Best Practices for Onboarding (or Offboarding) Staff at Your Holistic Practice

Employee onboarding entails all the tasks and procedures that empower a new hire to adjust to your holistic practice environment, their position, and new set of responsibilities. On the flip side, offboarding ties up any loose ends between your holistic practice and the recently departed employee. Whether you’re welcoming a new staff member or saying farewell to a colleague, there are certain measures you should take to onboard—or offboard—members at your holistic practice.

The Importance of Smooth Onboarding and Offboarding Procedures

Employee onboarding practices help set the tone for a new hire at your holistic practice. You’ll want to provide a smooth onboarding experience for new employees so they feel welcomed to your office and can quickly navigate their position and the responsibilities entailed. Establishing a standard onboarding process further demonstrates professionalism at your holistic practice as well as consideration for the new employee who doesn’t know the particularities of your practice.

It’s important to note that onboarding practices should be established in addition to offboarding procedures. Whatever the reason may be—whether it’s due to termination of employment or the colleague is moving to another state or something else—over the course of managing your holistic practice, you’ll have employees leave.

Since it’s an inevitable part of working with people, it’s essential that your practice’s offboarding measures are established and followed. Many of these measures are in place to secure your holistic practice’s patient information and fortify cybersecurity measures, which helps to keep your patients’ personal health information safe. The last thing you’ll want to worry about is whether or not a former employee still has access to your electronic health record system weeks after their last day at your holistic practice.

Best Practices for Onboarding Holistic Practice Staff

Congratulations on growing your holistic practice! When outlining an onboarding program for your holistic practice, consider a few different ideas, including:

Encourage Questions

If they express feeling self-conscious or hesitant to ask for something, then challenge them to ask at least 20 questions by the end of the day. Being steadfast in your openness to questions will help put them at ease and overcome any sense that they might be bothering you too much.

Assign All Relevant Training

Working in an environment where personal health information is stored, managed, and handled means your new hire will need to be HIPAA certified to ensure they know how to properly work with this sensitive information. This secures your patients’ data and keeps your holistic practice in HIPAA compliance, which is crucial in the healthcare industry. Be sure they also are trained in healthcare fraud, waste, and abuse, and cybersecurity best practices that include strong password efforts, etc.

You’ll also want to train them on your holistic practice’s electronic health record system and outline their limitations regarding transferring protected health information on external storage devices, such as thumb drives.

Write and Provide an Employee Handbook

One of the best resources you can provide to a new employee is an employee handbook that features a variety of information and outlines important components of their job. This document will serve as a handy reference for them over the course of their employment at your practice and also functions as a helpful way to discuss in-depth or legal-related information relating to their role.

When putting together an employee handbook, consider the following:

• Your practice’s history, mission, vision and goals
• Your practice’s core values and culture
• Human resources and legal information related to employment
• Your practice’s policies
• Employee benefits

This will ensure your new hire is on the same page as your holistic practice and can further facilitate questions.

Best Practices for Offboarding Staff

Offboarding practices are just as important as onboarding procedures at your holistic practice; a colleague can leave for a number of reasons so it’s crucial your practice is prepared to offboard an employee.

When establishing these practices for offboarding staff, consider the following:

Secure Your Practice’s Data

A survey from 2018 reveals that 72% of departing employees admitted to taking company data within the 90 days before leaving their employer. Obviously, this is especially heinous in the healthcare world that deals with sensitive patient information and other protected health information. That’s why it’s particularly important that you revoke an employee’s access to your electronic health record system immediately upon their termination and consider restricting their access upon their submission of a two-week’s notice.

Routinely Delete and Remove Access for Former Employees

Be sure to remove the former employee from any user accounts, like emails or shared servers, and deactivate their access to programs or software your holistic practice might use. This includes restricting their physical access to your holistic practice, including key cards or updating building access codes. Get in the habit of routinely verifying all personnel with access to various components of your holistic practice because this will allow you to clear out old files, accounts, and delete inactive users from your systems.

Ask for their Feedback (When Appropriate)

Obviously this tip won’t apply to employees who have had to be terminated and therefore are likely to be disgruntled, but in situations where the employee is leaving on amicable terms, consider asking for their feedback. Put together an informal kind of questionnaire to get their experience and any suggestions for improvement regarding the onboarding process, their time working with you, and anything else you feel is relevant.

The offboarding process, like onboarding, should ensure a smooth transition out of the practice for you and your employee.

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