Breaking Up is Hard To Do; Ending the Employment Relationship

Episode Transcript

Auto-generated transcript: Breaking Up is Hard To Do; Ending the Employment Relationship

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber, Wendy Askins, and David Harris. Please talk about the issues that matter to you. You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners.

The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests. So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber, Wendy Askins, and David Harris, talk about the issues that matter to you. Our Prosperident, Howard Howard Howard Howard Howard Howard. Talking about today, breaking up is hard to do, and any relationship business or personal.

So today, that is what we want to give you information about. I'm Amber Weber, Senior Fraud of Dammiter with Prosperident. I'm joined with my co-host CEO of Prosperident, Dave Harris. We want to remind you to remember that today is not a substitute that's up to for your human resource expert. You need to really make sure you know your specific state and your current situation before you make decisions to terminate or let somebody go.

Thank you, Amber, and great to be with you. And I just want also say hello to our community inside of the audience. A lot of the presentation is designed primarily for US clients, but we are going to touch on the Canadian context and a lot of the things we say will be applicable in both places. So things are changing right now.

And the big thing that's changing is this, six months ago what I heard from a lot of you was we're having a tough time finding good staff. Unemploymentist is low and people have lots of options for jobs and sometimes we're really settling as opposed to getting what we want. Right now in the US and Canadian numbers are that different.

The unemployment rate is 14.7%. Six months ago it was more like 4%. So what that means is right now, there are lots of good people looking for jobs. And the implication for you is that if you have some staff where really you settle over there's somebody who you've wanted to get rid of, but you just didn't think you can replace them.

Suddenly you're in the world of choice. That also means something to the people being fired. Six months ago, if you fired somebody, most of them probably said it's not a big deal because I can more or less walk across the street, probably get more money. Now they're going to join that 14% and being fired is going to be a much greater problem.

And we can expect these people to push back. So that means that doing it right and that's what we're going to talk about today, is going to be important. Good news, webinars. We've talked about systems for smart hiring. And today what we want to focus on is systems for smart firing.

So a lot of people think, well, when I'm done, I'm done. I'm ready to terminate this relationship. I can tell that staff member is no longer working out and they can just walk out the door and it's the done. So the key thing here is, really, specifically, you have to have a system. Why?

Well, what can go wrong? Here's an effective example of an employee who was terminated for in-veglement. After this termination had happened, this employee still had control of the practices Facebook page. Obviously, there was some animosity towards the practice. So this employee took it into their own hands

to make a post on Facebook to publicly cause problems with the office. This employee made a post about how the doctor had had chronic substance abuse problems from cocaine and methamphetamines. And his malpractice insurance had expired because of that and the office was forced to close the doors. For other more, the employee went on to say,

if you felt like you had been treated by this doctor, or if he was under the influence, please contact the dental board and file a complaint. And on a final note, this employee also said, if you have any future appointment, we recommend that you cancel the appointment. So this was complete public. We don't have viral everything goes now.

This practice was impacted immensely just because the system hadn't been taken place to make sure that the practice was safeguarded. So none of this was true. This was simply a guide to getting fired and the mad and deciding, I'm gonna wreck my boss's practice. And as Amber says, the opportunity was left there

because the practice didn't properly lock down when they fired him. All right. So another example is staff members who become personally involved with you. Here's a great example. This doctor had a staff member that has been sick. And the doctor offered to drive them to the local pharmacy to help the staff member out.

After the staff member was let go, obviously the staff member made many claims that there was discrimination that had happened. The doctor had racial discrimination and had made sexual advances towards the staff member. And when the staff member refused, that is why they were terminated. The key here is there was no witness

and the doctor had taken gotten into a personal relationship and spent personal time with his patient one-on-one. Sorry, with the staff member one-on-one with no protections for them, it was all here say. But the staff member was able to make this claim. We don't know what really happened here. There are only two people in the planet who know why I'm. But the mistake that was made was that

Dr. Kim put himself in a position where this kind of allegation could be made. And that just didn't need to happen. And we'll talk more specifically about that in a minute. The main thing is we talked about my heart hiring. And why you need to have that pre-screen process in place. The same goes. After that employee has entered your door, it's still a system.

