When it comes to motivating, attracting, and retaining the best talent at your clinic, one of the most important things you can do is offer rewards. When your employees feel appreciated for their hard work, they will be more engaged in their jobs and less likely to leave voluntarily.

There is a common misconception that the best way to motivate people in your company is to offer them more money. But, what if you can't afford to give them a raise especially during these times? That’s why I recently interviewed Jason Lindstrom on how the best companies increase staff engagement and increase employee retention. That any clinic can implement tomorrow.

Let’s get started…

Rick: Jason thanks for coming on.

Jason: My pleasure, Rick.

Rick: For those of you who don’t know. Jason is an authority on creating a high-performance team. He has helped billion-dollar companies like Chick-fil-a, Royal Bank, and the professional basketball team Orlando Magic to name a few, to increase employee engagement and results. And he is also the CEO of 3 high-growth tech companies including Bucket List Rewards.

So let’s get right to it, how can clinics boost employee performance and build a great clinic culture?

How Any Clinic Can Boost Staff Performance and Build a Great Culture

Jason: Ok, first I want to start with a couple of ideas on how Google does this. What's interesting about Google is they do some amazing things to reward employees. Yes, some of these things are quite expensive like an expensive campus and perks. However, their most effective one doesn't cost any money. According to the former head of people at Google...

"Google, is one of the best places to work, not because of all our cool perks but because we take excellent care of our people. Employee recognition is the most effective tool to keep people engaged and make them feel valuable."

Any clinic no matter your budget can implement that one.

What's interesting is they used to do a rewards program that awarded innovation called Founders Awards.

And one of the innovations that came out of the rewards program was Adsense.

And Rick do you know how much revenue Google Ads generated last year?

Rick: I would say 45 billion dollars.

Jason: It was 146.92 billion U.S dollars. The reason I'm sharing this with you is, you get what you reward. When you do this you get many rewards programs that drive revenue, drive profitability, a very happy team, and happy clinic culture.

In fact, according to Harvard Business reviews on organizations that have a culture of recognition. Their employees are:

• 5x times more likely to feel valued.
• 7x more likely to stay with their company.
• 11x more likely to feel completely committed to their jobs.

Also, do you know what percent of people leave their jobs because they don’t feel appreciated?

Rick: I would say close to 60%.

Jason: Yes, you are close 64%.

Rick: That's very interesting. I’m a big believer in recognizing staff and found it to be the most effective way to motivate staff and also retain the best talent.

Jason: Yes, it is very effective and costs no money.

Rick: So how would a clinic implement an effective rewards program that drives revenue and profitability?

The 4 Keys to Implementing An Effective Rewards Program That Drives Revenue and Profitability

Jason: Well there are 4 key components.

The first one is Planning. You first want to identify the goals you want to achieve with your rewards program.

The common ones we see are:

• Increase employee engagement
• Breakdown company silos
• Increase a feeling of recognition
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Increase innovation
• Lower voluntary turnover.

Once you find that out. The next component is the employee audience. This is where you find out how they want to be recognized and awarded.

Next, you want to find out how they like to be awarded. Do they prefer face-to-face, email, or instant messaging? If you know how your staff wants to be awarded you will have way better utilization and participation.

And lastly, you choose your tactics and pillars which I will go through in a second.

First I will talk about the Daily Huddle. It can be a powerful and quick way to recognize your staff. A great company called OTE, uses Daily Huddles via Zoom. However, it can be applied in person at your clinic. It's roughly 10 minutes long. They recognize good work. Share company KPIs. I think these are very important because when an employee can see how their company is performing. It creates a lot of transparency and authenticity.

The next one I want to talk about is Recognition Channels.

You can create a recognition channel inside of Slack which is free.

Then you invite your team members into the channel and begin recognizing each other.

In fact, Advisor websites launched their recognition program inside of Slack and they have a 90% participation each month since they started doing this.

And best of all there is no monetary reward to it.

The next one is recognition on the go. This is great for clinics. As I mentioned before it's very important to recognize people for how they want to be recognized.

Peter Piper Pizza who we worked with has over 2,000 staff across 50 locations and what they do is hand out spot awards around customer satisfaction.

And those are just a few ideas you can begin to implement in building your own recognition program.

Rick: I really like spot awards. I've found it doesn't have to be expensive either. $25-$50 is enough to motivate staff. You can even find discount gift cards on sites like Groupon. When I owned clinics I would give tickets to a sporting or play event as a spot award. 

I decided to take my leadership team out to try curling for the first time after setting our 90-day goals - I never expected my team to have so much fun! 

So what's the most effective way to recognize staff you see working right now?

Jason: Hands down the best way to recognize staff is peer to peer recognition. The reason this is so important is that it allows everyone to participate and participation often results in a very successful program.

Rick: And they can use a Slack channel for this?

Jason: Yes or Microsoft Teams.

Rick: Well Jason thanks for this great interview. You really gave a lot of golden nuggets that I believe can help any clinic create a high-performance team. Increase employee retention and engagement. If you would like to find out more about Jason go to BucketListRewards.com. Also, here’s a webinar Jason did where he goes in more depth.

And if you enjoyed this interview you might be interested in this…

There is only one solution to a clinic marketing problem - the Free Mystery Caller Audit. Normally it’s $199.00 but it’s FREE today. 

In fact, Jamie from ABC Clinic added an extra $15,000.00 a month to his clinic after the Free Mystery Caller Audit. To learn more click here now

2. How do I keep my staff motivated without breaking the bank?