t allow griping or complaining – While it is certainly important that your staff feels like they can come to you with complaints, your staff meetings are not the place for gossip, rumors, or creating conflict. If there is an issue that needs to be addressed, make sure it’s done professionally and welcome any suggestions on how to correct the problem constructively.
• Provide praise – Lastly, it’s been shown that providing praise to your employees is much more motivating than talking about the negatives. You don’t want your staff to leave your meeting feeling depressed or defeated. Let your team know about any compliments made by patients and the areas in which they are excelling. 

Here at Pro Dental Designs, we know that a unified team can contribute greatly to the success of your dental practice. For more ways to boost profitability and growth, we have the tools and understanding to help. For information on marketing, we can help you put together a dental marketing plan, website, direct mail, or printing solution for your unique dental practice.