How to Recognize Great Teamwork in Your Practice
When you are running a busy wellness practice, it can be challenging to stop and recognize all that you and your team have accomplished together.
Celebrating your team’s successes creates a positive work environment where your team can thrive. Acknowledging successes builds confidence and morale among your staff. It can help your team feel valued and that their work makes a difference. That can translate into happier employees who enjoy their work and remain loyal to your practice.
Build a Culture of Success
There is a well-known adage that states “what you focus on expands” — or in other words, what you choose to focus your thoughts on has an important influence on what is more likely to show up in your life.
This principle does indeed work when it comes to business. That’s why companies set annual goals to attract new customers and sell more products. Of course, they work hard towards them — but they also build a culture of success and keep their teams highly engaged by acknowledging and celebrating when they meet or exceed their goals.
In your healthcare practice, building and nurturing a culture of success can translate into a better patient experience, retaining more patients over the long term, getting more positive reviews for your practice, and ultimately attracting new patients into your practice. This is the ‘virtuous cycle’ of practice success.
Whether you work in an office or remotely, here are some ways you can celebrate your team’s successes.
Publicly Acknowledge Excellence in Team Meetings
It feels good to realize how far you have come when you’re building a business. But when you are wrapped up in the busy-ness of day-to-day work, it’s easy to forget to pause and look back at where you used to be. You have to make time to recognize the good work that got your practice to where it is now.
When you have team meetings in person or over conference calls, you can dedicate a portion of each meeting to recognizing team wins. You can call out team members that helped move your practice forward or did something extraordinary. Acknowledging their effort and successes reaffirms that their work is valued, appreciated, and necessary.
You could also start an employee of the month program in your practice. Feature your star teammate on the wall in your in-person office or in an email if your practice is virtual. Share a few words of praise and why they made a difference in that month.
Offer Small Rewards for Outstanding Work
Some people thrive when they are praised. Others feel appreciated when they receive gifts. You can offer your best-performing teammates small gifts or rewards as a token of appreciation.
A gift card to a local store or cafe, a book, a small gadget or tool they can use for a hobby outside of work are all great ways to reward a good job done. You could also treat employees who do an outstanding job to a delicious, healthy lunch outside the office.
Give Year-End Bonuses to Exemplary Employees
You could offer substantial rewards like year-end bonuses to employees who do a great job all year round. If you do choose to offer performance rewards, you may want to work with your employees to set goals for the year that they can work towards.
For example, if you have staff members that work on your practice’s marketing, you could reward them for meeting specific benchmarks. These could be measures such as adding a certain number of new patients to your roster, or getting a certain number of positive reviews for your practice on social media, or retaining a set number of patients each year.
You can meet with staff members periodically to check in and see if they are meeting the benchmarks that you set at the beginning of the year. For those that meet or exceed their goals, you can reward them with a year-end bonus payment or other reward.
Fuel For Your Dream Team
When you celebrate the successes of your team and your practice, positive reinforcement builds a culture of success. You recognize the good that you are doing together as an organization and the positive change you are affecting for your patients and in your community.
It can inspire teammates to overcome obstacles and think creatively to solve challenges. And it inspires you and your team to think bigger and grow.
