I am a dentist. I felt strongly that half my staff was against me (4 of 7 employees). So I fired them. I inherited them when I bought my business a few years ago. I am very ethical but I do care about gross revenue (as any owner should). They never fully embraced caring about revenue production or understanding that bonus pay is tied to profitability. Nonetheless, I feel it is a failing on my part as a leader that they as a group were not on my team. What can I do as a small business owner to display better leadership and engender better office morale. I should mention that I pay above market wages, have better benefits than market competitors, work with my employees to satisfy the number of hours they need and I run a schedule that is very predictable 8-5 with a lunch and we do not deviate. Further, we take great care of our patients and the staff never has to worry about patient satisfaction or quality of care. Thank you for your input.
Admin, nurses, dental hygienists, and auxiliary staff are a dime a dozen. They are very easy to replace. I would never keep staff that were in any way “against me.” Hand pick your own staff. Make sure your expectations are clear. Choose people you would happily be around 40h/wk.
Take this from one business owner to another. Ignore comments from people that are clearly not business owners and haven’t a clue what it entails.
I own a clinic I built from the ground up. It runs exactly as I want it to. Staff are excellent. I intend to buy another clinic in the next couple years, owner is retiring and looking for me to buy. I already see what I would consider “problems” with the way it is run from a business sense. I am open to inheriting their staff but will make my expectations clear from the start. Any inkling of people with the mindset of “but that’s the way we’ve always done things” are gone.