Pharmacist Retention Starts From Day One
In the last article of this series, you recognized how important it is to set mutual expectations with your new hire, and to check in with them frequently, especially during the training period. This can save you from misunderstandings down the road, both in how you expect someone to perform actual functions and in the attitude or the pharmacy/clinic/hospital’s culture you’d like them to imbibe. It will ultimately lead to retention of happy employees. Studies show that one main reason why pharmacists leave their positions is because of management. Setting the tone for a strong relationship with your staff from the beginning is key to preventing that. Read on for more tips on setting expectations, how frequently to meet with your new hire, and questions to ask your new hire during the training period to set the stage for their retention.
How frequently to meet with your new pharmacist hire:
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How to Train for Retention so Pharmacists Don’t Leave
The potential government shut down last week made many people affected sweat. With steep federal budget cuts, the issue of having money to hire becomes one to be concerned about. Even if you are not affected by federal funding, budgets is the name of the game in this economy. Having to hire someone new can be costly, so retention is always the first place to look for a solution. Retaining good pharmacists starts from the very beginning-hiring and training.
One of the most common phrases I hear from pharmacy directors/managers is “I don’t want to spend a long time training a new employee.” As a result, training becomes something many pharmacy managers fly through quickly to get a new pharmacist up to speed. Yet it is the most crucial element to your new employee’s long-term success and ultimately the retention of your new hire.
Here are a few tips to implement when you train someone new:
- Set expectations – between both you and your new hire. This means not only you setting expectations for them, but them expressing their expectations and how they prefer to be managed. Determine together what the definition of success in their role would look like.
- Discuss the pharmacy’s values, vision, and mission. This is a step many pharmacy directors skip. But it is an important step for key reasons. One of the main reasons why an employer feels compelled to stay at a job is if values, vision, and mission are in alignment. Things may not be perfect, but an employee is more likely to put up with things they are dissatisfied with if they feel they are aligned with your pharmacy’s values & are empowered by your vision/mission.
Conduct a personality assessment such as the Insights Model, so you recognize not only how they may tend to relate with others, but also their natural strengths. For example, an introvert may not openly share their successes with you, but they may be just as outstanding as an extrovert counterpart. Insights into how your pharmacy staff thinks, acts, and works can give you an edge to managing them smoothly.- Find a way to communicate regularly with your new hire. Set expectations for how they can maintain channels of communication, including as a team (ie, staff meetings) and individually. Include when, how frequently, what can be brought up. For example, you may set the stage early on that when someone brings a problem, they will always come with three potential solutions. This way you don’t get constant complainers.
In an upcoming blog article, you will learn some of the best questions to ask a new hire to see how they are doing during the training period….and how to use that valuable information to retain your pharmacists.
If you have temporary coverage needs between finding out when someone is leaving and training a new hire, explore your options for IHS/tribal-experienced pharmacists to cover in the interim. Don’t waste your money on inconsistent levels of pharmacists who take more than necessary effort to train and manage.
Gossiping & Backstabbing in the Pharmacy
Having problems with gossiping or backstabbing happening in your pharmacy, or someone on your pharmacy staff always arriving late and others getting upset about that person never being called out on it?
Let it be a thing of the past. Create a “code of honor” specifically for the pharmacy to prevent this.
Q: This sounds stuffy. Why go through the trouble?
A: This is something that isn’t routinely talked about in pharmacies, but is in essence the things (said or unsaid) that a team works according to. If there is not an established code of honor for the team, an individual usually goes by his/her own code of honor to make decisions. This is where you can start having problems among your staff.
Q: A Code of Honor-What is it?
A: As defined by Blair Singer’s “The ABC’s of Building a Business Team That Wins” (NOTE: this also applies to pharmacies & hospitals), “a Code of Honor is the physical manifestation of the team’s values, extended into behavior.
Not only is it important to have values, but also knowing how to put behavior into practice that reflect those values. Establishing and agreeing to a code of honor helps everyone achieve their best performance, enjoy their work environment, and see the best results.
Q: Why is it necessary?
A: Blair explains why a Code of Honor is necessary: “By experience and default we all formulate our own sets of guidelines, rules and assumptions. That’s natural. But when we start coming together with other people, organizations and cultures, we sometimes have a tough time figuring out why “those guys” don’t understand, or how they could so blatantly turn their back on our feelings, our way of doing things and our rules. In most respects, “those guys” feel the same way about us. Why? Because we assume that certain basic rules are the same. Bad assumption.”.
