If you have a high employee turnover, you might not be aware of the true cost of such a turnover to your dental practice. In this day and age, identifying, hiring and retaining the best staff for your practice is so vitally important to the success of the practice. This is especially true if there is a lack of qualified staff in your area. For example, there can be a lack of applicants for dental sales jobs for example.

It has been proven in various studies that if you have happy employees, your practice is more likely to be a success. If you have a large turnover of staff, existing staff who remain may become unhappy that their friends and colleagues have gone. They may then decide to look for a new job themselves. The more employees that leave, the more money and time you will have to spend on training new employees to replace them.

The cost of employee turnover

Studies on the true cost of turnover vary between different research findings. For example, SMHR found that every time that you needed to replace a full time employee, it will cost your practice around 6-9 months’ salary of that individual.Say for example you have a dental hygienist who makes approximately $60k a year, that means by their findings that you will probably end up spending or losing $30-45k. This may seem hard to believe, but that is what the research has conclusively shown.

Calculating the “exact” cost of an employee leaving can be difficult to quantify, just because there are so many variables. You will have lost productivity, time taken to train, time taken to interview, as well as many other things to consider. To work out the real cost, you should consider the following:

  • The direct cost of hiring a new employee. This may include costs for advertising the position, conduction interviews and screening.
  • The direct cost of training a new person on the job.
  • Lost productivity – Studies have shown that it can take around a year for a new employee to get up to the level of your previous employee.
  • Decrease in the level of engagement – Existing employees who see other staff members leave have a tendency themselvesto disengage. This in turn results in lost productivity.
  • Cultural impact on the practice. When a particular individual leaves, other staff members will raisequestions and gossip ensues.

So, how do you go about retaining your staff? Here are some things that you should consider doing and implementing:

  • Monitor your current employee retention rate and compare it to others.
  • Create a feedback system to gauge how happy or otherwise your employees are at the moment.
  • You could implement additional benefits for your existing employees to give something back. If they see that you care, they will more than likely feel valued.
  • When an employee leaves, make sure you do exit interviews to see what can be improved upon.

We hope these tips will be useful for you to increase your own employee retention rate. For more tips and techniques on keeping your employees engaged and motivated, check out https://www.dentreps.com/blog/keep-dental-employees-engaged-motivated/.