Your human resource system goes on forever. So you need to make sure you have those building blocks in place. Whether it's a good experience or not. So once you think, you need to make sure you have a very detailed deployment manual, detailed job description, secure personnel file, regular honest performance reviews, and write-ups. Otherwise, no-one is progressive discipline. The reason is that key is when you go to make a relationship, you have that

foundation built with your staff and your other team members that this is part of the standard of your office that you have those building blocks. And when you go for that final breaking up, every set in place, it allows you to do it in a structured, systemic way. Why do people get fired? They really get fired for two reasons. And the first one is performance based. So this is an employee who's not performing the way that they're shared.

And when Amber mentioned progressive discipline, what she's really talking about is when people fail to do things that they're supposed to do, or they do things that they're not supposed to do, that they get counseled, that it gets documented. And the documentation is really important, and that the consequences of transgressing again get made clear. So let's talk about the employee who keeps showing up late. The first time they show up late, probably they just get a verbal counseling from you. The second time it happens, it should be a written warning.

The third time, another written warning, and the written warning says, I know if you do it again, we will terminate you. And the next time they're late, they're fired. That's what we're talking about by progressive discipline. So when we're firing employees or performance issues, it's really important that they know that they're not performing. And that they realize that there will be consequences. Having said that, we never want somebody to know an advance when they're going to be fired.

In other words, I shouldn't call somebody on Tuesday and say, can you please come in Thursday after work because I'm going to fire you? When people do that, you'll see, you'll see what can happen over the next couple of slides, but they may do what we call anticipatory actions. They're expecting to be fired and you can do some things through getting your way. And then we have people who are fired for what's called just costs. And just cause in a legal sense is really narrowly defined, and I'm giving you the three most common answers.

Just honesty and then the three eyes which are in some orientation and intoxication. These are all things where we can fire somebody in either country immediately with no requirement to give them any kind of worry. So normally when we fire people, it's one of these two categories. And we need to, in the case of the performance base, we need to understand that you can't just call somebody in one day and say, you know, for the last three years you've been screwing up. And you're fired. They really need to have awareness.

And a lot of the rotten things that people do to you if they're fired happen when they're fired and it comes as a surprise to me. And the final invocation here is don't ever fire anybody when you're in, because you will make mistakes. If somebody, for example, shows up intoxicating in your workplace, you don't have to fire them. Now what you have to do now is separate them from the situation. So you send them home, preferably not behind the wheel of their car. And you tell them they're suspended. And then that gives you the time to work out the appropriate steps to actually let somebody go.

So we'll, we'll talk about those, those steps and you'll see how much preparation is required. You really let somebody go properly. But you can always suspend somebody. You don't, you don't need to fire anybody right now. After why we have to have these systems and why you need to document, have that progressive discipline. Even with those systems in place, we need to think about who's developing a relationship with the staff members and every staff member, whether they know they're not performing their job well, or they've done something that they should not have done.

We'll still still shock anger, denial, and greed. And so with each stage of this, every employee is going to react differently. So we want you to be prepared that you will deal with this every time you have to break up with an employee. You know, they'll have shock because they didn't think it was coming. Even if you have documented everything, they're still going to be anger because it happened. And they're going to have some denial that it occurred and they didn't think it was going to. And then the final one is greed. They're obviously going to be sad.

You know, they've had a business relationship. They've been at the practice. They felt like this was their home away from home. So be prepared when you're ready to have that final conversation with those employees. These are the four things you're going to deal with, even with those building blocks in place.

So in the United States, 49 states have what's called employment at Will. And if you take this very literally, what it means is that you can fire somebody at any time for any reason or in fact for no reason. And in the other state, which is Montana and in Canada, the concept of employment at Will does not exist. However, what I'm going to suggest to you and it'll probably surprise a lot of people is that really it doesn't exist in those 49 states.

This is something that hurts you many dentists rely on when they want to fire somebody and it often gets them in trouble. And here's why employment at Will is not absolute. There are a lot of exceptions to being able to terminate somebody for no reason or for no good reason. And if I'm an employee and I think I'm about to be fired right just got fired. What I'm going to do very quickly is start looking at those exceptions and trying to see if there's one of them that I can finish because if I do then you can't fire. So what are the exceptions?

The first one's I call structure based exceptions.

If you have a written employment class. I'll track with somebody in a lot of cases that will super-seed that the general principle that employees are in plays it well. So if you have a contract with somebody, and if they're required, for example, and give you a certain notice period, or if there's a term to get a contract, so it's a contract for one year,

then that isn't longer and employee at well.

