I recently had the opportunity to participate in an annual training day for the staff and physicians of one of our clients. The goal of my presentation was to intertwine the client’s HIPAA and compliance policies with the basics of HIPAA and compliance. While preparing for my session, I reflected upon the time that the practice was devoting to training their staff and the impact that this would have on the practice. Would there be increased operational efficiencies or a reduced chance of having a compliance issue? Would the employees have greater job satisfaction because of the practice’s investment in their personal development and training?
We can all agree that for an organization to reach the highest level of efficiency and service, it must be invested in training its employees. While organizations can focus a great deal of time, effort and resources to select the best employees, the most important step in moving from a good practice to an excellent practice could be how employees are trained.
Unfortunately, a majority of healthcare entities do not spend the appropriate time training, nor do they focus on appropriate training for their staff. In this volume of Prescriptives from the Consulting Cabinet, I discuss five ways to improve your training program.
Five Ways to Improve Your Training Program
#1 - Get over it. Many fear that making an investment in training an employee is only preparing them for their next job, so why spend the time and effort? Zig Ziglar, a national speaker on success and training said, “What’s worse than training your workers and losing them? Not training them and keeping them.” To run a great practice, you must focus on preparing employees to be the best that they can be, and in turn, your patients and practice will benefit. If the employee does leave your practice, it will be for a reason other than the training you provided.
#2 - Utilize your staff to facilitate training sessions. I believe that one of the best ways to know a subject is to teach the subject. Rather than having one person responsible for training, spread the wealth by having a group of staff members facilitate various training sessions. A staff member’s knowledge of a subject will increase as they prepare to teach their coworkers, and coworkers are generally more engaged when someone different is teaching.
#3 - Schedule the training. To make training a priority within your practice, you need to make it part of the schedule. This can be as simple as fifteen minutes every Tuesday morning before the office opens. If a staff member is providing part of the training, make sure they know in advance the date of their training so they can come prepared and facilitate a productive session. Scheduled meetings add accountability to the training process.
#4 - Use webinars. Webinars are an easy and cost effective way to make high level training available to your staff. Webinars generally last 45 to 90 minutes and cover a wide range of technical, compliance and general knowledge topics that can move your organization forward.
For example, if your organization has an evaluation process for employees, you know that effective feedback is critical to the evaluation process. Elliott Davis will be hosting a free webinar, titled “Developing Talent: Critical Steps to Effective Feedback and Coaching” on June 13th. To register click here.
#5 - Accountability. It is important to keep record of the subject matter of training sessions and who was in attendance. This information can later be utilized for your compliance program and evaluation process. To make the training session fun and interactive, you might include a simple evaluation at the end of it. And for those employees scoring a certain level, provide a low cost gift certificate to recognize their achievement.
I am interested in hearing your thoughts about training. E-mail your ideas on training to me at ibedenbaugh@elliottdavis.com and I will include them in the next Prescriptives from the Consulting Cabinet.