Are Your Employees “Shown” or “Trained”?

I’ve been helping a number of NDs build and improve their team recently and it’s brought some interesting points to light that are worth sharing.

Hiring a new employee or independent contractor is an exciting, sometimes scary and often stressful time for everyone involved.

For them, they just got a new job and want to impress their new boss… you!

For you, you want to get them up to speed as quickly as possible so they can do their job, help your practice run smoother and let you get on with helping patients and being the best Naturopathic Doctor you can be.  

All too often new employees get “shown” how to do their job. They watch you or another employee do it, and then they repeat it to the best of their ability. In the beginning they, naturally, have questions. You are busy but you show them how to do it again.

They hopefully improve.

 A “new to them” situation arises and they come to you with more questions. You show them how to handle it and they are good to go … until the next “new to them” issue comes up and the cycle continues.

They’ve been “shown” not trained!

The problem with “shown” is; memory loss. They mean well, but they forget all the steps and re-invent the wheel doing the best job they can from memory. Things inevitably fall through the cracks and your goal of newfound “free time” is spent answering their questions, fixing their mistakes and “showing them” how to do tasks repeatedly.  

You don’t get the amount of free time you hoped for, your frustration goes up, their motivation goes down and it doesn’t work out long term.

The solution is a well-developed training program on your practice systems and procedures.

(That brings up part of the problem; Do you have written systems and procedures to train them on? That’s a whole other topic that I’ll save for another time.)

A well-developed training program includes 4 core phases for every task:

1. Teach
2. Show
3. Watch
4. Let Go

1: Teach:

• Develop a training manual with step by step details, scripts, and instructions for each task that they will be expected to do.
• Train them on how to use the manual so they can refer to it when they have questions in the future instead of coming to you.
• Scheduled time to do classroom style training using the tasks in the manual as the curriculum

2: Show:

• Show them how to do each task by actually doing it and let them observe you or someone else doing it.
• Be sure whoever is showing them, is following all the steps in the manual.

3: Watch:

• Watch them do it
• Give them feedback
• Call them on their mistakes
• Repeat until they get it right

4: Let Go

• Get out of their way and let them do it – don’t micro-manage.
• When they come with questions, refer them to the manual for help if the answer is there.
• If the answer is not there, explain it to them and have them update the manual

When you empower your employees with a well develop training program like that things don’t fall through the cracks, there is a system to follow and you no longer have to do all the heavy lifting …You get lifted!

Sure it’s a lot of work, especially the first time, but so is hiring new people over and over.

Develop your training program and enjoy watching your trained employees grow your practice for you and with you.