Before You Print Another Dental Office Training Manual Try these 5 Alternatives

I was recently asked “Should office managers have a training manual?” when chatting with one of our members who was looking to hire their first office manager. They also were wondering what kind of training outline, or training manual, their new office manager should be provided with. Manuals apply to not only hiring and training office managers, but hiring employees in general. The issue with training manuals (and anything written or printed) is they can easily grow stagnant and out of date. The way you used to do things isn’t necessarily the way you want them to be done now.

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you write something down on paper, print it out, or bind it in a book…things change? That’s why we advocate training methods that are flexible enough to grow with you.

Here’s 5 Alternatives To A Printed Training Manual For Dental Hires:

1. Check out the Office Manager Checklist we have prepared for our members to download! (Not a member yet? Take a look at this preview!)
2. Include Front Office Rocks in your Training Check Sheets.
3. Don’t spend a lot of time ‘printing’ training manuals and material instead use video. Videos can also play an integral part in the successful implementation of training new team members. Video training provides the opportunity to show your new hire exactly how you expect a task to be completed. Another great aspect that comes with using videos for training new team members is, as procedures or policies change, this content can easily be updated.
4. Check Sheets are a must! What does the office manager need to learn how to do? What order do you want to teach the office manager these tasks in? We need to have policies and we need to have check sheets to tell these new team members how certain things are done in the practice.
5. Create a living document or a living place these materials and policies can be kept, either a Google document, or a location on your server. Then, as things change or new policies come up, this living document can be updated for other team members to access in the future.

We highly recommend implementing a training program for new office managers!

We advocate incorporating a training program for your new team member that works for both you AND for your team. I’m biased towards Front Office Rocks, so my suggestion, of course, is to include Front Office Rocks in this training. Why? The reason I suggest Front Office Rocks is, first of all, all the work is already done for you! I’ve spent hours and hours recording all the videos.

Our website and training video database is growing and changing all the time with new content being released regularly. Our content is not going to get stale and outdated.

This is THE place for your office manager to come to ask their questions, to explore and to download their very own copies of our documents. Here, is where they will find all the resources they will need to succeed in this integral role at your dental practice!

Video training, specifically, is amazing to aid in training new team members! There is lots of studies that show people learn best by watching from their perspective. They can watch somebody else talk about it and incorporate it, then take it in, versus reading it in a document. So, including video training in your training program is highly recommended.

 Have a training check sheet, have an outline, but make sure that these documents have a place to be stored where you can continue to grow and be added to.

The Take-Away: Once you print something, things change!

How we do things in the office will change and you want to make sure all in office training materials your team has access to are kept up to date, fresh and continually growing!

If you are having a difficult time finding and hiring that perfect person for the position at your dental practice, don’t forget – we are here and always happy to help if you would like some advice, all you need to do is ask!