Often, a business owner wears many hats. She built her business doing brilliant 1:1 work with patients, she focused on clinical outcomes, client experience, and developing her brand — and because her plate is full, the importance of having an aesthetic practice manager tends to get overlooked.
We worked with a nurse practitioner who had a rapidly growing business. Within two years of opening, she found herself with a fully booked schedule and began hiring additional providers to take on responsibility for certain services.
As she began to bring on more team members, she found it increasingly challenging to carve out the time to train each provider in a way that built their credibility. She also found that patients would continue to call the clinic and ask for her and only her.
It was time to hire an aesthetic practice manager to help create systems in her business — to handle the office management, inventory, team meetings, schedule, and provider training plan. That’s what we’ll cover in this blog post, including:
- Understanding the vital role of a practice manager in your business
- 5 reasons your practice manager is likely to leave—and how to retain talent
- 5 ways to support your practice manager and establish a working relationship
Crack the code to avoiding aesthetic practice manager turnover
It’s important to understand the perspective of your manager, who is leading a team of people, and is responsible for directing them in step with your needs, vision, and approval.
The role of a practice manager is important and dynamic, and needs more of your support in ways you may not have considered.
A salaried worker stays with their current employer for an average of 4.6 years, and the number one reason they leave is due to lack of appreciation. Here are the other top five reasons employees leave a company:
- Lack of stability
- No perceived future
- Lack of work-life balance
- Poor management
- Poor workplace culture
Many times when an employee is disgruntled and leaves, they say it’s because of a better offer or higher salary. In reality, they wouldn’t be looking for another opportunity if they had felt joy in their current workplace and had a relationship with their employer in which they could openly communicate about their needs.
Luckily, you can learn how to establish a relationship that supports your aesthetic practice manager to be the best she can be in her role.
5 key components to build a practice manager optimization checklist
Being a great boss is not rocket science, but it takes showing up with intention and supplying more than a big, fat paycheck. So, let’s walk through a practice manager optimization checklist to help you strategize showing up for your practice manager as a better leader.
These steps to building a better relationship will help your practice manager optimize their productivity, fuel them with your support, and inject fire in their belly to inspire them to radiate that same kind of passion into every team member.
- Have their back
Many times when we work with practice managers, they privately share with us that they feel unsupported in the management arena. Provider-owners are often so dedicated to the patient experience and the day to day duties that they overlook their role as the ultimate leader of the vision. Can you relate?
Your team needs to know that your manager is a direct extension of you, and that you support your manager in every decision, rule, directive, and idea that is disseminated to the team. For example, we had a client who enforced masks during COVID and her manager was mask-policing everyone in the practice—but the owner was not following her own rules. She would go into her room and take her mask off “where no one would notice,” but of course everyone knew.
The owner was putting her manager in a tough spot by requiring her to enforce agreed-upon rules, while passively telling the team that the rule wasn’t important. So, if you are asking your manager to enforce a rule in your business, show up for that manager like you are in full partnership with them and lead by example.
- Be present for important meetings
You hired a manager so you wouldn’t have to run every meeting and be at every little sit down—and you don’t. But if your manager needs your presence to reinforce the value of what she is sharing with the team, be there, and proactively ask how you can support them.
We had a practice manager client who created a new patient intake process for their 15 employees to implement. This was a process intended to direct the patient care plan throughout every division of the practice and inform each aspect of their aesthetic journey — it was a big deal.
Her boss, the business owner, was over the moon about this new tool, but when it came time to roll it out to the team, the boss couldn’t make the meeting. This signaled to the team that it was not a priority to the actual boss, so adoption was average at best. Had the owner been present and verbally reinforced the importance of this tool, imagine how much more impactful the rollout could have been.
- Conduct consistent performance reviews for your practice manager
Think about your position as a business owner. With the exception of your business coach, there is no one checking in on you, helping you stay accountable to your goals, applauding your wins, and challenging you to grow. That’s the person you need to be for your practice manager.
Don’t just hand over the reins and assume the practice manager duties are on lock. They probably are, but we’re all human and need routine reinforcement. Remember that two of the top five reasons employees seek other opportunities is a perceived lack of future, or in other words a missing growth runway, and lack of management.
In particular, great employees seldom get the consistent feedback loop of milestone setting, investment in their growth, and feedback for their accomplishments because our expectations of them are so high. If you can’t be that person for them, you and your manager should consider working with us in our POP Leadership Academy where you can learn the skills and create the habits for open, consistent, and healthy communication.
- Praise the good with the bad
Practice manager duties include having difficult conversations with employees in productive ways.
Owners, however, tend to “casualize” their communication with their managers, meaning every meeting is a stand-up chat, text exchange, or venting session — versus a formal sit-down meeting where there is a focus on performance.
Because of this, we often only think of meeting with our managers when there’s a fire drill to run, and they hear more of the negative than the positive. Instead, make it intentional to sit down and celebrate the small wins, because those are the little things that will compound into big satisfaction.
- Manage your micromanagement
One of the practice managers in our POP Leadership Academy told a story about an experience with a previous employer who was always up in her business when it came to the validity and accuracy of company numbers.
Her boss was insecure about her own ability to track data and make informed decisions based on the results of that data, so she constantly micromanaged the process.
If you are going to micromanage or be involved in every single detailed step of a process, then you might ask yourself why you’re delegating that responsibility. Micromanagement stems from one of two problems:
- Trust: Is your employee doing what they say they are?
- Competency: Is the employee capable of doing the job you are asking of them?
If you are micromanaging, ask yourself which one of these is the problem and address it.
Unlock the secrets of successful scaling
As a business owner in the aesthetic industry, navigating the complexities of managing a practice can often feel like spinning plates. You’ve built your business from the ground up, focusing on delivering exceptional patient care and building your brand. However, amidst the hustle, the crucial role of an aesthetic practice manager can sometimes be overlooked.
With our Certified Aesthetic Practice Leader (C-APL) Fastrack Course, your practice manager will gain the tools and knowledge necessary to optimize your practice’s efficiency and foster a thriving workplace culture. Don’t let turnover hinder your success—take the next step towards building a resilient and prosperous practice by enrolling in our program today.
Don’t wait! Register now, or set up a chat with me and my team to talk about your growth goals and decide if this is the right fit for you.
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