By Ally Stoeger, OD 
The Disney Experience. The Nordstrom Experience. The Ritz Experience. The Starbucks Experience. Conventional wisdom is that these companies are successful because of their emphasis on training employees to be friendly and helpful.
Back in 2008, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, shut down 7,000 stores for several hours in order to provide barista re-education in the “art of expresso.” It’s crucial to understand that service-oriented companies don’t just train employees to smile.They must also be totally committed to ongoing skills training.
How many of us wouldcompletely shutdown our practices for a half-day or more just to train staff?
How can we keepstaff membersup to date on training?Thesimplest solution to keeping staff up to date is to print articles from online optometry journals, or cut out articles in print journals, and put them in a “Training Topics” file. Use these articles, written by industry experts, to improve your staff’s technical and interpersonal skills.
Many doctors don’t have weekly office meetings because they dislike having to plan agendas. But a collection of articles from online and print journals can make planning for staff training programs much easier.Topics for these meetingsshould vary. Some can betechnical, othersabout inter-personal skills.Your staff needs to develop both technical and personalskills if they are tocreate the patient experience that you require to differentiate your practice. Getting to that point requires a commitment to ongoing and regularly scheduled staff training.
What strategies have you used to develop a staff that has good people skills as well as good technical skills?Can you share anyvaluable lessons you’ve learned along the way in developing your staff that other ODs could learn from?
Ally Stoeger, OD, is founder of www.RealPracticeToday.com and president of Consulting With Vision LLC, an optometry practice consulting firm. She was a founding and managing partner of a multi-doctor practice and is now in the process of opening a new practicein Virginia. Contact: ally@realpracticetoday.com.