You can't, if there are what are called public policy exceptions. So if somebody has made a workers' company, or if they're pregnant, public policy says that you can't terminate them at well anymore. The one that hooks a lot of dentists is what's called an implied contract. What that means is you tell somebody, you've got a job for life here,

or my plan is to retire when you retire, or something like that, when you give people, some it can even be verbal, some verbal indication that they have a long-term position with you, that's not employment at well anymore.

There's a good faith exception. And the best example I can give you of this is let's say that you've agreed with your office manager that if certain performance goals are met, that they're gonna get a bonus at the end of the year. And then you fire them on December 15th. And if you hadn't fired them, they would get the bonus. That's the case where a court's gonna see pretty quickly

that you didn't act in good faith. Also if you have an employee manual or a handbook, you need to follow whatever it says about termination. So those are good faith exceptions. And the final one is retaliation. So if somebody has made a complaint about you, to, for example, the state board or the occupational health and safety administration,

then at that point you can't fire it because doing so would constitute retaliation. So when we talk about not letting people see that the acts is about to fall on them are not giving them a specific timing. This is why. If I think today on Wednesday that I'm gonna be fired on Friday,

I'll make a complaint to OSHA. And especially right now with what's going on with COVID, OSHA's tied up for months and months and months. So it's gonna be a long time until they can actually deal with my complaint. And during that time, you can't fire me. If you fire somebody and they complained to OSHA today after, the complaint still has to be dealt with

but you're not firing a whistleboard. So that's a much better position. And if none of these said, the other place people go is they ask whether they were discriminated against because you even in an employment at will situation, you cannot fire somebody on a discriminatory basis. Here's the key.

Every employee who gets fired thinks they've been discriminating against. Why? Because you had 12 other employees who didn't get fired and they did. People aren't necessarily terribly objective about their own performance. And when we look at what are called the protected classes. So these are some of the reasons why you cannot discriminate

against somebody. And these apply to hiring. They also apply to firing. You can see in the category, well, a lot of the people you fire are going to be over age 40. So immediately they'll believe they have an argument that they were fired as a result of age. You can't fire somebody because of the disability

and the flavor of the month and disabilities as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The thing that makes PTSD convenient for an employee to claim is that you can't really measure it. In other words, if I wanted to get a diagnosis for PTSD, I go see my doctor. I've read on the internet what the manifestations of PTSD are in the doctor asked me to have trouble sleeping at nightness. Are you irritable? Yes, you know.

I just give all the right answers and I'll walk away with a PTSD diagnosis.

If you fire on Nail employee, they're certainly going to feel that they were single at because of their gender, because most administrative staff and dental practices are female. If you fire a female, they might also feel that they're being discriminated against. The other thing that your employees have,

if you fire them is they have the luxury of seeing who you replace them with. So you fire a male employee and you end up just by an offense hiring a female. If the male may think, well, it was gender based. Amherst got a really good example of what can happen when you do this. Yes, and so this is one of those examples

if you don't write it down and have a structured system, if you do it the wrong way, we can all fall into some type of protected class. So this is a situation where a practice of purchase from a new owner. And within the first two months of only the practice, he fired eight out of nine dental hygienists.

And those were over the age of 40. So they obviously fell in that second class. On the other side of his coin, from August 2016 to February 2018, he replaced those hygienists with 14 employees. 13 of them were all under the age of 40. So with that knowledge of what had happened, obviously there was some issues

because there was no documentation, no progressive discipline. And these eight hygienists had no reason or prior notice of why they were terminated. So this makes us really realize we have to really prepare if you are in a situation and you want to terminate an employee, preparation is the key.

You have to make sure you have everything lined out and that these employees have been documented and they are aware and have signed off on that documentation. What the issues are with their performance at their job? So again here, we don't know what really happened. We don't know whether these hygienists

who were fired were failing to be performing starting eight or what. But when you look at the optics of this, it just screams discrimination. So I'll say what I said before, if I'm fired in an employment at Will environment, what I start doing is looking back or being saying, okay, what argument can I make

for the possibility that employment at Will doesn't apply and certainly the seven hundred or the eight of nine hygienists who were let go in the situation have a really good argument that they were ages and were victims. of age discrimination. Exactly, David. So that's why we want to make sure that you and your team

have a great communication on what is expected of them and how they are completing that task. So when you get to that moment and you've completed these steps, you want to make sure you're ready to terminate. This does take some preparation. One of the key things is we are a dental family, when we work together with each other.

