How to simply optimize the organization of workplaces (5-S-Method)
As a practice owner, the workplace becomes the most strategic tool to reinforce certain behavior that can ultimately optimize productivity and maximize efficiency for the organization. Whether you’re working at the same office every day or working from multiple locations, the best way to optimize the environment of your workplace is by creating a plan that works.
Your employees play a crucial role in fashioning the productivity and success of your practice. Use this to your advantage by discovering the skill profiles of each employee which can then help create a clear structure of the treatment process and allow you to assign meaningful tasks to them based on said skills. Make sure that nobody has to do five tasks at the same time and that no time is wasted on meaningless work.
How to optimize your workplaces?
The trope about dictating your employees for a smoother sail at work is old-fashioned and inefficient. Start by involving your employees in the process. Make sure that no more than a single person is assigned a task because then it might not get done at all. Clear deadlines must be met, but what is not urgent should be done in peace and without the chaos and ruckus.
It is common when people are not sure how to prioritize quickly and easily. For this, I introduce the two-minute rule in my team. If you have several tasks to do seemingly at the same time, you bring them according to the following principle in a ranking:
- Activities that are expected to take less than two minutes will be done immediately.
- Activities that take considerably longer are scheduled and for this, a written task filed in our CRM system is created.
This is quick and easy and promotes independent decision-making. Allow your employees enough room to maneuver and trust their decisions.
Another strategy I allot in my practice is to have rotating employee assignments at different locations. Each location has a different opening hour and the plans are designed to accommodate and ensure that every patient can have an appointment every day of the week. Subsequently, we keep one day off for administrative work.
We introduce the rotating principle to each patient on their first appointment. We plan all patient treatments centrally. The medical colleagues collect the suggestions for possible solutions in our CRM system and jointly determine what the treatment plan looks like. As a result, our patients not only have a single medical opinion or a second opinion but actually several (in my practice there are up to five), which we present to the patient on their next appointment.
This is particularly helpful because then, all the physicians are educated with the problem for each patient and the corresponding problem treatment at any given point in time. Virtual networking is also an essential factor in our organization. Since all employees are networked via work smartphones, anyone can quickly get guidance and, regardless of the location.
The last and final rule: don’t let your employees be tuckered with work. Too many overtime hours might often get confused with “more work done”, however, that is simply not the case. Just like how you wouldn’t over-exert a racehorse to win the race, you should also give your employees time to breathe. The Pareto principle39, the 80/20 rule, helps here. With only 20 percent exertion, you can achieve an 80 percent result!