NEW YORK—Landing valuable and loyal employees in your eyecare practice isn’t always easy. So when you do find those rock star team members it’s important to meet their needs and keep them around in your practice.

A common trend among eyecare practices is high employee turnover, which can end up costing your practice a lot of money and time in hiring as well as training new staff. This is a big reason many practice’s will do just about anything they can to hang on to the employees that make life in their practice easier.

These 4 tips can help you create a positive working environment so that you’re able to meet the needs of your staff and keep them happy working in your practice.

1. Create a Work Space Employees Love
Anyone who dreads getting up and going to work each day, is likely keeping their options open when it comes to their place of employment. So if you want to avoid losing those employees, create a practice culture and environment that your staff will enjoy coming to every day.

This will take some time and there is no one size fits all formula for creating the perfect practice workplace. A couple of things that can create a stronger culture include:

  • Hire the right people—Don’t rush into hiring an “ok” candidate because you’re in a pinch. The right people in your practice can make or break the flow of your team, and waiting an extra week or two to find an employee that fits in with your team will pay off in the long run.
  • Create special benefits—It can be hard for small businesses to compete with the perks and benefits of larger corporations. But there are unique incentives you can provide your staff that won’t break the bank. Have fun and be creative when coming up with perks and incentives for your team.

2. Keep Your Ears Open
Listen to the needs and wants of your team. While you won’t be able to please every single person’s ideal work situation, staying open to everyone’s ideas will help you work toward compromises that everyone can agree on, and your team will be happy they were included in the conversation.

Don’t wait until your employees are complaining. Be proactive in keeping the door, and the conversation, open with your team so that everyone is happy and things keep running like clockwork.

3. Set Practice-Wide Goals
Setting goals in your practices is a good way to build teamwork and keep everyone in your practice working toward the same reward. For example, when it comes to sales in your practice, just about everyone contributes to making a sale in one way or another, not just your opticians.

Team-based goals and incentives will help you avoid pitting employees against each other while they try and beat each other out for a sale. Establishing goals as a team and rewarding each other as a team is the best way to create a unified front in your practice.

4. Deal With Problems Head On
No matter how great the employees on your team are, at some point or another someone is going to disagree or argue about something. Don’t let these types of problems go unnoticed or not acted on.

Holding regular team meetings is a great way to stay on top of any confrontations that might be happening between the team. It’s also a good idea to check in with employees one on one in case they are uncomfortable bringing up a specific issue in front of everyone. You can find more staff management tips like these on the VisionWeb Blog.