But Elizabeth definitely will think some ships here. So you want to make sure other staff members are not aware of that person not performing their job. And where is going to get around? You want to make sure you have it in writing. You have a termination letter that you're going to give this staff member that they will understand the reasons why.

And as they mentioned earlier, always consider suspension for foreign determination. This allows you to continue a constructive relationship with that employee and document what the issues are and have a follow-up. The main thing is main thing is dignity, do it at the end of the day and not before the weekend. This also helps protect your practice also

to make sure that they cannot go out and cause the issues that we talked about earlier that they have access to your Facebook or other things. Make sure you have your timing is essential when you're going to complete the termination conversation of your employee. On top of having your paperwork ready, you need to have that final payment ready for that employee.

So that when you're done with the conversation, everything is ready and you can hand that to them. And of course, I'm out of the practice to get their personal things and make sure that there is someone there to yourself and another witness doing this conversation and that they're not left alone throughout the practice to get their stuff up even though it's at the end of the day. And here's another key important thing

to take away from today. If you have started treatment on the staff member of any kind, make sure you have a plan in place to complete any treatment that's in progress for that employee or you've got a plan in place to refer it out and it will be completed for that employee, per your agreement in your office policy. So last thing you need is an employee claiming

that you did not want to finish any dental work that you had started completing on them. The maintain dignity parties important here. We, what we really want to avoid with somebody is making them do the what I call a walk of shame. And what that means is the employee who has to be going to clean out their desk in front of three other cohorts. And regardless of what they've done to you,

doing that to them is kind of an extra punishment that just does not be dappened. And when employees retaliate in some cases, it's because the employer does something like that. Speaking of retaliation, we need to think about blocking down the practice. And there are a lot of facets that is, I'm going to talk about some Amber mentioned initially

that we have a termination checklist as it belongs material for today. So at 430 Eastern time, you'll get an email and there's a link there where you can click and double the termination checklist. And it's much more detail, but I'll give you some idea, sir. The first thing we've got to do is stop somebody from having access to the computer system from a website.

And sometimes if your IT people are around, I help you where this can't be set up in advance, what you need to do as stupid as it sounds, is go to the wall and unplug your computer or from your network. So that there's no outside connection anymore.

The other thing we want to do ideally immediately before the termination is make sure that there's no such thing as remote access offer that will allow them to fully get access to your network. This stuff used to be complicated to install, but it's now, you know, some of the names you've probably heard like, Team Viewer or go to my PC or instant network,

there are lots of software that somebody can install without even knowing about it, that will give them outside access. So your IT people need to have a look for that. Obviously we need to change passwords to everything. PMS here means practice management software.

This is something that really needs to be planned in advance and not something we can tackle at the time of permutation. What drives me nuts is when I see practices using a non-domain email address. So if you have a website, you have a domain. If you're using, for example, an email address looked the one that's shown here.

That's not a real email address. I just made it up. But if somebody using an email address like that for patient stuff, the problem is that when you fire them, you can't easily get control of that email address. In other words, that kind of belongs to them to the way that Gmail used the world. So assuming that you have a domain for yourself,

all of the email addresses that are used to correspond with patients or referring doctors, or specialists or whatever, need to be from that domain because then you have control over them and your IT people can change the passwords. With this one, there's no way, if the employee is the only person who has the password to this, there's no way you can get it back.

So you all have patients continuing to email that person and you just can't stop it. A lot of times there's an exit interview that happens. And some important things there. I'll mention that the people in the background are the advisors. You can see the dollar amounts that they took. So if anybody who's on the screen wants a lot

like one of your staff members, calling it. If you have an exit interview, the first thing is it's good to have a witness. Preferably not a staff member. You know, it might be your spouse. It might be somebody outside, but some things will get said in this meeting and it's good to have somebody else who's there with you.

