Why retaining great people has become more challenging than ever

By Sarah Buxton

Retaining good people has always been a challenge in dentistry, but many practice owners and managers feel it is becoming harder than ever. Sarah Buxton explores what's changed, why employee expectations are evolving and what successful practices are doing differently.

If you run a dental practice, you don’t need me to tell you that keeping good people is really hard. Not just slightly harder, but noticeably, frustratingly harder than it used to be. And it’s not just you. This is coming up in almost every conversation I have with dental practice owners at the moment.

There is a real shortage of people across dentistry from dentists, nurses, hygienists to reception staff.   This means good people have options. More options than they’ve ever had before and therefore are able to make demands that they may not have been in a position to make previously. 

Added to this, I hear a lot about burn out. And not the kind you fix with a long weekend. We’re seeing genuinely high levels of emotional exhaustion across the dental profession, with many people feeling overwhelmed and disengaged. When people reach that point, they don’t just look for a new job but they start questioning whether they want to stay in dentistry at all.

Even putting burnout to one side, things have changed. What people want from work today is not what it was five or ten years ago. Across the UK workforce, people are prioritising; work–life balance, flexibility, a feeling of being valued and opportunities to grow. Salary still matters, of course - but it’s no longer the only thing.

The challenge for dentistry is obvious to me and you can’t easily run a dental practice remotely or offer flexible hours. This means that there’s a natural tension between what the job requires and what people want.

On top of all that, there’s money. Practice owners are dealing with rising costs, NHS pressures and squeezed margins. Further when the shortage of people means that they are demanding higher rates of pay, you end up stuck in this uncomfortable middle ground where you want to reward your team, but your business model is under pressure. What I see happening is that the gap between expectation and reality keeps widening.

Here’s the bit I think has really shifted. Team members are looking at the culture and whether they feel appreciated. In other words, two dental practices can feel completely different to work in and people vote with their feet.

So, what actually makes people stay? This is the question I get asked all the time.

And while there’s no silver bullet, the practices doing this well do have HR support in place. The team appreciate a culture where they can see they are being invested in and the practice has the foundations in place to support the team on a day-to-day basis by having a culture where conversations are had about well-being and what the practice owner can do for the team.

I completely appreciate how difficult this is as a business owner. Running Buxton Coates we also have cost pressures, regulatory demands, patient/client expectations and now a workforce that is harder to retain than ever.  But your team is feeling a lot of that pressure too. That’s the bit that’s easy to forget when you’re trying to keep the practice running.

Retention today isn’t about trying to “hold on” to people. It’s about creating an environment they don’t want to leave. In the current climate, that’s probably one of the most important things a dental practice owner can get right.