Having a strong mission & an established culture is only part of the whole picture. Having a strong code of honor within the pharmacy makes the team stronger and reinforces what the pharmacy stands for.
Mission comes first, the needs of the team second, and the needs of the individual third. Develop the code of honor together as a pharmacy.
Some code of honor examples: “When a team member needs help, we will do whatever it takes to help that team member complete the task.” “Celebrate all wins.” “When someone breaches the code…”call it”!” “Keep agreements.” “Be on time.”
Tips for Implementing Your Pharmacy’s Code of Honor
Discuss the code and make sure everyone is on the same page. For example, there may be different interpretations of what being on time means. Some people view being on time as arriving through the door on time. Others view it as ready at a workstation with a pen to start doing what needs to be done. This is to be discussed so that the team is on the same page and there is no unspoken resentment about different interpretations about the code.
In the absence of rules or “code”, people make up their own rules. One of the biggest challenges about the workplace is that well-meaning people are playing by different sets of rules.
If you want to learn more about how to implement the code of honor in your pharmacy, read Blair Singer’s “Rich Dad’s Advisors®: The ABC’s of Building a Business Team That Wins: The Invisible Code of Honor That Takes Ordinary People and Turns Them Into a Championship Team
Pharmacy Managers: Sometimes You Have to Say, “You’re Fired!”
Take the Poll: How long after hiring a new pharmacist do you know whether or not he or she will work out for the long run?
Q: What is the best way to address and remove a bad hire?
Determine whether to say goodbye. Determine if you’ve made a bad hire, or whether underperformance may be due to other factors such as your lack of strategic direction or leadership, or inability to foster your hire to perform to his/her highest capacity. If you determine your hiring mistake is irreparable, remove your bad pharmacist hire quickly, because he/she can drain the energy and morale of your good hires (not to mention taking up a lot of your management time).
The firing. Have compassion and respect for your bad hire when you are doing your firing. Come from the perspective of discussing how it is no longer a fit for both parties, rather than making your discussion focused on the areas in which they are underperforming. Usually when you are at the point of having the “letting go” conversation, you have already made attempts at making things work. One example of discussing it from the place of it being no longer a mutual fit could be saying that the vision/ strategic direction or values you have for the pharmacy isn’t in alignment with the way he/she is currently performing.
Anticipate that you may receive different reactions. Some pharmacists react by being defensive. Others may be surprised. Some may even feel a sense of relief because they have felt for some time that it’s not a good fit and you’ve finally validated it for them. Be prepared for the range of human emotion.
What to do about the reaction. Be present — give them your attention. Acknowledge their reaction. Allow the person to share their perspective and acknowledge them for sharing. Then come back to how it is not a fit and that you feel they would thrive in a different environment. Wish them luck in their next endeavor. It doesn’t have to be a long discussion, but have compassion and respect for the pharmacist you are firing.
Ready to hire right the first time so you don’t have to fire someone? Read the 4 secret ways to attract good pharmacists.
Emotional Hiring Baggage
Take the Poll: Do you think it’s better to strengthen your strengths, or strengthen your weaknesses?
*Scroll down to the bottom to see what experts say about strengthening your strengths vs. strengthening your weaknesses. Find out why it matters to the success of your pharmacy after you hire.*
Now…read about a common mistake that pharmacy directors make when hiring a pharmacist.
Hiring based on emotions or your rapport with someone is a common mistake hiring managers make. You go through your screening process, but end up hiring someone you like rather than the most suitable person for the role. It is important to like whom you work with, but taking emotion out of the picture will allow you to make sound final decisions. Go through a set system that takes emotion out of the decision. Emotion can be triggered by your need to hire someone right away, or your hoping that a candidate you like will work out because you like him/her, and you hire them despite red flags showing up.
Try to involve other people and your pharmacy staff in the decision-making process at some point. They may be able to identify your blind spots preventing you from seeing the whole picture of the candidate. Use a set system and include your intuition to help you make a final decision.
One overlooked mistake is hiring someone who <span id=”more-1598″></span>is similar to you in the way they process the world. The problem is that you may actually be looking for them to fulfill a role that does not require the similar type of excellent that your role does.
