Dentistry is a profession that requires flexibility and adaptability as it is exposed to constant and shifting patient demands. Constant movement is expected, but what about the workforce itself? Internal mobility is a concept that many industries have prioritized due to the pandemic and has statistically proven to benefit these industries and their workforce alike. Gradually, dentistry has embraced job mobility due to skill and labor shortages, allowing dental practices to reskill and upskill dental professionals. Additionally, dental employees acquire fresh knowledge to boost their career trajectories by capitalizing on new internal opportunities.
Internal mobility affords dental temps and permanent employees chances to develop and become highly-valued employees who dentists can count on to handle any situation. Reskilling is the future of talent acquisition, helping dental employees learn new skills and develop fresh perspectives on skills they already possess. Through reskilling, internal mobility in dentistry becomes achievable.
Dental Leaders Can Fill Positions Faster
Dental leaders should consider job mobility because it’s significantly less costly to recruit internally than to recruit from the outside. It’s easier to have a talent pool within your dental practice that has the enhanced skills and knowledge to be able to work across different functions. Job mobility strategies are necessary as the work landscape constantly changes as industries counter labor shortage concerns with the necessary agility and resourcefulness to ensure they improve productivity.
Employee reskilling and upskilling initiatives improve talent retention as well as employee engagement, helping dental practices gain key competitive advantages. Also, dental practices can attract new talent through internal mobility initiatives as it shows new employees that there is the potential to advance and improve their positioning in practice, showing their value and accelerating skill development. Cross-department collaboration also improves thanks to job mobility, leading to fresh ideas and information exchanges serving to improve productivity.
How Can Dental Leaders Approach Reskilling for Job Mobility?
Reskilling dental employees requires a nuanced and measured approach. The aim of reskilling isn’t to completely rework an employee’s skill set but add to what he or she has learned to become a more all-around employee. Reskilling is about getting and being more so that dental practices see increased value in their employees, and employees, in turn, reward the practices that hired them with the productivity and loyalty they’re looking for.
One way that dental leaders can successfully leverage job mobility is to be data-driven. Dentists can gather and decipher people analytics to determine employee capabilities and the quality of the employee experience. By using data, dental leaders can better design and establish more strategic decisions regarding talent. Dental leaders can align the data discovered with their business ideas and concepts, focusing more on their workforce and the metrics they’ve accumulated to ensure employees are comfortable acquiring new skills/knowledge and improving their career development.
Also, dental leaders should encourage as much knowledge sharing as possible, particularly for dental temps who are trying to adjust to their new environs and are often tasked with short-notice jobs. Collaboration should be a priority at all levels of the workforce, allowing dental practices to successfully transition current employees into new positions and reducing hiring costs along the way.
Introducing Performance Enablement Solutions
Another measure that companies across various industries have introduced to better facilitate internal mobility is performance enablement. It’s an important tool for reskilling/upskilling as it encourages workplace development, facilitating agility and adaptability amid ever-changing dental industry needs.
Performance enablement solutions are never one-size-fits-all solutions because they are backed by technology, specifically artificial intelligence. Performance enablement technology analyzes live performance data before understanding more about dental employees and their traits as they gather experience within a practice.
Initiatives like distributed workforce training are paramount to making performance enablement solutions functional and helpful to dental practices. Dentists can readily maximize employee potential at will, allowing dental temps and other workers to expand their skillsets to various areas. Dental employees can receive information on-demand thanks to performance enablement technology, including from remote locations in case they have to work away from the office. Through personalized learning, dental professionals optimize their skillsets and get treasured information that helps them to navigate their day-to-day responsibilities with confidence.
With personal enablement, dentists can make their dental practices more resilient, connecting performance data with personalized learning to ensure each employee is comfortable adapting to new roles and growing the courage to fill positions that otherwise would have necessitated a costly and tiresome external hiring process.
Temporary dental staffers can be very helpful whenever permanent staff members are sick or have full schedules, filling unforeseen gaps as they appear and have been statistically beneficial since the start of the pandemic, providing added value and benefits for practices. TempStars helps practices spot such talents to optimize their practice’s productivity right away. Sign up today and learn more about our trusted services!
