By Lucy McCarthy, Operations Manager at Hive Business

In any industry recruiting the right team is essential for business success. The first few weeks of a new team member joining your practice is crucial for making sure they understand what your business is all about.

At Hive, we’ve developed the new starter journey that you could implement in your practice.

1. Welcome to Hive automation – This is a series of automated emails that cover the basics from how to get paid or where to eat lunch to how the team works and who our clients are. This is a great way to drip feed the essential information you need to give them to become an integrated team member in no time.
2. Meetings with the team – At a dental practice, the varied shifts, the different departments and the different roles mean that not everyone spends time together even if their roles may still interact. The email automation is accompanied with complimentary meetings with relevant team members. This is a good way to get to know the different areas of the business quickly and ensure the business is explained by the different department’s point of view.
3. New starter workbook – This has each and every stage of the process written as a checklist for each week. It’s essential that every team member has the same information and messaging to keep everyone in the loop. It allows you to track week by week where the new starter is in the process and is a record for the management team to be able to see what has been shared so far. The new starter workbook begins before they’ve joined and includes preparatory tasks like ensuring they have the tools/ space to work in ready for their first day.
4. Regular meetings – In the first four weeks, the new starter has a weekly check-in with their line manager which have set agendas. These are mini appraisals which help to iron out any issues by addressing them early and also allows praise to be given too. The meetings occur monthly for the first 6 months and then they have bi-annual appraisals like the rest of the team thereafter.

This should be rolled out to all new starters regardless of their position in your practice. It’s easy to think that once someone joins that they’ll figure it all out in time – this could happen for a select few but it’s much more practical to tell the story in your own words.

If you need help managing your team or getting the right roles filled at your practice, please get in touch.