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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: EMPLOYEE TERMINATION ISSUES

February 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Silkin Management Group consultants are often asked to help clients with staff issues. As most Silkin Management Group clients are health care practice owners who have received little or no training in business management, this type of requested help is a frequent occurrence.

Hiring, training, correcting, monitoring and, if needed, terminating staff are key issues in the success of a practice. Without good staff, which includes weeding out the bad staff, a practice will stagnate and/or contract. Silkin Management Group consultants are continually working with our clients on these issues.

Terminating an employee is not a light matter given the litigious nature of our society. We always recommend to Silkin Management Group clients to proceed with employee termination in a methodical manner and, if needed, consult with a good employment attorney. For the sake of further educating anyone reading this blog or our other Silkin Management Group blog sites, we’ll list below some key areas to be aware of when looking at termination. These areas were taken from a very good article in AllBusiness which you can link to here:

http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/workforce-management-termination/4010-1.html

  • Make sure you have an “at will” employment agreement
  • Have proper job descriptions and office policies so that violations of policy and job duties can be clearly delineated. (Silkin Management Group has a 400 plus page Office Policy and Job Description Manual that is very useful in this regard.)
  • Make sure you fully document violations of office policy and/or poor production.
  • Terminate for clear cut job related reasons. Be aware of potential discriminatory issues.
  • When you terminate, keep it simple. One employment attorney we know recommends to say nothing more than, “Things just didn’t work out” and not get into any long winded explanations that can later backfire on you.

There are more recommendations in the above mentioned article that anyone reading this blog, whether a Silkin Management Group client or not, should be aware of when conducting a termination action. We highly recommend reading the full article for a good education in this area.

For more information about Silkin Management Group and our practice management training and consulting programs, visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Dave McKevitt

Silkin Management Group Consultant



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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: PRODUCTS, SUB PRODUCTS AND PROCRASTINATION

August 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Silkin Management Group teaches its clients how to properly manage their business. Why is this service necessary? It’s because most clients of Silkin Management Group are private practice owners in the health care field who have little to no training in business management.

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of basic management tools and systems that Silkin Management Group teaches its clients. I was reminded of one of Silkin Management Group’s key tools after reading an article today about procrastination in the Harvard Business Review (Silkin Management Group clients and non-clients can access this article here: http://hbr.org/2001/10/curbing-the-procrastination-instinct/ar/1).

This article discusses a study done at MIT about setting deadlines and how they effect whether a job gets fully done or not and whether it gets done on time. Many Silkin Management Group clients, when they first come to Silkin Management Group, have no clue about how to properly set deadlines, how to monitor compliance to orders and other basic management skills. This is one of the things we teach at Silkin Management Group.

The article points out that if you just set a single deadline your chances of compliance are poor. We have experienced the same thing at Silkin Management Group. The study further points out that if you set a final deadline and then tell the employee to set their own interim deadline, you’ll get a middle of the road result, but one better than no interim deadlines at all. Again, we have experienced the same thing at Silkin Management Group and with Silkin Management Group clients.

The best result, as pointed out in the article, and as we have experienced both in Silkin Management Group and with Silkin Management Group clients, is when you set a deadline, and then set very specific interim deadlines on a weekly and/or daily basis. This conforms with a management system we teach at Silkin Management Group having to do with clearly defining what product you are trying to produce and breaking that down into sub-products that are clearly delineated. We’ll discuss this more in future Silkin Management Group blog articles.

Dave McKevitt
Consultant for Silkin Management Group

Visit www.ikarma.com/user/silkinmanagementgroup for more information about Silkin Management Group.



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IS THERE A JOB DESCRIPTION FOR AN OWNER OF A HEALTH CARE OFFICE?

July 29, 2010 By 1 Comment
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Clients new to Silkin Management Group often don’t have job descriptions for the various positions in their office. And, for certain, if they have some job descriptions they never have one for the owner of the practice. In fact it usually has never crossed their mind to have one.

The owner of the practice is the most important person in the practice. He/she is the one who sets the goals and is ultimately responsible for everything that goes on in the office and the success or failure of the office.

We provide all Silkin Management Group clients with an extensive office policy and job description manual covering all positions in the office INCLUDING the owner.

Here is some of the key points any owner should have as part of his/her job description:

PURPOSE:

To set the direction and the pace of the practice and demands the products of the organization are achieved.

To establish the practice and see to it that written policy is applied so that the purpose of the practice can be achieved.

To keep the group solvent and functioning.

PRODUCT:

Utilization of his/her Office Manager to obtain those products through proper alignment of actions which bring about continued prosperity and well being of the practice and its staff.

STATISTICS:

• Number of Active Patients
• Cash to Bills Ratio

If you would like more information about our copyrighted 400 page Job Description and Office Policy manual, contact us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com. You can also find out more about Silkin Management Group by visiting our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Bill Hickey
Silkin Management Group Consultant



Filed Under: Management Tagged With: , , ,

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



Filed Under: Management Tagged With: , , ,

WHAT IS THE HEALTH OF MY BANK

July 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Although Silkin Management Group is not an expert on the status of the banking system, we certainly are interested in the health of the banks we deal with and that our clients use. In fact we do get asked by Silkin clients if we know how to determine the health of banks given the record number of bank failures over the last year or two.

