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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: GUIDLINES TO CONSIDER WHEN TERMINATING AN EMPLOYEE

September 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Part 3

Silkin Management Group’s first two articles on termination guidelines can be found on this Silkin Management Group blog site and at the following Silkin Management Group site, which you can link to here: http://silkinmanagementgroup.org/.

In a previous Silkin Management Group series of articles we discussed things to consider when you are considering employee termination. We presented ideas on what Silkin Management Group consultants recommend to Silkin Management Group clients on this matter. In this new series we are covering guidelines to bear in mind once you have actually decided to terminate the employee under consideration. These are guidelines that Silkin Management Group consultants go over with their Silkin Management Group clients, especially clients new to the Silkin Management Group program.

As previously noted, all of this information can be found in Silkin Management Group’s copyrighted Job Description and Office Policy Manual that all new Silkin Management Group clients receive as part of their Silkin Management Group program. Silkin Management Group’s 400 plus page manual can be easily edited for any office and is something all Silkin Management Group consultants ensure is implemented with Silkin Management Group clients. In today’s litigious world, having proper policies in place, and following them, is vitally important.

Here are several more guidelines to keep in mind when discharging an employee:

• When the Employee Begs: If an employee begs for a second chance, you have got to be tough. Be willing to explain things but don’t give the slightest indication that you are flexible in your decision.
• Arguing the Reasons: Don’t argue with the employee. Indicate that you have the specific documentation supporting the decision. On the other hand, if the employee’s argument convinces you that something has been overlooked, indicate you will check it out as quickly as possible and do so.

We will present more guidelines for termination in upcoming Silkin Management Group blogs.

Eric Korb
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Find out more about Silkin Management Group at http://silkinmanagementgroup.ning.com/.



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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: GUIDELINES TO CONSIDER WHEN TERMINATING AN EMPLOYEE

September 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Part 1

Silkin Management Group presented a series of five articles concerning important guidelines to look at when considering the possibility of terminating an employee. Some of these articles are posted on this Silkin Management Group blog site and the remainder are on the Silkin Management Group blog site which you can link to here: http://silkinmanagementgroup.org/.

This series of Silkin Management Group articles will go over issues to consider once you have made the decision to terminate an employee and feel you have proper documentation and consistency surrounding the decision.

There are several important points to consider once the decision has been made to terminate an employee. We will go over some key points to be aware of in this Silkin Management Group blog article as well as upcoming Silkin Management Group articles.

As we’ve stated in every Silkin Management Group article on the subject of employee interaction, you must ensure you have proper office policies and job descriptions in place. Silkin Management Group’s extensive Office Policy and Job Description Manual that all Silkin Management Group clients receive, is an excellent starting place. Silkin Management Group consultants make sure that all new Silkin Management Group clients implement these policies and job descriptions and, as needed, adapt them to their office.

Assuming you have these policies and job descriptions in place, here are the first of several things that Silkin Management Group suggests that Silkin Management Group clients consider when they are ready to proceed with terminating an employee.

• When to do it: The best advice is to communicate the decision as soon as possible to the employee. It saves embarrassment to deliver news of termination to the employee at the end of the workday when everyone else has left the office.

• Witness: Have a witness present. This offers protection as well as evidence that various things were or were not communicated.

We will present more termination suggestions in upcoming Silkin Management Group blogs.

Jack Hennessy
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Follow Silkin Management Group at http://twitter.com/silkin



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SILKIN MANAGEMENTGROUP: STAFF CORRECTION, GUIDELINES TO TERMINATE

August 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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PART 2

Silkin Management Group’s initial article on termination guidelines can be found at Silkin Management Group’s blog site which you can link to here: http://silkinmanagementgroup.org/?p=28
.

In previous articles on this and other Silkin Management Group blog sites we went over how to handle a sequence of offenses committed by a staff member and what Silkin Management Group consultants recommend to Silkin Management Group clients on this matter. In this new series of articles we are going over key guidelines that consultants at Silkin Management Group go over with their clients when looking at terminating an employee. These guidelines can also be found in Silkin Management Group’s copyrighted Job Description and Office Policy Manual that all new Silkin Management Group clients receive.

The first two guidelines mentioned in Silkin Management Group’s August 25th article were: a) being aware if the employee was part of a protected group and b) making sure you had a good, defensible paper trail.

Here are several more termination guidelines or points to keep in mind that we go over with Silkin Management Group clients:

• Remaining Staff Morale: Make sure you look at what impact would failing to terminate have on morale as well as what impact terminating the employee would have on office morale. Silkin Management Group consultants look at this closely.

• Shooting From the Hip: Are you just trying to get rid of someone you don’t like or does the evidence justify dismissal? Silkin Management Group clients are taught to evaluate this.