Many times, the way someone processes the world is tied to the type of role they are well suited in. For example, someone who is introverted, structured & organized, systematic, analytical, detail-oriented will be more likely to be in the role of a bookkeeper than an entertainer (who may be more extraverted, sociable, and right-brained).
Pharmacists typically have a strong analytical and detail-oriented side to them, which makes them more prone to being accurate and perhaps enjoy reading journal articles. But they may not like counseling patients because they are an introvert. Even though they may appear sociable, their true preference is being an introvert. Others may thrive on counseling patients.
Each person has traits that allow them to be strong in other areas, whether they are traits that allow them to be a strong leader, the ability to make others feel comfortable and welcoming, or being a supportive type of person who doesn’t mind being conforming and likes to avoid confrontation.
Although some pharmacists can accomplish the analytical side of things, they would thrive even more if placed in a role (or add-on to their current role) that allows their creativity to come through, such as creating ways to improve patient satisfaction. Or engaging in a role that requires thinking outside the box. Maybe they would be better at re-designing pharmacy workflow to its optimal efficiency rather than analyzing journal articles, reviewing patient records, or making sure everything is entered in the computer exactly as requested.
When you hire pharmacists without conducting behavioral assessments, chances are that you are not utilizing their best talent, because you haven’t taken the time to truly understand their strengths and how they process the world.
Identify your team’s strengths and strengthen their strengths. It is more effective than identifying weaknesses and improving on their weaknesses. That is a concept explored in “Strengths Finder” by Tom Rath. The Strengths Finder assessment is something you can incorporate in your hiring process to understand someone’s true strengths, and identify ways to magnify those strengths.
Other assessment tools can help with determining work style preferences. Stay tuned–in a future article, you will find out how to move someone a seemingly low achiever to a high level of performance.
The time to start assessing and understanding your pharmacy staff’s strengths is during the hiring process, even before they start.
Can’t Find the Right Pharmacist Hire? Check Your Job Description
One of the biggest mistakes hiring managers & pharmacy directors make during the hiring process is writing a vague or incomplete job description. From the thousands of job descriptions I have seen, many are vague. Some job descriptions don’t even convey clearly whether it’s an inpatient or outpatient position. As a result, an HR/pharmacy department is flooded with a large percentage of unqualified candidates that waste their time.
A well-written job description is key to attracting the right pharmacist candidates to you. This is a potential candidate’s first impression of what it is like to work at your facility.
Start with writing down values that are important to your pharmacy & facility. For example, “Strong work ethics” or “professional growth”. You will incorporate these values within the job description. Next, write down the purpose of the role. This helps both you get grounded about what to write in the job description, and conveys to a potential applicant how he/she would fit in to the rest of the organization.
As you are writing this, set the intention to paint a strong picture of what it is like to work at your pharmacy. If you keep this in mind as you write the job description, it will be more powerful than a job description that just follows a typical job description format.
Next, start with the main responsibilities and key aspects that are important in the role. Main responsibilities could include reviewing patient records and labs, preparing IVs, and counseling patients. Key aspects could include teamwork, problem-solving skills, clinical skills, computer skills, and the attitude you want your pharmacist to have.
The size and pace of your pharmacy can be acknowledged. For example, you could mention that the pharmacy current fills on average 800-1000 Rxs/day. Mention any pharmacy-run clinical programs unique to your facility or on-the-job training unique to your facility. Be clear about the schedule expectations.
Describe the technical ability of the pharmacist you are looking for. Example: the ability to process prescriptions with the support of Script Pro Central. Experience with CPOE, McKesson, and bedside coding.
The clearer you are about your ideal candidate not just from the perspective of responsibilities, the more likely you will attract the right pharmacist. You may even wish to incorporate a separate paragraph in your job description describing your ideal candidate. The ideal candidate’s attitude, skills, experience level can be summarized in this paragraph titled “Ideal Pharmacist for this Position”. Phrases like the following can be used: “Self starter”, “Positive attitude”, “being a part of a high-functioning fast-paced environment”, or “handles miscommunication in a professional and direct manner.”
An effective job description also takes a paragraph to express what is unique about the facility. For example, if your pharmacy has been recognized by the hospital for an award, this is attractive to a potential new hire because it shows that the pharmacy focuses on excellence. Highlight strong management support and leadership, if you have it. Pharmacists like to work under a well-supported management.