To that end we found the following information that we thought we’d pass along to Silkin Management Group clients and non clients alike. We hope you find it useful.

To check the health of your bank go to http://www.bankrate.com. Go to the section on the first page that says “Safe and Sound Ratings.” They have a service there that ranks banks with 1 to 5 stars. If your bank has 4 or 5 >stars, you should be fine; if it has 1 or 2 stars, you should move banks. If it has 3 stars, you are in somewhat of a grey zone frankly.
You shouldn’t be immediate danger, but keep an eye on the ratings or consider moving banks.

Although your accounts are insured, it could be a lot of unneeded trouble for you if your bank fails.

Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.



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MORE MARKETING TIPS

July 1, 2010 By 3 Comments
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In yesterday’s Silkin Management Group blog article, which you can access here http://blog.silkinmanagementgroup.com, we introduced two marketing tips that we use with Silkin Management Group clients (who are primarily single doctor owner/practitioners in a variety of fields such as dentistry, veterinary medicine and optometry). Most of our clients are interested in increasing the number of new patients, and we have a “stable” of successful marketing activities that always help increase the number of new patients coming in the door.

Over the next week or two our consultants will continue to offer a few marketing tips a day to anyone reading our various Silkin Management Group blog sites. If you have any questions about the tips or if you’d like more information about how Silkin Management Group can help you increase your number of new patients and office productivity, visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or email us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Jack Hennessy
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Here’s today’s two tips:

1. Do a Quality Control Survey of patients to give you feedback regarding whether or not you’re meeting their expectations and what, if anything, you can do to improve your service to them. Patients appreciate being asked if they are happy with the level of care and service they’re receiving and will be happy that you care enough to ask. You can then rectify any problems that come up with specific people. That type of care always results in more referrals.

2. Design a series of questions you can ask of potential patients to find out what they need and want – find out such things as what services they are interested in receiving, what they value most in a health care provider and what has disappointed them in previous practices. Enclose this survey in your new resident letters and use the information you get back to help you write and design ads, brochures and other promotional items.



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FURTHER DATA ON THE NEW REGULATIONS FOR EXISTING HEALTH CARE PLANS

June 24, 2010 By 1 Comment
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We’ve written recent articles on the problems small businesses may soon experience with existing health care plans as a result of the new guidelines put out by the Obama Administration. You can read these previous articles on two of Silkin Management Group’s blog sites: http://practicemanagementblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-rules-for-existing-health-care.html & http://silkinmanagementgroup.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-information-on-new-rules-for.html

The following is a short summary of this issue for anyone who hasn’t read what we’ve previously written and/or who is unfamiliar with this recent turn of events for small businesses with existing health care plans.

Under the new regulations, any business that has an existing plan will be able to keep their current plans as long as they don’t significantly cut benefits, raise co-insurance charges, or increase co-payments by more than five dollars. Such plans also will lose their status of being “grandfathered in” if deductibles are raised appreciably or if employers reduce their payments to employees’ premiums by more than five percent.

As mentioned in our previous blogs noted above, we are keeping an eye on any further updates and information about these new regulations as it affects Silkin Management Group clients with existing plans. Today I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that I thought I should pass along to any Silkin client or small business owner reading this site. You can access this article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703513604575311013340405940.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

This article points out another aspect of these new regulations that is not helpful for small businesses with existing plans. These new regulations could easily end up limiting what an employer can do about his plan costs and, at the same time, prevents him/her from getting a new plan at a lower cost because he/she would then lose the benefits from the “grandfathering” rights of existing plans.

As the article points out, “Many small businesses would like to keep their grandfathered status but can’t afford the premium increases. Benefits consulting firm Mercer LLC says increases are averaging about 10% in 2010, and a Deloitte LLP estimate puts the range between 11% and 15%.”

With premium increases happening now, small businesses are forced to make difficult decisions to control their costs, many of which may not comply with the new regulations and which could then result in losing their “grandfathering” advantages. Truly a lose-lose situation.

I suggest all Silkin Management Group clients read the attached article, as well as the previous articles noted in the blogs sites referenced above in order to stay on top of this issue.

Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com



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HOW DOES THE HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION AFFECT GROUP HEALTH CARE PLANS?

June 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Part 2

Yesterday, on this Silkin Management Group blog site, which you can link to here: www.silkinmanagementgroup.blogspot.com, we discussed some of the aspects of the new health care legislation relative to how it affects group health plans. All of Silkin’s clients are small businesses and many of them have group plans. Therefore wanted to relay the information we have found on this aspect of the legislation.

Here are 5 additional points that are important to know if you have a group health plan:

1. You insurance company should provide you with a summary of benefits as you are required to distribute such a summary to all employees covered under your plan.

