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TRAINING

5 reasons to pay for medical office staff education

Paid continuing education is one of the most popular perks you can offer your employees. Besides making your staff happier, paid upgrading and training also benefits the practice in at least five ways. Enhancing knowledge and skills: Continuing education and staff upgrading help employees to stay current with the latest advancements and trends in the healthcare industry. It allows them to enhance their knowledge and skills, which leads to improved performance, better patient outcomes, and higher levels of job satisfaction. Meeting regulatory requirements: Many healthcare regulatory bodies require healthcare providers to have certain levels of training and education. For example, nurses may need to maintain their license by completing continuing education credits, while medical assistants may need to be certified to perform certain tasks. Improving patient outcomes: By investing in… . . . read more.

COMPLIANCE

What does FMLA require of a medical office employer?

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is one of the employment laws that protect your staff. It is a federal law that requires certain employers to provide their employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year for certain qualified medical and family reasons. For a medical office employer, the FMLA requires that they provide eligible employees with job-protected leave for the following reasons: The birth of a child or the placement of a child for adoption or foster care The care of an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition The employee’s own serious health condition that makes them unable to perform the essential functions of their job Any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse,… . . . read more.

MOTIVATING YOUR STAFF

Praise is nice but a year-end bonus is better

A year-end bonus can be a powerful tool for reminding your staff their hard work and commitment and the company’s overall growth and success are closely intertwined. And according to a survey of employers, 50% of companies plan to award year-end bonuses in 2022. While this is down from 63% last year, it’s a sign that staff retention remains top of mind for many employers, says Robert Half, the specialized talent solutions and business consulting firm which conducted the survey. Presenting employees with a financial reward—whether it’s to acknowledge individual, departmental or companywide success—can help bolster retention and even help with recruitment efforts. It can also be a motivational tool for driving team productivity and engagement in the year ahead. A year-end bonus can help employees feel like they make a… . . . read more.

MANAGING STAFF

Inflation’s impact on employees and the workplace

By Lynne Curry What keeps your employees and coworkers up at night, and what does it mean to you as their employer or colleague? According to the U.S. 2022 Inside Employees’ Minds Report conducted by the HR consulting firm Mercer, which surveyed 4049 employees between Aug. 26 and Sept. 9, 2022, it’s financial worries, https://www.mercer.us/content/dam/mercer/attachments/private/us-2022-inside-employees-minds-report.pdf. The number one issue for many employees in 2022—can they cover monthly expenses given skyrocketing inflation—ranked only ranked ninth in 2021. As no surprise, employee satisfaction with their employers has declined markedly from last year in the areas of compensation and benefits. Further, two years of continued crises—the pandemic, layoffs and labor shortages, supply chain challenges, political and racial polarization, the war in Ukraine, and the looming recession—have changed how employees view work. Employees who… . . . read more.

HIRING & FIRING

Employees who ask to be fired: A new trend to obtain a strategic advantage

By Lynne Curry At first, you think you’re imagining things. Your employee, “Kevin,” seems to want you to fire him. It started with Kevin not showing up for two critical team meetings in a row. When you sent him a text asking, “what happened” after the first, he responded, “It wasn’t on my radar.” You sent him an individual meeting request to ask him about this, but he was a “no show.” You planned to ask him to stay after the second team meeting, but he didn’t show up. In the meantime, your hear a complaint from another staffer: “He treats me with total disrespect. Maybe it’s that I’m a woman, or Hispanic, but I don’t plan to take it anymore.” This cascade of problems tells you need to act… . . . read more.

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

Staff continuing education: Must you or should you pay for it?

By Paul Edwards I’m looking to hire a new employee and they asked me about my policy on paying for employee CE. I normally don’t pay for employee CE but it sounds important to this potential new employee. What is the best way to handle this? Many individuals working in healthcare fields have annual continuing education (CE) requirements they need to meet in order to maintain certain licenses. Meeting that requirement is an obligation on the individual, not on the practice. Of course, you should keep track of whether your employees have a valid license and are meeting the requirements for renewing it, otherwise it does become a problem for the practice. While you may not be required to help pay for the cost of license renewals or CEs taken… . . . read more.

HUMAN RESOURCES

5 ways to help your staff cope with inflation

By Paul Edwards CEO, CEDR  Solutions Inflation is on everyone’s minds right now, and understandably so. Most Americans are aware that the purchasing power of a dollar is always decreasing to some degree, but rarely does the rise in the cost of living have such a powerful impact on our daily lives or feature so prominently in the public discourse. As you may already know, financial pressure on American consumers reached an all-time high this year. Based on The Consumer Price Index—the best-known indicator of inflation—inflation rose to 8.6 percent in the 12 months ending in May 2022, marking the most extreme spike in that figure in over 40 years. The Impact of Inflation on You and Your Team Employees are justifiably concerned by this sudden and dramatic hike in the cost… . . . read more.

RETAINING STAFF

Do you make your employees want to stay?

By Lynne Curry Your employees are leaving, because they want better opportunities. What are you giving them? If it’s not better opportunities, you’ll lose them. Here’s what you need to consider: Do you pay your employees what they’re worth? If you can’t afford competitive compensation, do you compensate by giving employees flexibility and autonomy, allowing them to feel they’re in charge of leveraging their time and productivity, and can work harder or longer one day and take a bit of a break the next day? Do you give your employees the chance to learn new things and develop professionally? Do you respect and value your employees, and do you clearly demonstrate that you value them? As a manager/supervisor, do you step to the plate? If you want the best employees,… . . . read more.

RECRUITING

How to attract employees in the post-pandemic job market

By Lynne Curry The pandemic has changed employees and what they want out of a job. It’s up to employers to recognize these new attitudes toward work and figure out how to attract good staff. See if you relate to the situation described here by a manager in another industry, and if you can use some of the advice.  Question: I always thought I was a good manager. Not anymore. I feel outgunned by what’s happened with my employees. A third of them have left for “better” jobs. The ones who’ve stayed have made it clear they expect higher wages and to work from home when they want.  The woman we hired to handle HR and accounting tells us she’s doing her best, but she hires “the best of the… . . . read more.

EMPLOYEE MENTAL HEALTH

Is it poor performance or a personal crisis?

By Paul Edwards Those in the healthcare industry are bound to be ahead of the curve in understanding that mental illness is not a character defect and can be a serious health condition that requires intervention. Despite having a good comprehension of the importance of good mental health hygiene, healthcare professionals tend to fare badly in terms of psychological self-care. While nurses and physicians are at a higher risk of suicide than the general population, this article is focused on employees and how can take the mental health of employees in crisis into account when talking to individuals about their performance at work. Given this past year, just about everyone associated with providing health care, when asked, will tell you they are burned out and tired. Overall, it seems most are facing… . . . read more.


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