Your team of employees has a huge impact on your profitability.
When it comes to pharmacy profitability, you have to consider how your employees can contribute to or lessen your profitability. I have learned over the years, that you can’t do this alone and your team will make you or break you. For these reasons, team development gets its own profit pillar. This is the fifth pharmacy profit pillar in our series.
Let’s dive into some of our favorite tips for making sure your team is helping to boost your pharmacy profits.
Controlling Calendar
We recommend every employee in your pharmacy have a controlling calendar. This will allow them to keep track of their daily, weekly, and monthly tasks on their own. The most important items are at the top (and often come with a bonus).
Due dates have already been built in. They may be labeled for frequency (daily, weekly) or marked on the calendar when a particular activity is expected. A controlling calendar also serves as an effective communication tool.
Rather than having to ask each employee if they have completed their tasks, you can use this calendar to ensure employees are getting things done without micromanaging. You also don’t have to play the ‘did ya?’ game anymore. Did ya do this… Did ya do that…
You can download a free controlling calendar template here. Once you have it on your computer, you can go through and customize the tasks for your pharmacy and workflow.
Employee Bonus Program
Retain your employees and get the highest level of production from them with a great employee bonus program.
An employee bonus program is a beautiful approach to increase your employee compensation and ensure you are getting additional benefits as well. When employees are rewarded for hitting goals and improving metrics, they feel valued. Creating an employee bonus program has numerous advantages over automatic wage increases every year. Employees are put in control of their own destiny. When they work hard they get bigger paychecks!
By implementing a pay-for-performance structure you are also protecting yourself. Gone are the days of stagnant employees. As they produce more which boosts your bottom line, you then get to reward them.
I like to offer employees a good wage and then sweeten the pot with an aggressive bonus program. These types of compensation packages then do attract the doers. The types of people who like to accomplish goals and win. That is who you want to work in your pharmacy.
Individualized Employee Compensation
One size does not fit all when it comes to employee compensation. Adjusting the employee benefit levers to match your employees’ needs is one of the most effective strategies to keep your employees and, as a result, your patients satisfied.
What are employee benefit levers? These are the areas that you control and will benefit the employee. We all know there are wages and paid time off. However, there are many more ‘levers’ you can pull to truly customize a unique benefits package for your current or future employees.
When it comes to giving comprehensive benefits to your staff, you have control over the following areas:
- Salary
- Commissions
- Bonus
- Paid Time Off
- Insurance/Retirement
- Schedule
- Perks
- Title/Position
- Culture
Assessments
In our blog, Slow to Hire Quick to Fire, we discuss some areas in which assessments are vital for employee success and team development.
Here are some highlights on how a company culture should be established and how assessments are a part of that.
Your pharmacy’s culture is the energy behind it. It has a significant influence on everything. When your culture is strong, workers want to learn about more opportunities so that they may provide a better experience for your patients.
When you make a bad hire, you dig yourself a hole with negative energy, business loss, and a terrible reputation. It may take years to bounce back from the impact of just one bad employee.
How can you create a positive culture?
We believe in the mantra slow to hire and quick to fire. Take your time selecting the ideal new employee. Use your current team, examinations, interviews, and instinct to ensure that only excellent individuals make it through your procedure. Have a new hiring process that is standardized and uses many angles. Here is an overview of my process.
- Screening questions are sent to all applicants.
- Only applicants who answer the screening questions get a call
- Call #1 for initial screening
- Call #2 call with a different member of the team
- TTI/DISC assessments
- Working interview
- Job offer
This procedure has several deliberate stages, and the applicants are informed upfront about what to expect. Sometimes they opt out of continuing. That’s when I am most happy! If they can’t cope with a multi-step hiring procedure, so they can’t handle the dynamic operations of my pharmacy’.
Having assessments during this process helps remove the emotions from hiring and gives you unbiased feedback.
Empowerment
You have your controlling calendar, a great culture, and excellent benefits, but what could be the last push for a solid team? Empowerment.
Empowering your employees may seem easy, but here are a few tips to empower your team more effectively.
- Set the expectation early on that you want them to make decisions.
- Make sure they know that their role is vital to the pharmacy’s success.
- Encourage and support creativity within the team so they feel like they can bring new ideas to the table.
- Lastly, give them the resources they need to be successful.
With these tips, you will have a team that is empowered and engaged in their work. They will take ownership of their projects and be proud of the outcomes. When you have a high-performing team, it will show in every area of your pharmacy. The culture will be positive, morale will be high, and your profits will soar!
