Retaining your dental team can sometimes be challenging, and making sure that your dental employees are happy and feel appreciated are extremely important factors. 

Having high turnover within your dental office is the opposite of ideal, because it can cost you a lot of money, and can be a stressful situation for you and everyone else within your office. 

It can also be an uneasy experience for your patients, because it makes patients much more comfortable to see familiar faces each time they come in for an appointment or procedure. 

If you want your dental office to grow and to create a sustainable business, you must have good employee retention.

Retaining a hardworking and passionate staff that is loyal to your dental office can be difficult, but is absolutely possible by implementing certain strategies on a day-to-day basis.

Here are 5  strategies for retaining your dental team so that you can make your employees feel happy and appreciated, and keep them for long periods of time. 

1. Create a Positive Workplace Environment

Creating a positive workplace environment for your dental staff is a crucial part of retaining them. Employees are much more likely to stay in an office that makes them feel happy, motivated, and supported.

Make sure that you have proper systems in place, such as a consistent schedule and procedures for handling specific treatments and situations that everyone in the office follows.

Have the most up-to-date technology, tools, instruments, and equipment in your dental office so that your team can be set up for success everyday. If your employees are constantly struggling with the equipment they are using, they will become frustrated and unhappy.

Paying them a respectable salary, offering continuing education opportunities, and providing a good benefits package all help to assure your dental employees that they are supported and properly taken care of. 

2. Show Appreciation to Your Dental Staff

Showing constant appreciation to your dental staff will allow your employees to feel happy and confident in their work, which will help them excel in their jobs. 

If your employees feel that their good work is going unnoticed, they will not be as motivated to work as hard. This may lead to tasks going undone or being done incorrectly. 

Make sure that you are showing appreciation and praising your dental staff often, so that they know that their hard work is valued.

Get to know each member of your team well, so that you can alter the way that you show appreciation for each team member based on what is important to them. This makes the praises more personalized, and allows your employees to know that you care about them. 

Also ensure that you are specific in your praises, by explaining exactly what they did that you like and appreciate. 

3. Provide Continuous Training 

Things are constantly changing and improving within the dental office, so it is important that your dental staff is aware of and knowledgeable about these changes.

Providing continuous training allows your staff to learn new skills and keep up with the changes in the office, so they feel comfortable doing new things that may be required of them.

It also gives your team members the opportunity to spend time together and learn together, which provides a sort of bonding experience for them. 

You can also have them attend conferences and training outside of the office together, so they can bring back new skills and implement them.

4. Hold Meaningful Staff Meetings

Staff meetings are an important way to get everyone on the same page about what is going on within the dental office, so making sure that each meeting is meaningful is very beneficial.

This is your one time to have all of your team members together in the same place to share thoughts and ideas about how to make the dental office more productive and successful.

Create an agenda of topics that need to be discussed before the staff meeting to provide some sort of structure. Follow the agenda during the meeting, but then allow people to give their input throughout so that you have an open discussion about each topic.

Make sure that the priorities and goals of the dental office are the same, with the patients, team members, and office as a whole in mind. This helps each employee to know what they are working toward so that they can feel motivated and confident each day they come into work.

5. Set Clear Expectations for Each Team Member

Setting clear expectations for each team member and for the office as a whole is important when it comes to confidence and productivity in the dental office. 

Each dental employee needs to have a clear understanding of their responsibilities and what is expected of them at work on a day to day basis. 

When each employee knows exactly what to do and what is expected of them, there will be less conflicts that arise between team members, and higher quality work will be completed. 

They will feel more confident and comfortable with their work, and will be more likely to stay at their job.