
Tiffany, the chief operating officer of ROB Professional Editor Dr. Laurie Sorrenson’s practice giving feedback to Marcus, the practice’s ABO certified optician. Dr. Fishbein notes that, just as you and your practice leaders provide feedback like this to employees, feedback should also work in the reverse direction—from employees to you.
Optometry office feedback strategies for patient and staff satisfaction.
By Bethany Fishbein, OD
June 12, 2024
Most offices are aware of the importance of the perceptions of their patients. These perceptions sometimes differ from those of the practice owner.
An office can invest in technology that makes their office smell like a high-end hotel; a patient can perceive this as offensive and migraine-inducing.
A doctor can pride themself on their detailed explanations of eye conditions or their commitment to educating patients about all of the available options – and a patient can see this as “takes way too long” or “doesn’t seem to know how to treat this.”
These are key examples of situations where there is a mismatch between the optometrist’s intent, and the patient’s perception– which, like it or not, is their reality, and what they are likely to tell others.
Although the initial reaction to this feedback is to be surprised or even hurt when patient feedback yields complaints, any trend of negative comments shouldn’t be ignored. Most optometrists take this feedback seriously, and (although they might grumble) ultimately adapt their behavior accordingly to increase patient satisfaction and avoid bad reviews.
The perceptions of your team members, like those of your patients, may also differ sharply from your own.
Ask Both Patients AND Staff for Feedback
While it is common for optometry offices to survey their patients to understand their perceptions of the office, it’s far less common for offices to seek this type of feedback from their staff members, which means that many practice owners and leaders have no idea how their own behaviors and actions are being perceived by their teams.
This lack of internal feedback can create blind spots (what is this, a glaucoma article?) where leaders are unaware of their own contribution to issues that affect staff morale and performance.
How to Survey Your Team
Similar to surveying patients, surveying staff members lets you gain insight about how your team is perceiving the workplace and find areas for adjustment.
Other Articles to Explore
There are three methods I find valuable to gain this information – e-mail surveys, an in-person verbal assessment and a quantitative online assessment.
There are pros and cons to each, but what they all share in common is they provide a chance for staff members to give their opinions and allow the practice owners and leaders the opportunity to see the “reality” of their staff members’ points of view.
An e-mail survey is one of the simplest (and cheapest) methods of obtaining staff feedback. You can create a survey using Google Forms or SurveyMonkey, and copy the questions of any “employee engagement survey”online.
Shorter, Anonymous Surveys Work Better
I’ve gotten the most useful results with short surveys (five questions or less) that invite respondents to answer in their own words. For example:
- What are three things you enjoy about working in our office?
- What is the biggest frustration or challenge you currently face?
- What is one thing we can do (or stop doing) that will make your job better?
- Is there anything else you’d like us to know?
To get unfiltered, honest feedback from your team, make the survey anonymous, so that you won’t know who gave which answer (and fight the urge to try and figure out who said what from the specifics!)
Advantages of Verbal Assessment
A verbal assessment is typically conducted by someone outside the practice, like a consultant or coach. This individual will spend a few minutes meeting with each staff member to gain their thoughts on what’s working, what’s not working and the changes they’d like to see.
The advantage of this method is that people will typically give more information verbally than they will in writing, and that an observer can see the reactions, tone and body language of the person responding and ask for clarification or follow-up when needed.
Each conversation typically takes less than 15 minutes, and the leader or owner is then debriefed on trends noted in the conversations, not on individual responses.
Quantitative Assessments are an Option
For those who like numbers and data, there are many quantitative assessments to choose from. Each looks at different things, like employee engagement or emotional intelligence of a workplace or a specific leader. These allow staff members to anonymously rate their workplace or managers on a variety of different measures, and provide numerical scores that leaders can compare to their own self-assessments, or to benchmarks of other leaders and teams.
Regardless of the method, just the act of seeking feedback from staff members seems to set a positive tone. Staff members often comment that they are glad to see the practice leaders looking for feedback, and appreciate that their opinions and insights are valued.
Getting Over Your Hesitancy
There is always some trepidation from leaders starting this process and making the emotional (and sometimes financial) investment in their own professional development, but receiving the results is often easier than they anticipated.
It feels great to hear what you’re doing well – many leaders are surprised that things they thought were insignificant are noticed and remembered, and how easy it is to do more of what’s working for their teams, once they know what those things are.
Receiving tough feedback is a challenge, and it’s normal to feel upset or defensive when hearing negative things about yourself and your business, especially when they’re in response to things you thought you were doing well.
A well-intended owner who lets their teams leave early when there aren’t patients can be criticized for “cutting hours” and being insensitive to staff members who rely on their full paycheck. An owner who takes a vacation can be resented for “keeping the team from reaching our bonus.”
I remind clients (and myself) that even negative comments from staff members are truly a positive thing because when you know that your actions are being perceived in an unintended way, you have the opportunity to change them.
The alternative is for staff members to harbor negative feelings, while you might be unknowingly amplifying the situation by continuing to do the offending actions over and over (and thinking you’re doing a great thing!)
Once an owner knows some of their staff doesn’t appreciate leaving early, they can start to offer it as an option, allowing staff members who want to work their full hours to stay. They may not have thought about the impact of their vacation on a team’s bonus; taking this into consideration and adjusting the goal puts things right back on track.
The best practices I see are led by people who constantly strive for improvement of themselves and their businesses.
If an owner or leader comes out of the process committed to work on even one thing that will improve the office culture for their teams, they will reap the benefits of increased satisfaction and a happier work environment for all.
Bethany Fishbein, OD, is a co-owner of two practices in New Jersey, a practice management consultant and certified executive coach. She can be reached at: bethany@leadersofvision.com
