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Wired for Success: Establishing Your Employee Training Program Alan A. Curtis, DDS, MS, Editorial Director, Orthotown Magazine

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I once heard a practice's most valuable asset is a well-trained team. To that end I am focusing on staff training for this month's installment of Wired for Success. Training often occurs without forethought or effort. This is the most arduous and foolish type of training however. Patients and experience will train your staff on items ranging from bonding to scheduling through trial and error. The crux of the issue comes down to what are you doing to actively train and retrain your team?

Step 1: Identify duties

Your first step is to clearly identify each employee's job duty and role within the office. Every office of every size manages the same tasks with a slightly different division of labor. For example, in some offices the receptionist is responsible for all financial coordinator duties whereas other larger offices will hand over financial coordinator duties to an actual financial coordinator and a dedicated insurance coordinator. You should begin by listing all of the roles and duties of each member of your orthodontic team. Have them each do the same exercise. Comparing your list of employee duties with that of your employees will help you to identify where ambiguity exists. If you identify any grey areas or come across duties that are not clearly assigned, use those moments to modify or adjust job descriptions to make sure all details of the practice are covered.
Example:

Receptionist
  • Answer phones
  • Take payments
  • Schedule appointments
  • Respond to general e-mail inquiries

Step 2: Find resources

Your next step is to identify resources for training. While not exhaustive, the following list includes some of my favorites along with trusted training resources within the profession.
  • American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) annual session staff sessions available for purchase on DVD. This is my favorite source for staff training.
  • Webinars. Always be on the lookout for webinars from Orthotown.com, the AAO, consultants, vendors or practice management software companies. Learning from the experts is a valuable experience.
  • YouTube. Easy and free, YouTube videos can also be incredibly insightful and helpful. You might be surprised at the amount of material you can find that will benefit your staff.
  • Consultant newsletters. Newsletters from Levin Group, Landy Chase, etc., are packed with ideas and tips that can benefit a practice.
  • Books. Yes to Treatment by Landy Chase, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don'tby Jim Collins, and The Four Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney and Sean Covey.

Step 3: Schedule time

With the key duties of your staff identified and an understanding of the resources available to them, you're now ready to carve out time from your busy schedule for them to be trained. It would be amazing if your employees took their career seriously enough to be self-directed on their own time. Unfortunately, career development is not typically enough of a motivator for them to dive in independently. You have to pay them (and probably feed them) during this training time. Training sessions you plan can be as short as half an hour, or as long as a half a day. Anything longer will be less effective as your team's attention will wander. Once training becomes a frequent office culture norm, the length of training sessions can be shortened. In our office we schedule monthly half day training in addition to annual offsite continuing education conferences. As technology advances more and more, our training has become on-demand. What does your office do to improve and develop your administrative and clinical skills? I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Orthotown Magazine
September 2025
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