In an exit interview, normally your words are pretty scripted. And if we help somebody do this, a lot of times we will more or less write out the words that they use. And staying on the script just stops you from saying something that will get you into trouble and there's lots of potential for that. If you're going to do this face to face,

what are your objectives? Are you simply telling somebody that their job has ended or are you confronting them about something that they've done wrong? And as I think most of you know, our company prosperity investigates and settlements. A lot of times with us, this exit. their abuse is done with somebody who's

still in money from the practice. And then in that case, ideally we'd like them to do a few things. We'd like them to admit to see I. And we'd probably like them to fill in some of the blanks about how they do it. So we're going in with very definite objectives. The way that you get somebody to make a confession or to say a lot more than they plan is along these lines.

You say, and let's use an investment as an example. I'm not asking you if you stole the money. I know you did. What I want to know is why you did it. And when you put it in those terms, that will put a lot of employees off balance a little bit. I mean, a lot of them are prepared to deny. But when you say to them, I know you did this.

Tell me why you did it. A lot of them will start spelling the beans and really end up saying a lot more than they really plan to. If an employee does make a confession to you, what you really want them to do next is put it in right. And this is an area where you probably need some guidance. And obviously it needs to happen in advance.

In other words, when you're preparing for the termination interview, you need to consider the possibility that the employee wants to make a written confession. If you're in that situation and you're a client, we have some guidelines that we give you that kind of talk you through how to do this. But a written confession is much, much, much, much better than a verbal one,

because you can get some things in it that are a little bit tough to get in a verbal confession. For example, one of the things that we want people to say is I knew that what I was doing was wrong. And that makes their confession much more effective. If somebody says that verbally, it kind of comes down to what witnesses remember. But if they make it right, it's there.

After somebody's been terminated, there are some really basic rules. The first one is you do not leave them alone. At all in the practice.

If they want to go to the restroom, as awkward as it sounds, you either need somebody in their with them or right outside the door. When they're packing up their stuff, you need to be watching them. And you need to take them right out to the front door where the locks are gonna be changed. It's really important that they not touch

the phone or the computer system. If they say that they have personal files on the computer system, you tell them that you will have the IT people take them off and put them on a flash drive and send it to them. But there's no way they touch your computer system once they're told they're done.

This is important. We need to make sure they have a safe way home. As Amber mentioned, people who are terminated go through a lot of emotions. And we want to make sure before they get behind the wheel of their car, they really feel okay to drive. And I suggest asking them this a couple of times.

It's not because you'll get sued for letting them drive home. That's not why we're doing this. We just simply do not want them to get into a car unfit to drive and harm them to sellers or somebody else. So we're doing this part because it's you may. If they are not okay to drive home, pay for it to actually get an Uber under no circumstance you're getting your car and drive them

and Amber showed an example of the kind of thing that can go wrong when that happens.

Lots and lots of things to do in the lockdown and we'll talk about those or we'll give you the termination checklist to help you understand what to do there. The biggest one is change the box. Everybody assumes that if they get a staff members key back that the staff member has no access. Well, the very best material on the planet for duplicating keys is in every one of your practices.

Evalgin it can a lot all by us, but don't you think it can handle a key? So giving keys back doesn't do it. You need to change the locks and remove that employee's alarm code. Hopefully in your alarm system everybody has their own individual code and you can just cancel one. If you're doing that really bad thing called the Unicode where there's one alarm code and everybody has it,

you need to get rid of that code and give everybody else a new code. Unicode's are a really bad idea on all of the levels. So if you're looking for takeaways here, one is if you have one single alarm code for everybody it's time to get that fixed and get everybody their own code. All the steps that you have to take to get break up with that employee that you still

is not as good fit for your practice. But we have to remember not just about that one employee, right? Now we have to deal with the staff members and you have to remember they have a relationship with each other. A lot of these staff members become very close and consider them their dental family. So we talked about what to expect that shock, anger, denial, and grief.

So these employees are going to feel that on some level. So the main thing is what are you going to tell your staff? You want to be very clear in some sight and make sure again, kind of like the example we gave of that doctor becoming personally involved and writing his staff members to the pharmacy. You want to make sure that you don't let the emotions get the best of you and really go into detail

of all the issues you had with that staff members. So other things you want to make sure you provide the duties that that staff member was responsible for, evenly among the team, so that they're clear that even though that person is no longer with us, we still have to make sure things get done. And you want to also convey the message that we're looking for of a placement

and we'll go through our process to find the proper fit. Like I said, many of these staff members have personal relationships. So when you let that staff members go, like for instance, towards the weekend, you're going to have a lot of communication with those other staff members. And they may come back in that Monday

and have a different change in attitude or further and other side of the story. So that's one of the reasons we recommend you do not fire on the weekend. But you're going to hear a lot of shock anger and disbelief from team members who are still with your staff. So you even make sure you have a clear, concise message

that you're going to tell your staff on why that person is no longer with you and don't go too deep to in-depth into the details. That was the moment I always remember that if you fire as soon as you're staff, don't see her as the person who stole from you or whatever, they see her as the person who make cookies and never forget anybody's birthday.

