Practice managers: Hack your review process
If the daily demands of veterinary practice management are causing you to fall behind in employee reviews, try this trick to be a more supportiveand efficientmanager.
Shutterstock.comI didn't realize how important employee reviews were to my team until I started falling behind on them. It's easy to let staffing issues, new employee training and financial considerations crowd out these reviews. But they're great bonding opportunities for team members to co-create their paths to success.
Looking to maximize the time I already spent on staff-related documentation, I've started creating a new review for each team member every quarter. Every time I have a discussion with someone-either offering praise or redirection-I promptly document it in their review. By the end of the quarter, 90 percent of the reviews are already complete.
These are all situations I need to take time to document anyway, so why not simply add this information to their reviews at the same time? This helps me document everything, and it's taught me to go out of my way to record when my coworkers go above and beyond.
When you show your employees that you pay as much attention to the good moments as the bad, you build trust and credibility at an accelerated rate. And an environment that fosters trust, communication and support benefits everyone-especially our patients. Isn't that the ultimate goal?
Kristine McCormick, CVPM, SHRM-SCP
Practice manger
Animal Hospital at Baldwin Park
Integrative Animal Hospital of Central Florida
