“Nobody told me about that.”
“When did that change?”
“I wasn’t there when that was discussed.”
“Whatever happened with...?”
If you run a large enough practice with a number of team members coming and going to serve a full schedule, you are bound to hear a lot of “out of the loop” questions and comments, no matter how much you try to keep up with team meetings. Even in a small practice, people tend to work within their compartments and not everything gets shared in a timely way.
The irony is that the same team members who are not aware of many of the happenings going on in the practice are also getting up-to-the-minute updates on what is going on with friends and family from across the country and around the world. Why? Because, like just about everybody else in today’s world, they stay connected through social media.
So why not tap into that social network? One of the more effective trends I’ve seen is to establish a private Facebook group for your team. This functions as a space online that only team members can access, where you post anything and everything related to practice operations, such as:
- Notices about team meetings or changes in protocols
- Announcements of birthdays or anniversaries
- Updates on patient successes
You can also upload documents for everyone to review, and you can track who saw each update, even if you haven’t spoken to them directly. Any team member can access it from any device they use at any time. Using social media is like having an ongoing team meeting in virtual space.
This easy to embrace team-building tool costs you nothing to get started, and it involves using a communication platform that many of your team members are probably already hooked on. It may seem paradoxical, but sometimes the best way to connect with the people around you is to meet with them online.
(Click this link for more dental practice management articles by Imtiaz Manji.)