So as Amber says, there are relationships with each other as different than there relationship with you and we need to be mindful of that. Let's talk about references. And I'm giving references and I was given a webinar yesterday and the webinar was said to me, you know, we were talking about this exact topic about fire and people and the webinar was said to me yesterday and of course you're not allowed to say anything bad about somebody in a job reference. And I still don't know that's actually not how it works.

The send that you can commit if you do transgress is called defamation and defamation takes two forms if it's written, it's called libel and if it's spoken, it's called slyner. But let's look at what has to happen for you to commit defamation and all of these requirements apply and others you must do all of these to defame somebody. The first thing is you must make a statement that is false. The second thing is that that statement must be made to a third party. In other words if I if I privately tell an employee look you're the stupidest employee I ever had, you know my my dog is smarter than you are. I'm not sure that's a that's that's a good way to manage your employees. But if that statement is made to the employee and private,

that's not defamation. Defamation requires you to tell a third party something. It also requires that you knew or you should have known that the statement was false. And 20 states and Canadian provinces give what's called qualified privilege. In other words they they specifically create a pathway where a former employer can give a reference to a current employer and as long as it's not malicious they're not able to be sued by that. So if you're in one of those 20 states and I'm not going to list them here or if you're in Canada you you are specifically allowed to be candid with a perspective employer. And the final requirement for defamation is that the person you defamed must have suffered harm from this. So they didn't get a job that they otherwise would have gotten for example.

So if if I just tell you today that you know a certain employee is a moron but you're not in a position higher than anyway that's on defamation. There has to be harm from it. So in order for somebody to advance the defamation claim they got to get all these. And the first thing that comes across from that is that the truth will set you free. So if what you say is true it can't be defamation. If what you say is about the future it can't be defamation. It requires a statement that is false that you know as false. So just to keep you very clear of getting into trouble you can see the bar set pretty high there but just to keep you clear here's what I suggest you do. If you're giving a negative reference about somebody what you say is I'm going to confirm their dates of employment

and I'm only going to answer one other question and that question is would you be higher this person? So if somebody's calling me for a reference and and they hear this from me what they're going to say next is okay David I'll play your game. Would you be higher to this person and my answer will be along the lines of not in a hundred million years. And if you hear that from a former employer and you hire that person anyway like you deserve whatever's going to happen you next. The good thing about this statement is that it's a statement about what I plan to do in the future. So that's not something I do a true or false test. I mean I'm simply saying I have no plans to higher to this person you know and in fact even if they were the last dental assistant on the planet I still wouldn't

hire them I I'd work with two hands instead of four you know if if you say that nobody can see you for that you've simply said what you plan to do in the future. The other thing to be aware of is that it's very common for an employee who's fired to get one of their friends to call you and pretend to be getting a job reference. And what they want to find out is what you're going to say.

So the best practice as far as I'm concerned is if somebody calls you for a job reference on a foreign employee whether they were a good or a bad employee what I would say is actually I'm just about to check a hygiene patient. Can I call you back and have an hour and take down their name and what the practice is. And then of course they'll give you the phone number don't call that number. Let let Google find the office number for you and call that and get put through and then give the reference and then you know who you're speaking to. I mean when somebody gives you a phone number you could be calling really anywhere. So if somebody says they worked for Dr. Martin Smith and pure Illinois go find that practice online call that number ask to speak with

Dr. Smith and you know you've got the right person and that will shut down some of these games.

