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Great Expectations: Tips to Improve Performance Management by Eilene Verret

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by Eilene Verret

One of the most often overlooked necessities in running a practice is effective employee performance management, and the reason why is simple. Both doctors and employees look at the entire performance management process as a negative, when in fact it can be such a useful tool for everyone. Why is it so important to put an effective performance management process in place? As a doctor or a manager, you will immediately gain the trust and respect of your team. Your employees will have a clear idea of what you expect, and you will be seen as an effective leader. Over time, this will increase employee job satisfaction and the team will become stronger, more effective and committed to doing not just a good job, but a phenomenal job.

Timely and accurate staff evaluations are critical in successfully implementing a performance management plan. Employees want to know how they are doing. It gives them the opportunity to gain the confidence needed to continually improve performance and exceed your expectations. It also gives you the opportunity to mentor your team members, and if somebody is not the right fit for your practice, they will ultimately terminate themselves.

We recommend an evaluation after the first 90 days of employment and then, annually on an employee’s anniversary. The most common mistake is to only conduct an evaluation when you are not happy with a team member’s performance. This is why performance evaluations have received a bad reputation over the years. Don’t set your team, or even worse, your practice, up for failure! Maintain consistent communication with each team member including both positive and negative reinforcement.

It is easy to forget the positives when negatives quickly overshadow them. During the year, we recommend you maintain a separate electronic file for each team member. It takes no time at all to add quick bullet points to a document as soon as they occur. How else will you remember that great marketing idea your treatment coordinator came up with in the morning huddle back in January? What about the parent who told you how patient and kind your assistant was when her daughter was not being cooperative? Without the file, it’s difficult to remember those items eight months later when it is evaluation time.

While nobody wants to conduct a negative evaluation, we all recognize these are impossible to ignore. We have found that the best process to follow is progressive discipline. There are several steps to this form of counseling, and remember you are never required to utilize all of the steps. However, it is always best to relay your discipline process clearly to the team members upon hire.

The first step we recommend is simply verbal counseling during the course of a normal day. It should be ongoing, positive and/or negative verbal feedback during the workday. This expresses your expectations clearly, but shows the employee that you have confidence in him or her. If you continue to see no improvement, the second recommended step would be an oral warning. This warning would be conducted in private, which reinforces the prior verbal counseling and gets the employee’s attention. If the oral warning is not successful or you feel the verbal counseling should have corrected the behavior, we strongly recommend going forward with a written warning. This step should never be skipped unless it is gross misconduct, such as theft or drug use, which in most cases should result in immediate termination.

A common evaluation form, which we utilize at Ortho- Synetics is referred to as the Employee Performance Improvement Plan (EPIP). This form not only describes the incident that occurred and the policies/conduct standard(s) violated, but it allows you to set measurable and achievable performance improvement goals and determine how the supervisor will help the employee succeed and reach those established goals. We often hear doctors say, “My office manager has a negative attitude.” Don’t focus on the employee’s negative attitude, as attitudes are subjective and impossible to measure. Instead, state the specific incident and demonstrate how the employee’s job performance was affected by the negative attitude.

Always designate how much time the employee has to improve his or her job performance, and be clear on what disciplinary action will result if the employee does not improve within the agreed timeframe. Follow up with the employee on a determined date to review the employee’s progress. Even if the employee is performing above your expectation at that time, you made a commitment to meet with them again, so follow through!

If you have followed the progressive discipline steps, and the performance is still not up to par, then you can feel confident in your decision to either suspend or terminate that team member. If you decide to suspend an employee, it should be without pay. Set forth the expectation that the employee should return to work committed to improved job performance or he or she should not return at all.

If you have to terminate a team member, there is a simple five-step method we utilize.
  1. The As You Know Statement – refer to the last disciplinary meeting
  2. The At That Time Statement – review truth and consequences
  3. The Since Then Statement – re-communicate his or her failure to perform
  4. The Therefore/Announcement Statement – inform employee of termination
  5. The Final Pay/Benefit Follow Up Statement – inform of the next step for pay and benefits
Whenever possible, terminate employees late in the day and in a private location. This will help reduce embarrassment and humiliation, as well as the chance of workplace violence. Terminate immediately after the final conduct violation has occurred, and do not put it off until another day. Have a supervisor present to act as a witness both during and immediately following the termination.

It is important to maintain your team’s morale after termination. Notify your team of the termination at the very beginning of the next workday. Briefly state the facts. For example: “Sarah was terminated for violation of a conduct standard.” Be careful not to answer questions specific to the reason for the termination, as it might violate the former employee’s privacy. Reassure your team that if there were any performance issues with them individually, they would have been addressed already during their performance evaluations. Invite the team to discuss their own job performance with you privately if they are still concerned. You might be surprised that the team might actually be relieved by the termination. After all, employers don’t terminate employees; employees terminate themselves.
Author's Bio
Eilene Verret is the human resources director for OrthoSynetics (OSI), a business services firm that assists orthodontic and dental practices utilizing a full-service, turnkey management approach to address all non-clinical practice functions to gain better efficiencies and profitability. Services are also offered on an a la carte basis. For more information, visit www.orthosynetics. com or e-mail sales@orthosynetics.com.
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October 2025
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