Doctors (and pretty much all employers) are finding it increasingly challenging to attract and retain great talent to work in their organization. The impact of the pandemic and the Great Resignation across the labor force didn’t help. Can you relate? Do you see major areas of improvement in your own team?
Check out this one trick shared by several innovative CEOs to ensuring they are retaining the team they WANT… not just the team they can get.
How to Build a Great Team?
Pay Disengaged Employees to Quit
This recent news story highlighted a novel approach by a CEO to make sure that those who do work at his company really want to be there. Chris Ronzio, who runs the software company Trainual, offers new employees money to quit. Yes indeed, he will pay someone $5,000 to leave the company after only two weeks on the job.
Of the 38 employees in the company, exactly none have taken the offer. That says a lot about the culture he’s building and also speaks to what is likely a solid interview process to identify candidates who will be a good fit.
Even if he must pay a stack of cash, I’d say that’s a good investment. It’s an insurance policy that helps prevent a situation where an employee who doesn’t want to be there infects others by injecting a negative attitude into the environment.
I first heard about this approach at Zappos, where the founding CEO Tony Hsieh would offer a bounty to employees halfway through their 8-week orientation. I like this approach and have advised clients to try it even with established employees. What you learn in doing this is who’s around just for the paycheck.
All too often, we see the performance of good employees suffer as their morale and motivation gets dragged down by others. If left unaddressed, these negative influencers can kill a practice culture. The high performing employees leave for better opportunities, while the remaining employees figure out that if bad behavior is tolerated, then why try harder?
Paying an employee to leave creates an opportunity to hire a replacement that is more invested in the success of the enterprise. Because the patient experience can only be as good as the people who are making it happen, you want to have the best people on your team and not settle for anything less.