2. There are some preventative care benefits that are required to be covered 100 percent. Which ones? That is still being figured out although vision and dental exams for children might be included. Any plan “grandfathered” will have the same preventative care benefits until 2014.

3. Any employer with 25 or less employees with an average wage less than $50,000 per year may be able to use the tax credit to deduct up to 35% of the premium payments from their taxes.

4. Employers with 2 to 50 employees may be eligible for a federal grant program to help with providing wellness programs for their employees. The details of this are still being figured out.

5. Emergency services (the definitions of which are still being figured out) will be paid at the in-network level whether or not the provider is preferred or non-preferred. Grandfathered plans will continue with the same emergency services benefits until 2014.

Bill Hickey
Consultant for Silkin Management Group

Please visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com for more information about Silkin’s services.



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WHO DO YOU TRUST?

May 4, 2010 By 1 Comment
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Who do you think are the most trusted institutions in America? Or the least trusted? (Unfortunately, attorneys are not considered an “institution” or else we’d all know they’d be at the bottom of the list.)

What’s your guess? Do you think the entertainment industry rates higher or lower than the news media? Do people view the Obama administration as having a more positive or negative effect on the country than technology companies? How about small business versus big business…who do people trust more?

As Silkin Management Group consults and trains small businesses on management, we are proud to see that the most trusted institution in the country is small business according to the recently released study by the Pew Research Center. And who’s at the bottom? It’s banks and financial institutions with Congress right on their heels. You can read about this study in the following article from USA Today: Small Business Pew Survey.

As noted by the author of the article and according to Carroll Dougherty, Pew’s Associate Director. “At a time when a lot of institutions are viewed negatively, small business is viewed very positively. What’s really interesting is that large corporations are viewed almost as negatively as Wall Street. The contrast between large corporations and small business is enormous.” And this was a very bi-partisan response – 70% of Democrats, 72% of Republicans and 73% of Independents concurred.

Read the article, you’ll find it very interesting. Silkin Management Group clients who read it found it very supportive of the work they do. Below is the chart given in this article and taken from the Pew study. I think you’ll find it fascinating.

PUBLIC’S NEGATIVE VIEWS OF INSTITUTIONS

Effect on the way things are going in the country (in percent)

Positive Negative Other/Don’t Know
Small Business 71 19 10
Technology companies 68 18 14
Churches & religious orgs 63 22 15
Colleges & universities 61 26 13
Obama administration 45 45 10
Entertainment industry 33 51 16
Labor industry 32 49 18
Federal agencies and depts 31 54 16
National news media 31 57 12
Large corporations 25 64 12
Federal government 25 65 9
Congress 24 65 12
Banks & financial inst 22 69 10

Pew Research Center March 11-21. Figures may not add to 100% because of rounding

Silkin Management Group consults and trains small business owners, primarily in the health care field. If you’d like more information about business or practice management or about Silkin Management Group and its services, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or contact us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group



Filed Under: Legislation Tagged With: , ,

MORE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NEW HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL

April 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Small Businesses Still Have Many Unresolved Issues

We’ve been continuing to research and write about the ramifications of the new health care legislation on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites. Since all Silkin Management Group clients are small businesses, we find it vital to keep a close eye on how this bill will be implemented and how that will affect not only our clients, but all small businesses.

Today I read an interesting article which you can access here: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/04/26/making-sense-of-the-new-health-care/?test=latestnews. This article covered an event put on by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in which a panel of experts discussed the legislation.

This article points out the following key issues:

• Employers are confused about adding dependants to existing policies and how much that will cost them.
• Tax guidelines for employers and employees are unclear.
• Employers who have to make decisions about their health care coverage for the next year are in a precarious position as the Department of Health and Human Service has not yet issued many needed guidelines to facilitate the decision making process.
• Yearly caps on benefits are not resolved.
• What changes plans grandfathered from the new law will have to make to maintain exempt status.
• Tax reporting requirements for small businesses will add costs for small businesses.
• Requirements for tax credits are very limited.

The article also gave a great example of how a business could use the new law to stop paying health care insurance for its employees and save a large amount of money. But, by doing so, it will increase the federal government’s cost and, if enough companies do this, it could result in another underfunded government program. Here’s the example given in the article:

“Monday’s event included the release of a study sponsored by the Chamber analyzing the impact of the new law which its backers said would insure more Americans while containing costs. The report cited a small Philadelphia trash company that has 55 full-time employees and spends $600,000/year on health care costs. In 2014, if the company decided to drop its health plan, it would pay $50,000 in fines. In other words, the study shows, the company will save $550,000 by not offering its workers health insurance and forcing them to find insurance on their own.”

We will continue to research up to date articles and information about this legislation in the attempt to keep Silkin Management Group clients and anyone reading our Silkin Management Group blogs informed about the latest questions and answers regarding this massive piece of legislation.

Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group and our services, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com. You can also contact us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.



Filed Under: Legislation, Small business Tagged With: , , ,
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