Lucie Simic introduces her ‘Culture and creativity’ workshop which will be traveling the UK as part of the Practice Plan Workshop Tour.
One of the additional benefits Practice Plan customers can take advantage of is the hugely popular annual workshop tour. Exclusive to Practice Plan practices, the tour takes places on 15 dates across 13 venues from Southampton to Dunblane and Belfast.
The theme of this year’s tour is ‘Culture and creativity’ which will be delivered jointly by dental business consultant Lucie Simic and Practice Plan’s creative director, Les Jones.
Taking charge of the culture part of the workshop, Lucie is pleased to be talking about the subject as she feels practice owners neglect culture to their cost. ‘One of the biggest mistakes practice owners make is to overlook the culture,’ she asserts. ‘You can have the best building and brand, you could be gold star compliant, and have all the policies and protocols in place, but if the team members walk into that building and feel a particular way, they will not want to be there.’
Good culture saves money
While she acknowledges the importance of having policies and procedures in place, on their own they will not ensure a healthy practice culture.
‘Policies and procedures will only get you nine 10ths of the way,’ she says. ‘For some, that might seem great. But it’s a really long-winded way to do things as your team will be constantly changing as people leave because your culture isn’t right. And if you think about the cost involved in replacing, recruiting and retaining staff, then I would rather plough all my money into culture and retention, than I would other things.
‘Recruiting new staff is so time consuming and the danger is the uncertainty created by having frequent vacancies also breeds more uncertainty because as one person hands in their notice others may start to wonder why and question whether they’re happy where they are. And then you’ve created this type of culture which is one you don’t want.’
Culture in the whole team
Lucie is keen to stress that, although the culture of a practice often originates from the top, it is the responsibility of the whole team, and it need not necessarily be the owner who sets it.
‘I am very aware that there are lots of different types of practice owners and the vast majority of them are very involved in the way a practice works day-to-day,’ she says. ‘However, there is what I would call a “delegating leadership level”. Those are the owners and principals who just want to be in surgery and would rather not take part in running the practice.
‘If that is you, my plea is to recognise it and build a team around you to be able to take over the running of the practice but be sure to have regular meetings and catchups. I do think the practice culture can be led by somebody other than the principal, but a great deal of trust needs to be placed in that person,’ she advises. ‘A lot of work needs to go into it and there still needs to be some involvement from the owner/principal. But there is without a doubt, a type of owner who is the delegating kind.’
Collective ownership
In an ideal situation, Lucie sees the whole team being responsible for ‘policing’ the culture and not only the senior leaders.
In my opinion, the culture belongs to the team,’ Lucie says. ‘Through their vision, the owner or their proxy, sets the tone, or the direction of the practice. This could be, for example, “I want this to be the world’s best dental practice.” And then it’s up to the team to make that happen. The best practices I’ve seen have been ones where that is the case.’
‘However, for a culture to remain positive, all team members need to subscribe to it. In practices with a healthy culture, it’s self-policing,’ Lucie states. ‘People may join and think, “This doesn’t feel right. I’m not part of this gang.” So, they leave. This is not through any negativity or anything bad, but just this feeling of not having found their tribe, so they need to go and look elsewhere.’
With Les’ session on Creativity following Lucie’s this year’s workshop tour promises to be a great day for anyone attending. So, what does Lucie hope they get out of the day?
‘I want everyone who comes on the workshop tour to go away and feel energised and inspired to want to create better workplaces,’ she enthuses. ‘As an industry we are so constricted by some things in our workplaces. For the business to work, we need patients in the chair. We can’t do this from home. So, there are certain things that make the dental workplace less favourable, in the modern day. So, the only thing we can do is create a place where you want to come to work.’
Human interaction
She’s confident dental practices can achieve this.
‘One of the things that’s been interesting post COVID, is there was a moment where people said it was the death of offices, as people will never go back into offices again,’ she continues. ‘But that hasn’t proved to be the case at all. And the places where they adapted and were able to work for nearly two years from home are now seeing people choosing to come in for certain days or flexibly. So, it just goes to show we do like human interaction. And I think dental practices have a unique opportunity to be able to offer that.
‘So, if I could hope that anybody takes anything away from the day, it’s that they go back and they think about making their environment as open, as opportunistic and as happy as possible. And I think genuinely some of the things that they’ll take from this workshop tour should enable them to do that in their own practices.’
Practice Plan has been welcoming practices into the family since 1995, helping them to grow profitable businesses through the introduction of practice-branded membership plans.
With over 300 years’ dental experience in our field team, if you’re looking for a provider that has that family feel but knows a thing or two about dentistry… Be Practice Plan and get in touch. If you’re going to Dentistry Show London, we’ll be at Stand F32, otherwise call 01691 684165 or visit www.practiceplan.co.uk/be-practice-plan/.