Three years since the pandemic rocked our world and turned it upside down, and still it continues today with no clear end in sight.
Although we are learning to “live with it”, there are many resultant effects that are holding us back from fully recovering our equilibriums and returning to pre-pandemic energy levels.
Healthcare Practices are Particularly Affected
Many businesses have come up with solutions such as work-from-home options and flexible schedules in order to facilitate a better life/work balance.
However, in the case of healthcare practices (such as dental, chiropractic, optometric, denturist, physiotherapy, veterinarian, podiatry and so on), trying to function without a full complement of team members in person on regular schedules results in poor service to patients, creates tension between team members, jacks up the overhead, and creates a distracting hiring nightmare for the owner.
Patient Centric but Staff Focussed
Some practices have had to close their doors due to lack of staffing. It’s not as if healthcare teams can work partly from home and partly in the office. These businesses are hands-on and patient centric.
At the same time, the staff’s morale and energy levels need attention too in order for everyone to win in this difficult time.
10 Ideas to Improve Your Staff’s Well-Being
1. Obviously the first order of business has been to ensure the health and safety of your team. This is a given, and most offices have been on top of this. Don’t drop out the high level of care on this.
2. Make sure you set clear goals that the staff can work towards. Everyone needs clear objectives to accomplish. Whether it’s increased revenues, boosted efficiency, or high patient retention, give the team realistic but tough goals with good rewards for accomplishing them.
3. Reimagine your practice to determine if there are additional quality of life benefits you can offer your employees. You could ask for suggestions in a Suggestion Box.
4. Organize weekly fun meetings with trivia games. Each week a different staff member could be the in-charge.
5. At the weekly staff meeting, staff could share short stories of patients who were thankful that week for some extra care they received or an unexpectedly good outcome from their treatment.
6. Celebrate staff birthdays with a cake or pie and a card signed by everyone. (Just don’t forget anyone’s birthday.)
7. Brainstorming is a gateway to better team morale and to open up ideas that get the team excited and thriving into the future. Definitely motivational, and team engagement is inspired.
8. Sometimes, the best way to boost employee morale is just to let people hang out and socialize in an unstructured setting that’s not focused on work. Try hosting a potluck where everyone brings their favorite dish. Then, simply sit back, let people chat and connect in a social setting, and watch everyone create organic bonds.
9. Believe it or not, doing good deeds for others has actually been proven to make people feel better. So, volunteering is a great way to build employee morale, especially during a time when so many people are facing challenges. You and your team can get together to do some volunteer work of any kind, directly contributing to the wellbeing of others. From organizing a food drive to working in a soup kitchen, the opportunities are endless.
10. Create a list of tasks that are done by the various members of your team that could effectively be switched around without hampering productivity. Having variety is the spice of life.
Bonus Idea:
Every day one of the staff has to bring a fresh joke to Morning Huddle to give the team their first giggle of the day.
“I was addicted to the hokey pokey … but I turned myself around.”
“My IQ test results came back. They were negative.”
“What do you get when you cross a polar bear with a seal? A polar bear.”