I suspect we've got a lot of questions for today so we're going to we're been all out some time. I do want to mention three I'm going to give a shout out here specifically to three companies that we've worked with in the past and these all specialize in HR for dentists and they all cover all 50 states and they're called Ben Erickson who are in Oregon. Seater solutions in Arizona and HR for health and California all really good companies and and if you have a dental look if you're a practice owner in my mind HR is a very specialized area there's a lot of state specific stuff and it's a really good idea to work with one of these groups. That's us and if you want to reach us the email addresses are there also the phone number of the website and Amber must

you can unless you have anything else you want to add now why don't we tackle some of those questions. Yeah I think you know we went over some great topics and like I said you want to have a system and a structure just because you have a pre-screening process does not mean that it's once they're sign on the dotted line and there a member of your dental team that it's a done deal we have to make sure we document and they're all we have those performance reviews. So I think very about this. Yeah please. Great what should your employee manual say regarding termination? Your manual should reinforce. The concept that it's employment at will,

if you are in one of the 49 states where you can do that.

It shouldn't take away from that. And a lot of the HR people say, also that the employee manual should specifically state that it does not form part of your employee contract. Okay, right. We did cover this, but let's go ahead and answer this question. Is there an age where you are age protected?

You fire someone and hire someone younger? Absolutely. And the answer varies a little bit based on where you live. So in the United States, the federal law says that age discrimination happens starts at age 40. In Canada, typically, the rule is that you cannot age

discriminate when somebody is between the ages of 18 and 65. So this has a lot of implications. Firing is definitely one of them. Another one is when you hire, one of the things you can't ask somebody is how old are you? Or what year were you born? Or what year do you graduate from high school? Because any of those things will point you towards a question

that could be discriminatory. The way you have to ask a question in Canada, you have to say are you between the ages of 18 and 65.

And in the U.S., it's phrased a little bit differently, but you can't sort of try to get somebody's age when you're hiring them through the back door. Once you hire somebody, you know their age, because that's some of the information that you normally have to gather on an employee. So then you have to be thinking, when you, sorry, there was something I should have said earlier

and I'll say it now. When we talk about employment at will and those exceptions, what I really meant to say there was this,

you need when you fire somebody, whether you're in an employment at will environment or not, you need a reason. Let's just accept that you need a reason to fire someone. And if you don't have that reason, then you fire somebody, then people are looking for the exceptions. So that's where the things that Amber said about progressive discipline, having those building blocks is really important.

If you don't have those, you know, for example, if you're trying to fire somebody on a performance-based reason, which is another way of saying they're not doing their job, then what you need is a job description, that says, here's what their job is. What we rely on way too much in the industry is the concept that everybody knows.

So everybody understands that the duties of a receptionist, including in-click collecting money from patients and insurance companies. But if you don't have a job description, and you're trying to fire somebody because they're not doing their job, the problem you can have is you can't objectively establish what their job is.

So job descriptions, performance ofraisals, another one where people run into trouble is they don't have any performance ofraisal system, or even worse, they give everybody glowing appraisals. So you say in three consecutive appraisals, that somebody's a great employee, and then you fire them. That doesn't line up, and that's where somebody's going to say,

I was discriminated against because I had three greater appraisals and suddenly they fired it. So we, let's just accept that we need to fire somebody for a reason. Even if you are in an employment at Will State, and you've been told by somebody, no, you don't need any reason. Everybody whose fire is gonna be able to make an argument that they fit into one of those exceptions.

So let's just accept that we need a reason. And we need to design our HR system in a way that gather that reason. Sorry, Amber, that was a long answer to a short question. That was perfect. And one thing I'd like to add to that is how we talked about those emotions that will happen with determination, that shock, anger, denial,

all of those. So if there is no reason, you've given it some employee, you've done such a great job and great reviews, you know, it's like I'm plugging the Christmas tree, you know, on Christmas being, nobody prepared for that. Good example. You know, talking about that group that fired the A to I genus or the age of 40.

Let's assume that they had some good reason other than that, you know, they wanted to trade them in on newer models. Right. You know, there are a lot of ways you can handle this. For example, if they're not meeting performance goals, then you do the progress and discipline.

If you really have no other way to do it, what you would do is give them a fair amount of notice. And say, look, your job's gonna end in six months. And, you know, if you happen to be in a position where you find a different job between now, then you might want to do it. And put a little more thought into it as opposed to hanging your hat on employment at low, because that's gonna get you in trouble virtually every time.

Exactly. Yeah, like we've talked about, at will is not a blank check, right? Yeah, it is not a blank check. And people rely on it because they're too lazy or they're uninformed about how to set up a proper termination. And the real takeaway from today is, if you're in an employment at will place, pretend you're not. Just, that's simple.

All right. I, you're the, is there a probation period after hiring?

