Employee handbooks, or documented policies and procedures, ensure that your staff have clear expectations and guidelines when working in your practice. When your policies are in writing, it serves as a resource for staff to reference if they are unsure of the proper procedure.
Documenting policies and procedures provides a level of accountability for your staff to follow proper protocol. It can be much harder to enforce a policy when all you have is word of mouth.
Set Clear Expectations
It can be tricky when you need to have a corrective conversation with an employee. It can be even more difficult if the policy or procedure in question isn’t well documented.
Ensuring that your policies and procedures are well documented, as well as any consequences for breaking them, ensures that you can properly hold employees accountable to maintaining your robust standards. It also ensures fairness amongst your employees when you’re holding everyone to the same documented standards.
Set New Employees Up for Success
Creating new employee training materials and documenting your standard procedures can help ensure your new employee is successful. Onboarding at a new job can be stressful and overwhelming at times. It can make a world of difference for an employee if they have written resources to fall back on.
Whether you have a new employee who is a veteran in the dental industry or one who is starting their first job, chances are they’re going to have to learn how your practice runs.
Ensure Compliance
Arguably one of the most important reasons to have well-documented policies and procedures is to ensure your business is compliant with any regulations. This can be especially helpful for staff who are not experienced in the dental or medical industry or when regulations inevitably change.
Whether it be HIPAA, state law, or any anything in between, make sure your practice has documented procedures that ensure necessary compliance.
But How Do I Document Policies and Procedures?
- Make documentation easily accessible: Make sure your employees can easily find specific policies and procedures. While a printed employee handbook was once the standard, using a digital version is a much more efficient method. Ensuring your documentation is searchable is another bonus.
- Keep documentation up-to-date: Another reason to make your employee handbook digital is to ensure it is kept up to date. If you get new equipment, regulations change, or any number of other changes happen, printed documentation can quickly become outdated. If you keep documentation digital, it’s easy to make updates that are accessible to your staff immediately.
- Be clear and concise: It can be a fine line between making sure documentation is comprehensive without being too overwhelming. Keep your documentation concise and on topic. Make sure expectations, policies, and procedures are clear. If you need to, split complex topics up into their own pages. For example, if you have different procedures for cleaning different equipment, make a page for each type of equipment, rather than one long “Cleaning” page.
Effective communication and documentation can be vital to the success of your practice. The Open Dental Wiki feature can be used as the one-stop shop for creating and accessing your policies and procedures. Contact Open Dental Support to learn more.