How to future proof your practice team

With employment legislation and the needs of practice staff changing at a rapid pace, Practice Plan Creative Director, Les Jones, brought together Specialist HR and Employment Solicitor, Sarah Buxton, and Dental Business Consultant, Lucie Simic, to share their advice for practice owners.

Les: Where do you think the main shifts are going to come in the next five years to do with team dynamics and employment law, Sarah?

Sarah: Employment law is the big area I see. Legislation is constantly changing and it's my full-time job to keep up to date with it. On 6th April this year there were changes relating to flexible working. As a practice owner or manager, it's only one small aspect of what you have to do. However, post-pandemic, there's been a huge shift in the legislation. It’s now aimed at making changes for you to ensure the wellbeing of your team and to look at what additional benefits you can give that focus on the wellbeing of the team.

Les:  Any specific areas you think that are going to become priority there?

Sarah: Apart from flexible working, there's a shift to looking at family friendly rights. For example, at the moment, there are no statutory rights for somebody who has a miscarriage or when they're going through IVF. There are also very few rights in respect of bereavement. So, the Conservative Government was looking at introducing laws where you must provide leave, and sometimes pay, for these very personal events in people's lives. Whether the new government will continue with those changes, remains to be seen.

They also suggested going a step further and have been consulting on how much an employer should be policing what happens in people's personal lives. For example, if we look at domestic abuse, there are two schools of thought about this. Both employees and employers may feel it's a very personal matter that they might not want to bring into the workplace. They’d rather deal with it in their own time.

Then there's another school of thought where, as one in six people will suffer from domestic abuse at some point in their lives, both men and women, it should be the responsibility of the employer to look into this and to support the employee. I have drafted some domestic abuse policies for a few forward-thinking practices that want to encourage these types of conversations in the workplace to help their team members who are experiencing domestic abuse. It's not yet statutory, so, you don't need to have the policy in place, but some practices have already introduced them. I think we're moving in a direction where it will become statutory, so employers will have to think about this for their teams.

Les: Lucie, you run your own business now, but you were a practice manager as well, so you've seen this right at the coal face. What's your take on it?

Lucie: I feel your team is going to want to know where they're going and what it looks like for them. People don't want to be part of something they don't understand. Trying to work to build a better culture, a better understanding of the vision and the meaning, and knowing that they're part of something, that’s the purpose.

They're going to want forward motion and that will mean two things. They'll want to appreciate that your business is doing something bigger than just them, but they're also going to want to understand what that means for them personally. Sometimes we forget that whilst we're building this bigger culture, there are individuals who work within that business who are anxious to know what it means for them as an individual.

Something I see a lot of at the moment is employees wanting progression. We want to be building teams for the future, and that means we will need to start looking at different roles within dentistry and upskilling our team so that they can move there. This will represent a huge benefit for both the practice owner in terms of increased revenue, but also an increase in happiness and that sense of loving what you do when you go to work for employees.

Les: To play devil's advocate on this, some dentists might worry that their team members are going to be taking a lot more time off work and that they’ll need to make more allowances for them. What are the potential financial implications of this? Do you think practices need to be aware of what's coming over the horizon in that respect?

Sarah: There is going to be a cost to the practice owner for sure. And when the legislation is put in place, they won't discriminate regarding the size of the business. They won't consider the burden of costs for a small medium enterprise. With the pieces of legislation that are coming in the costs won’t have the same effect on bigger businesses as for a small team of say, five people, where the effect is huge.

It's certainly something owners need to think about and plan for because there's no sign of leave being retracted; it’ll only be increased. So, this needs to be covered in the training and development of all the team members so people can exercise their statutory rights.

Les: Lucie, as a previous practice manager, clearly one of your focuses was on business and bottom line. How do you square that circle? 

Lucie: This is the juggle. We can talk about policies and things we have to put in place and the cost of it, but when you're a staff member working in the dental practice and you're a little bit detached from that, you don't always know what some of those financial stresses are unless they're passed through to you. So, you need to upskill your business manager to make sure they're in those conversations and they understand what those financial burdens are.

We also need to look at what our team members and our patients want. Our team members want to work less. That's very generalised, but the more practices I go into, the fewer hours they want to be working.

For work-life balance, it’s fantastic if you can put in place longer working days. So, we could be looking at split shifts, doing slightly longer hours so we can allow staff members to work three long days, but then have two days of the week where they're not working. That also helps the business. So, it's important that we start looking at it as a business.

This is something forward thinking practices are starting to do. They're thinking about the practice as a business in the same way that Sainsbury's thinks about the hours they can open for their customers. We cannot be nine to five and expect our team to just fit back into that mould. And it’s the same for our patients. I'm seeing greater demand for appointments outside of office hours. Patients are going back to pre-COVID rules. They aren't taking time off work in the same way. They can’t get out of their normal nine to five days. So, we need to be looking at opening for patients, but also helping the balance with the team.

Les: It seems that there are lots of shifting dynamics likely to impact the team in the future. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

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About Sarah

Sarah Buxton specialises in acting exclusively for dentists, dental managers and dental practice owners in all aspects of HR and employment law and is a director at Buxton Coates Solicitors Ltd. Sarah advises dental practices on managing and motivating their staff, dealing with sickness absence, assisting with making changes to employment contracts and, if needed, how to bring the employment relationship to an end.

About Lucie

Lucie Simic is a Dental Business Consultant and has worked in the dental industry for nearly a decade, helping practices increase their turnover and deliver exceptional customer experience.

Lucie’s background is in journalism and she has applied these skills to the dental industry. She managed a strategic business plan which transformed a three-chair practice into a seven-surgery referral hub in three years. Lucie has assisted many practices around the UK with their own journey and now works alongside Ashley Latter, delivering his training courses.