Staff Meetings: How Often Should You Have Them?

Assuming that you are a working owner who is actively involved in the day-to-day management of your eyecare practice, I think you need to meet with every staff member at least once a week.

That may sound like a lot. But it’s not. That’s particularly true for newer employees who need your guidance and feedback.

The exception might be if you have ten or more employees. In that case, you can delegate some of the meetings to a full time office manager. 

But, for the typical practice with one to nine non-OD staff members, I think meeting once a week is about right.

Here Is One Way To Meet Every Week

By ‘meeting’, I don’t mean lock the front door, turn off the phones and hunker down for an hour or two. Who wants to do that?

I had six non-OD staff in my practice, one of whom was the office manager. I met with two employees every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the morning before we started seeing patients.

Sometimes the topics of discussion were the same for everybody, such as, when we were going to close the office for New Year’s.

But often, I had different things to discuss based on whether I was meeting with the front desk staff, optical staff or contact lens staff.

Plus, I would not hesitate to meet with someone individually when they needed ‘extra coaching’. 

Well-known speaker, author and management consultant Tom Peters said the ‘number one motivator of people’ is feedback on results. 

I say that feedback needs to come at least once a week.

Best regards,
Jerry Hayes, OD

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Disclaimer: The information and opinions contained on this site are for discussion purposes only and are NOT intended to serve as legal, accounting or investment advice. ©2010 Jerry Hayes, OD. Not to be reproduced without written permission of the author.