A paragraph about this may look like “We are a facility recognized as one of the top 100 hospitals to work in the US. Services include….”
Run your job description by the person in the current role or by someone else in your pharmacy. Ask them if it gives them a strong sense of what the responsibilities entail.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can share job description ideas among other facilities that have similar roles, however, definitely add in the essence of what makes working at your facility unique.
When you work with a recruiting firm to find the right pharmacist to hire, use the recruiter to take your job description to life. An independent recruiter can paint a picture of what it’s like to work there to a candidate and serves as a walking & talking ambassador for your facility. Use this to your advantage. Although a recruiter can save you time by networking with pharmacists who fit your criteria, assessing a candidate’s honest answers about what he/she really wants in a job, and determining whether the position is a true fit, the important step of creating a well-written job description is not to be skipped. It can be highly supportive to a walking & talking ambassador for your facility. It will lead to finding the right pharmacist for your facility.
4 Secret Ways to Attract Good Pharmacists to Your Pharmacy (Part II)
It’s easier to attract a pharmacist who has worked at your pharmacy before as a pharmacy student or resident. You also have the benefit of having experienced the pharmacist’s capability and fit for the position.
SOLUTION: Attract pharmacists by developing an externship program or residency program, if you don’t have one already. Stay in touch with them–they may become your future hires.
Out of the Fire
Do you spend most of your time in the fire? Are you putting out fires or helping out in the pharmacy on the line, leaving little time for high-level visioning for the pharmacy? Or do you spend most of your time doing high-level visioning, but receive complaints from your pharmacy staff that you are disconnected and don’t understand the main challenges they experience? For those of you who have budget crunches, being on the line may seem like a complete necessity. It is also easy to feel a sense of accomplishment when you are out there on the line helping patients and making a difference.
This is a tricky balance to achieve when you face the dilemma of being in a budget crunch where you need to make the best use of your time. When you are caught up in the day-to-day operations of the pharmacy, it is hard to be in the space of taking a step back to take a high-level view and consider what is best for the short-term and long-term vision of the pharmacy.
However, as a leader, you will “spin” less if you take time to step back to think of the bigger picture. It will help you make a difference in many more patients. How can you impact 500 patients vs. you serving them 1-on-1? These are questions you play an important part in answering, as the leader of the pharmacy.
On the flip side, if you spend all of your time visioning, managing budgets, project management, patient satisfaction/quality improvement, as well as hiring/firing, you may lose the pulse of what is happening among your pharmacy staff and what is important to the patients. Regardless of what side of the coin you are on, there are things that you can do right away to make sure you focus on the bigger vision even if you’re busy.
Stay tuned for an article coming up about 4 steps you can take today to focus on the bigger vision, even if you are busy.
In the meantime, if you are a pharmacy manager or director, share below how frequently you are in the fire vs. stepping back to focus on the bigger vision and make plans. What has worked & hasn’t worked for you? What are some obstacles you have to reach a balance between working with your pharmacy staff vs. on your pharmacy?
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Pharmacy Directors- Biggest Management Challenges?
Share your biggest management challenges being a pharmacy manager by commenting on this blog or click here. I will answer the most commonly asked questions here. Also, stay tuned for a multi-speaker pharmacist/pharmacy manager telesummit event within the next year that will address your main management challenges.
One of the most common challenges mentioned by pharmacists about their management is managing expectations and communicating expectations clearly.
One way to communicate expectations clearly is to conduct set performance reviews.
Here’s a pearl on having performance reviews that inspire your staff’s performance. Something you may not be doing currently: Include the pharmacist rating him/herself on measurable factors, in addition to you as the pharmacy management evaluating the pharmacist. Allow the pharmacist to participate in the creation of some of those measurable factors as well.
Stay tuned! I will write on other ways to communicate expectations effectively in another blog article.
“I Don’t Want to Spend Time Training”
This article is for Indian Health Service pharmacy directors only.
This is one of the most common comments pharmacy directors share with me, both for training new hires and relief pharmacists. A way to save you time to train is to hire slowly for the right hire and screen for pharmacists who have as many translatable skills as possible. If you have a relief pharmacist coming in, select someone with IHS experience. At the same time, there will always be new procedures and strategic direction unique only to your facility.
Training is an area that is easy to shortcut. The most common excuses are: “I don’t have time”, “Things are always changing around here; just ask other pharmacists how they will handle this.” Read more