As mentioned many times before in Silkin Management Group blog articles on this subject, make sure you have job descriptions and office policies in place as your first step of basic business management in the area of human resources. :

We will present more guidelines for termination decisions in upcoming Silkin Management Group blogs.

Gary Crawshaw
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Find out more about Silkin Management Group at http://silkinmanagementgroup.ning.com/.



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WHAT ANNOYS YOU ABOUT YOUR EMPLOYEES?

July 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Part 3

Handling problem employees is a huge area of help that Silkin Management Group clients and prospective clients are interested in. In Silkin Management Group’s blog site of July 20th & July 21st we introduced Part 1 and 2 of a 5 part series on things staff do to drive their bosses crazy and what to do about them.

In Part 1 we went over the “clock puncher”, the low responsibility staff member. In part 2 we discussed the staff member who spends job time doing personal things and disturbing other employees.
Here is a third type of staff member that can cause irritation to their boss:

“I know you already told me a few times, but can you tell me again, how do I do this?”

These employees just can’t seem to learn anything and are always asking you to solve their problems. They rarely, if ever, offer solutions. They just don’t take the intuitive to seek answers or work out solutions to problems by themselves. Even if you have an easy-to-understand and comprehensive job policy manual put together, they’ve just never read it, but instead bother you and the other staff members with questions that are clearly answered in their job materials.

Solution: For starters, make very sure you have a comprehensive Office Policy and Job Description Manual. Then check the employee out on their job description by asking them to perform some of the duties covered. Do this on a gradient basis, taking the easiest first. If they have trouble with the easy stuff, you know you are going to have trouble generally. More basic, do some literacy testing PRIOR to hiring.

Silkin Management Group provides job description and office policy manuals to its clients as well as various tests for screening applicants. If you’d like more information about this contact us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Lyn Ribisi
Senior Analyst’s Assistant
For Silkin Management Group



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Handling a Difficult Staff Member Part II

February 11, 2010 By 1 Comment
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In a article posted yesterday on one of Silkin Management Group’s blog sites, which you can access here, I discussed how handling staff is, by survey, one of the areas that doctors need the most help with in their practice. In that blog I gave an example of a doctor running across the following scene:

You (the doctor) round the corner and overhear Jessica, your front office employee, saying to Julie, your assistant, “Omigod! You just have to see Brian! He’s sooooo totally hot! I gotta show you his Facebook page!” Then off they go to her computer and spend 10 minutes looking at Facebook and chatting.

What do you do?

First, you have to be sure which one is the bad apple. Although Jessica might be the one that seems to be distracting the staff, and she’s the one that garners many staff complaints, you better take a moment and examine the situation a bit more closely. Sometimes office appearances just aren’t what they seem. How do you measure a staff member’s worth? It’s easy to get thrown off by a friendly smile, a quick wit or worse, accept one excuse after the other when mistakes are made.

You might hear from various staff such things as, “We like Amy,” or “Bill is a great asset to the office.” Or maybe you hear, “Yvonne isn’t doing a good job. We don’t like her.” Or perhaps it’s, “Fred just doesn’t fit in around the office.” Possibly you go home and tell your spouse that the stress at the office is getting to you and wonder what is causing it. Or you might confide in a colleague. You go to seminars. You read the trade journals. You may even hear similar stories of woe. You just don’t know which way to turn. You don’t want to lose all your hair or take an early retirement. You consider firing the bunch of them, but that could be jumping from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.

If you had a tool for measuring the value of the work a staff member produces, you would be way ahead of the game. This is exactly what Silkin Management Group helps its clients with. The answer is having measurable metrics or statistics for every position in the office. Larry Silver, President of Silkin Management Group states, “The only way you can effectively manage your staff is to accurately judge their production and contribution to the practice. If you have exact statistics for each employee, then and only then, can you make correct, unbiased decisions.”

With such a system in place you might actually find that Jessica, the gal with “extra-curricular” activities during the work day, is your highest producer, and you find that she has generated the most income for the practice. Or you might find that grumpy Jean, does a great job on the phone with recall and reactivates many patients.

Conversely, once production can easily be seen in black and white, you might find that the “most popular” staff member, has the lowest productivity as measured by his/her statistics. And, in uncovering that employee, you have just found the staff member that is causing most of the trouble and wasting most of the time and money around the office.

Now what? You can either train, discipline or fire this person. But which route to take? Silkin Management Group has the answer to that too, but that is a subject for another day. For now, using correct statistics that properly show the productivity of the expected product from each job position, will take you a long way.
For more information about what we do at Silkin Management Group, how we help clients with staff and other practice management issues, visit our website at: silkinmanagementgroup.com. You can also contact us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com or call 800-695-0257.

Lyn Ribisi
Silkin Management Group
Appointment Coordinator



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