Unify Your Practice for the Future
What is arguably the most valuable and important resource in any practice?
Answer: the people.
What is the most important factor in making them and your practice successful?
Answer: the culture they work in each day.
The culture of your practice is on display the moment a patient interacts with your team. Good, bad or indifferent, it is an undeniable and very apparent reflection of who your organization is and what it stands for. If your culture has been nurtured, your patients will notice and be more likely to maintain their relationship with you. If it has been ignored, it will create reasons for them to go elsewhere.
Practice culture is made up of the values, interests, experiences, assumptions and beliefs shared by its employees. It influences how employees feel about work and how they perform. A culture exists whether you are intentional about it or not. Increasingly we are finding that ignoring culture is a surefire way to have a lower performing and less satisfied team.
Research shows that organizations that can lean into culture during difficult times are outperforming their competition. In fact, a strong culture can enhance employee engagement by 30%, resulting in up to a 19% increase in operating income and a 28% increase in earnings growth.
With Fuel, You Get the Tools of Change
One of the best and worst aspects of culture is that it can change. On the positive side, if you realize your culture isn’t quite what it should be to help your practice perform at its best, don’t worry—it still can be. At Fuel, we often find that practices already know why patients should visit them instead of the competition, they just have yet to put it into words. Defining your culture so that the team agrees to and understands it is often the first step on the pathway to improved performance.
The next step is to address any performance gaps between where you are as a team and where you want that path to take you. Fuel members have access to our Professional Development team and its many resources to do just that—help you identify where you are at, where you want to go and the challenges currently in your way. Our team will work collaboratively with you to develop a plan to fill the gaps and then correct and adapt as needed to get everyone on the same path, headed in the same direction.
The Fuel professional development team, along with your dedicated region team, will roll up their sleeves and help you implement the plan through:
- Customized courses delivered virtually or onsite
- Change management with staff members
- Planning and implementation of other staff investments
One exciting resource our team has been using recently with practices is our new e-workbook. The book is focused on building a thriving workplace culture. The content and insights in the workbook come from real-life lessons with our practices and supporting research. Designed to be interactive, the workbook is packed with advice, downloadable tools, case studies, and videos to be used as we collaborate on your culture plan.
At the end of that path is something we call ‘brand + culture + strategy’ alignment. What does that look like? One analogy would be a high-performing sports team. Each year in any sport at any level, there are a few teams who are just “better” than everyone else. The difference between them and the competition doesn’t simply come down to having better players or a better coach; it is most frequently because every member of the team understands their role, their value, the plan and the ultimate goal they are all working toward.
We’d like to help your practice be one of those teams. Fuel Medical’s professional development team includes industry veterans, on-staff audiologists and subject matter experts from inside and outside the industry. Professional development is just one part of our comprehensive ‘Practice Support,’ ‘Revenue Growth’ and ‘Patient Engagement’ model. Our additional support teams are versed in everything from innovative digital services to in-house marketing, recruiting services and virtually every branch of operations necessary to unify your team for success.
Are you struggling to improve or sustain an organizational culture? Fuel’s professional development team is here to help! Contact us today.
