Hiring and Onboarding a New Team Member Successfully
The cost of acquiring a new team member and training is significant.
It’s essential to have a good system and checklist to ensure it is as successful as possible. The goal is to have a good match for the role you are hiring for a quality hire and then help them succeed in the role in a reasonable amount of time.
Hiring Tips
Several options are available when hiring, and it may be wise to utilize all of them to increase your chances of finding the right candidate.
- Involve Your Team: Alert your team about the reason you are hiring. Team members are generally put at ease if they are part of the plan and not surprised. Encourage them to contact people they may feel would be a good fit, and consider offering an incentive if they refer someone you hire.
- Advertise: Place ads in your area’s local Facebook groups, dental posts, or commonly used sites.
- Under Your Nose: You may interact with a potential hire daily. Those who work in banking, finance, hospitality, and marketing generally transition well to dentistry. If you come across someone impressive, tell them you are impressed and are hiring. Finally, you may have patients or community members who ask to shadow your office thinking of applying to dental hygiene or dental assisting. Consider hiring them for an entry-level position if that suits your needs. It can be a win-win in the long run.
Interview Process
Evaluate resumes by looking at things like longevity in previous positions, responsibilities, and accomplishments. Additionally, here are added tips that lead to hiring success:
- Rank resumes and start by contacting the potential hires with the better resumes.
- You can use a Google form to have standard interview questions you use in your office. Sending the questions ahead of time for them to complete and return gives you time to come up with follow-up questions. With this preparation, you can spend your interview time getting deeper information.
- Spend some time learning about them: What do they do for fun? How do they like to spend their free time? Evaluate during these questions if they will fit in with your team and team culture.
- Always complete a reference call and use this time to verify responsibilities and results they reported they could achieve.
- A working interview of 2-3 hours gives them a chance to evaluate the office, and you evaluate them with some tasks to determine if they are a good fit. (Always double-check with your state laws about working interviews.)
New Employee Orientation
On the new employee’s first day, you should orient them to the practice. This will include physically walking them around and discussing where important things are located. A posted map of the practice with exits, fire extinguisher, eye wash station, and AED location is good to review.
Give the new hire a training binder and go through that with them. The binder should include practice philosophy, doctor bio, key culture pieces, core values, training checklist, and important SOPs.
Finally, go through all the necessary paperwork for them to complete and give them a deadline to turn this paperwork in.
Employee Manual
Review the employee manual with new hires, explaining essential policies. Reviewing policies now will ensure clarity and smooth conversations down the line.
Make sure you cover the following items:
- Cell Phone Policy
- Continuing Education Policy—Is there a pay differential for CE days? Does the office pay for CE?
- Vacation Policy—Do they need to find coverage? How much notice do they need to give?
- Pay Dates
- Appearance and Uniform—Set standards from the start.
- Performance Reviews
An HR company like Bent Ericksen or CEDR HR is a huge asset. They can help you update your manual yearly and implement new requirements based on federal or local law changes. If you want to write a policy into your manual, they can also review it and make sure it is legally appropriate.
30-60-90-Day Check-Ins
It’s important to discuss these check-ins, which will be done at the New Employee Orientation Meeting.
Meeting with the trainer before check-ins helps ensure you are on the same page, aware of any concerns, and know where they excel.
The goal of these check-ins is two-fold. You want to understand how the new hire feels and tell them how you think they are doing. If things are not going to work out, you don’t want them surprised at the end of 90 days.
Ideally, things are going well, and this time is used to keep the ideal candidate moving forward with new training and responsibilities. It gives you a chance to let them know where they are excelling, what still needs more practice, and what the next steps look like.
You also want them to give them some time to share to provide insight by asking questions, such as:
“Is our culture what you expected?”
“How do you think things are going?”
“Where can I support you?”
“Where do you need additional training?”
Each new hire will be different; they can have different struggles and will go through training at various paces. Generally, that will be okay if they are a good fit and moving in the right direction. Often, new hires will get in the panic zone or be overwhelmed with information or the learning pace we expect.
These check-ins can help us recognize this so we can adjust the pace. Likewise, others may be bored or feel things are moving too slowly and be eager to take on more.
Communication is critical in these first 90 days, and offering an open-door policy so they feel they can check in is essential to building rapport with a new team member.
Always remember documentation and deadlines help hold everyone accountable and protect us if things ultimately come to an end. If you have a standard check-in form, you add a signature line, and it becomes a part of the process each time after recording your notes, action plan, and agreed-upon deadlines.
The Joys of Finding the Right Employee
Nothing is better than having a respected team member compliment you on a great hire. Finding the right person is challenging and requires dedication to stay involved through the training process to ensure we are challenging and evaluating them the entire time.
Once they have completed training, they move into yearly performance plan discussions. Again, the open-door policy is critical on both sides. No one should come to a performance plan discussion surprised.
Be brave enough to have conversations along the way and savvy enough to catch and praise all the positives that happen as well.
About the Author
Michelle Broughton, FAADOM
Michelle Broughton’s dental career began in 1993 as a dental hygienist.
She has been at her current practice since 2006. She started in the practice—Eastgate Dental Excellence—as a dental hygienist, and as the practice grew, she accepted the office manager role. Her practice in Cincinnati, Ohio, has grown tremendously in many aspects over the years.
Michelle has been a member of AADOM since 2016 and earned her Fellowship in 2023.
Personally, Michelle has been married to her husband, Geoff, since 1998 and they have 3 children that they enjoy and love.
