Employee Onboarding - I clearly remember my first day as manager of a large multi-unit medspa with a staff of about 100. I was ushered into what I call "the closet" and handed a 500-page binder to learn the policies and procedures of every department in the company. Now, I am an eager gal, but there is no way that was going to happen in a week. I am a hands-on learner: show me, lead me, teach me. Except now I was the boss. My strategy was to implement that hands-on learning and coaching for both myself and my new team.I started with the front desk, what I call the soul of the medspa. I wanted to learn everything. I had an assistant manager who had been working for the company before me. She was a good assistant manager, but she was so scripted, stiff, and impersonal. It made me crazy.Meanwhile, she was looking at me like I was doing something wrong because I was having unscripted conversations with clients. After some time, she said to me, "This whole time I thought you just knew all those clients." I laughed and said, "No I don’t know any of them. This is customer service. We need to care about who is walking through the door and make sure they stay with us."Which leads me to employee onboarding. I love rules, directions, expectations, and compliance, but how do we best communicate our standards of operation to new staff members?Communicating Unique AttributesAll staff members need to understand basic business skills no matter what their position with the company is. For me, that begins with teaching our brand message and company culture. If staff is unclear of our brand message, we won’t continue to build business. Every single person within the organization must understand what we stand for and why.I am going to be real here, customer service in a medical office is very different from customer service in a high-end medspa. Patients have so many choices for medical aesthetic treatments that the reasons for choosing us need to be loud and clear, which means all team members need to be well trained and well versed in those differentiating factors.Yes, we have the traditional job descriptions, employee handbook, standard operating procedure manuals, front desk playbook and much more. But, as a company, we have taken a hard stand on being different. Our job is to create relationships, build trust and show compassion and understanding, and our whole team needs to be on board. You may be the best injector, esthetician or laser tech out there, but that won’t matter if you don’t understand our brand and our purpose.Helping Employees Find Their PlaceEach employee also needs to understand their own unique strengths and what they bring to the business. This is where on-the-job coaching comes in. After reviewing the policies, procedures and brand messaging, we focus on the new employee, aka new team member. We get to know them both personally and professionally. Our goal is to build confidence and trust in each other. We work side by side supporting new team members in everything they may need to be successful at our practice.We spend most of our time identifying a provider’s unique differences and how they can use these to be successful in their new role. As a new provider who is building their own practice or client base, we believe this is a team effort.We supply providers with all needed procedure training and business-building skills. In return, the provider is responsible for delivering the best patient outcomes and retention. Each employee’s voice matters; we learn from each other and become a better team.One of my favorite quotes is, "People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily" -Zig Ziglar. In our medspa, coaching is constant and daily.Providing Data to Drive ResultsI believe that no matter how well the practice is doing or how talented you are as a provider, starting in a new office is a crawl, walk and then run. Once the new team member is familiar with the business brand, purpose and their role within it, we give them the tools to monitor their own growth.We teach their key performance indicators (KPIs), and each team member is equipped with all their service and growth data, which can be accessed through their cell phones—so all their data is in the palm of their hands. Each team member can see their own daily totals, guest visits, utilization, average spend per guest, new guests, memberships, average feedback, rebooking percentage and product-to-service percentage.They can follow these numbers by the day, week to date, month to date, by quarter and year to date. But, team members can only view their own information. Why is this powerful? Once you set concrete goals, a KPI tool provides a progress report every day. Nothing is more motivating than an individual watching their own growth. To me, working without KPI tools is like driving without directions. As a manager, I use KPI tools as a sports team would use a playbook. We create an inspiring environment and acknowledge daily, weekly and monthly achievements.Onboarding can be a painful and time-consuming process, but perhaps if we get out of the closet, we can create a more productive, successful team. I encourage owners and managers to step beyond the standard style of learning by a book. Let’s lead a team where everyone understands their purpose before protocol.

Written by Lora Kassaros. Originally posted on MedEsthetics.com.