Priorities, Priorities, Priorities! Priorities = Productive Staff!

No matter what type of medical setting you are working in, you have experienced the joys of proper priotization and the frustration of innapropriate prioritizing.  Staff who appropriately prioritize, without direction, are far and few between and should be cherised.  But, what if you have (or are) a great staff member who just doesn't prioritize appropriately?  Don't throw in the towel!  Having the ability to prioritize effectively is a gift and doesn't come naturally to everyone, however with all of the demands on our medical system we all know that prioritizing isn't optional - prioritizing in the medical field means 'swimming' while lack of prioritizing means 'sinking', and unfortunately sometimes sinking the entire office.  Sinking is something we have all experienced and it brings a constant feeling of chaos and sometimes brings frustrated and angry patients, physicians, nurses and/or staff members who experience the brunt of the preventible- the chaos can be organized! 

An invaluable office management tool is a daily / weekly checklist.  Not only do they help you to remember those silly vital steps but they direct the work flow and account for everything so as long as the list is being followed - your office will be on track come the end of every week - as long as the list is followed.

Sometimes communication and work distribution issues within the office exist purely because the expectations of each staff member have not been clearly outlined.  When staff understand exactly what their responsibilities are, and what is expected of them it removes a lot of "issues" that were not really "issues" at all.  We've all experienced the employee/colleague who was never trained properly, even though we thought/told they were; or the colleague who was never told they were responsible for certain tasks.

While the pratical benefits of this type of hardcopy resource for employers and employees are obvious, there are also hidden legal benefits in situations where staff are not living up to their job requirements.  Due to the nature of these checklists (to be followed and completed each day) it will become obvious very quickly if you have a staff member who is non-compliant.  Unfortunately when dealing with a "problem" staff member a lot of the time the situation is muddied by responsibility not being clearly assigned, responsibility doesn't get much more clearly assigned than with checklists; and in fact this responsibility distribution protects colleagues of "problem" staff.  These checklists can be used when disciplining or dismissing an employee in a few ways, the first is if a task isn't completed, however, the tasklist is signed off and the issue becomes that either the employee inadvertently or purposefully signed off to something that wasn't done - time will quickly highlight which is the case.  Secondly, these sheets should be saved and can provide support when dismissing an employee either for habitually failing to meet job expectations or fraudulantly stating job expectations were met, when they weren't. 

When incorporating this system into your practice/office, this shouldn't be done without sitting down with the person/people who complete the applicable jobs and asking them what needs to be put on the list.  This level of communication will serve two purposes, the first is that the staff won't feel as though it is being done without their input - no better way to start out on the wrong foot than to assume that you know the tasks of another position, they will feel resentful and it won't be relevant - it needs to be relevant to work!  Also, by having discussion as to what will be on the list and how work should be distributed surrounding clinic or office hours, you have now had an involved conversation with your staff and cooperatively set clear job expectations - this will make them feel valued and they won't feel as though the only purpose is to "spy" on what they are doing.  You should explain the intention of the checklist is to organize the chaos and to help support them in their position.
We have created a customizable template with WORD, just send us an email if you would like us to forward you a copy.  Our template comes with common office tasks that will also give you an idea of the type of tasks to be noted - you don't want to get too general and you don't want to get ridiculously specific to a point that you are detailing every job task.  The types of tasks that should be on the list are tasks that will affect office work flow and tasks that would be beneficial to remind the staff. 

Contact us at feedback@ombis.ca