5 Simple Tips for Running a Smooth Workplace
Productivity and Efficiency: 5 Simple Tips for Running a Smooth Workplace
It is a top question we get from our plastic surgery practices and med spas alike: “What tips do you have for helping my team work smarter, not harder?” And we get it. Every day we listen as our customers share the struggles that a small business must manage, all while trying to keep their employees, make happy patients, and stay profitable. Your business is a small operation, and each team member wears multiple hats. Your boundary lines for work-life balance are completely blurred. And you are tired of plugging holes with no end in sight.
We have put together workplace productivity tips to help you get back behind the driver’s seat for your business day, so you can focus on building your team and improving your practice!
1. Make Time on Your Schedule
Some research suggests that only around 17% of people can accurately estimate the passage of time. How many times have you walked into your office, settled into your workspace to check emails, only to receive an unexpected patient complaint, or receive a text from a staff member with a family emergency? Unexpected events can quickly take your daily plan from good intentions into full on crisis management mode. Before you know it, the day is over and everything you meant to do is now waiting for you (again) at the start of tomorrow.
Michael Hyatt said, “What gets scheduled gets done.” Scheduling your daily tasks including team meetings, marketing, budgeting, patient follow ups not only helps you measure and manage your time, but it helps give you peace of mind knowing that you’ve scheduled time for a task in the future. Just remember, once you’ve made a schedule, STICK TO IT!
We also recommend implementing the 2-minute rule which states: “If a task or action can be done in two minutes or less, do it right away. It actually takes less time than having to go back to the task later.”
Symplast’s scheduling tool is not only easy to use, it keeps you and you team on task with links to your patient notes, billing, and more. It also allows you to approve appointment requests right in the calendar!
2. Brainstorming Sessions with Your Team
Depending on the size of your team and practice, consider scheduling team huddles to devote a dedicated block of time especially for exchanging ideas on topics like product and service bundling, improving the patient experience, and perfecting practice flow. Look for areas that overlap and simplify redundant tasks and paperwork.
Remove your thought filters as a group and talk through your teams’ ideas. Brainstorming sessions provide many benefits for both you and your team:
• It supplies a dedicated time and space where your team can be heard.
• It gives your team a platform to share their viewpoints in a productive, solutions-oriented way.
• Enhances team productivity
• It inspires your team to search for ways to make the business better.
• It allows you the opportunity to think outside of the “manager’s box” with insight from different perspectives of your team.
Interested in more ways to stay in touch with your team? Symplast provides easy, communication tools for your team and your patients.
3. Leverage Technology
Conserving costs is a big concern when you are running a practice, and no one wants to spend money if they do not have to. But remember: In business, what matters isn’t what you spend now, but how much money you make later. It is worth taking an honest look at technology built to keep your team lean and mean. Oftentimes, creating a system for repetitive tasks (called a workflow) can help your team combine duties and accomplish more without hiring more hands to do it. Another way to leverage technology is to templatize your frequent tasks and notes, and to keep those templates handy so you can use them again and again.
Terri Ross with APX consulting reviews the importance of investing in the right technology for your practice. Watch the webcast here!
4. Take Meaningful Measurements
Practice data is all around you, and it is easy to get overwhelmed by managing spreadsheets and calculating ROI statistics. But is the information you are collecting really helping to drive revenue for your practice? Schedule some time to reflect on your business objectives and goal setting for growth. After you have decided on your goals, create custom reports to help you evaluate how well your practice is performing.
Symplast’s Reporting extends beyond the basics and lets you take a deeper look at your practice to get a true understanding of your retail, overall business, and even patient demographics.
5. Look At Ways to Become More Mobile
Technology that provides instant “anywhere” access to your practice information positions your team for easy pivots when the office manager’s child is ill, or your patient care coordinator’s car breaks down. Beyond that, adopting mobile technology will free you from your workspace, meaning you can leave early to avoid the traffic, do your pre-appointment review anywhere, and lets you stay in-tune and in-touch with all aspects of your practice no matter where you are. Creating a better work/life balance and giving you peace of mind.
Symplast prides itself on being a true-cloud mobile software, for a deep look on how mobility helped one doctor excel at his practice and his hobbies take a look at THIS Case Study.
Create A More Productive Practice Today
Tim Ferriss said it best, “Focus on being productive instead of busy.” Creating a more productive and efficient workplace is possible with the right strategy and tools. We also love this quote that says, “If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan, but never the goal.” Every practice is different. We hope these workplace productivity tips for aesthetic businesses will inspire you to think of creative ways to build an effective workplace and encourage healthy team productivity.