That's, that's very state-specific. And, and I'm, I'm reluctant to answer that, because I, I think I'll, I'll, I'll pick up something that doesn't apply and where you live. A lot of jurisdictions allow the provision for probationary period, but normally you have to set it up. So that's in, that's in your employee manual or your, your terms of employment that,

some amount of, some amount of time this probation. Where, where I need three months is kind of a lot of automatically considered probation, but that's not universal. Here's a great question. Can you call the new employer and let them know the employee was terminated for cause? That's a really bad idea. The, I, I mentioned earlier that there's this,

privilege. In other words, that there is the permission for a foreign employer to be candid with a current employer. But a lot of places limit that privilege to when it's specifically requested by the new employer. In other words, if the new employer calls you and ask you for a reference, you're allowed to be candid. If you call them that privilege may not apply. And now you're at least in the in the zone where it could be to be candid. So my suggestion would be if you know, you really want to tell the the new employer something. You just phone them and say, I see

songs I was working for you. I don't remember you ever calling me and asking for a job reference. You know, you might want to. And then hang out. I'm probably what'll have in a minute and a half later is the phone ring. It'll be the former. It'll be the new employer. Then your response will be well, since you asked. Here it is. But no, I do not encourage people to initiate that call. Here's another great question. Can you give somebody a written termination in an envelope, rather than having a face to face? So have your written termination in your final pay and employment record and

to hand it to them, rather than having a face to face? In a legal sense, there's nothing that requires you to have a termination meeting with somebody. And there's no there's no requirement for that in your own. Having said that, it may be a good idea. And you know, I understand that this is not a fun meeting for either Prairie and, you know, I get why if I were a dentist, I wouldn't avoid it. There are probably a couple of reasons why you should have that ex-emine. The first is if the employee wants to vent about whatever, they get a chance to do that. And it may be a lot less destructive to

let them blow off their steam to you than feel the need to complain your state board for example. The second is that in a lot of cases, certainly where we're involved, when you're terminating, you're trying to learn something. And you lose the chance to have the employee tell you, yeah, you know, this is how I still will your money, which surprisingly a lot of them will. So if you, if you have information objectives, of course you're never going to achieve them if you do it in termination. So that's a case where I'm really talking to somebody's important. My suggestion would be you should do that where possible. And

show leadership, you know, have the guts to meet somebody face to face and say, you know, I'm sorry you're job's ending, but here's why. And we want them to be clear on the reasons. You know, again, it's when people perceive an absence of reasons that they're looking to attack employment at well. So we want, when somebody's terminated, we want them to know why. Not distracted. Lead not, not hurtfully, but we want them to know why they don't have a job anymore. Right. Here's another great question. Why did you recommend not to terminate before the weekend? That's one of those humane things. If you, if you

terminate somebody on a Tuesday, what they do Wednesday morning is they get up, they polish up the resume and they start looking for work. If you terminate somebody on a Thursday and your practice is an open Friday, what they do is they go home and drink. And the suicide rate for people who are terminated on a weekend at the end of a work week is noticeably higher than the people who are terminated at the beginning of a week. And those of you who know me have probably heard me say this, I don't care what the employees do. We don't want them to harm themselves and we don't want

that on our conscience. So we try to do this in a way that will put them into constructive activity next because that's the best thing for everybody. I mean, an employee who is only working two days a week for a lot of the network or reduction of costs. What's the best way to do that? I'd ask that person to just re ask their question and give where they live. That one has some geographic components and I just want to make sure that I understand where they're coming from. Actually, Amber on second thought, the person who asked that question, if you could please ask it privately,

send the question to my email. We'll tackle it there. I think this one's going to get a little bit situation specific and maybe not on that we want to do with the group. Let me tackle one. There's a question that says, can you fire someone due to financial difficulty? What I'm not sure from that question and this one I would like to re ask. I'm not sure if that's your financial difficulty or the employees. So if the person who asked that question can re ask it just be specific as to who's financial difficulty they're asking about that one would make it easier. Okay. Looking for another thing. I see one here. I'd love to take

Amber. It says, can you give an example of the insegordination allowing a media examination? Yes, I can. And yes, this has really happened. There was an employee once who took a dump on the doctor's desk. I'm not kidding. Yes, that is an insegordination for a media termination. As I said though, about most of the things that should get people fired immediately, don't do it. Send them home, suspend them and take the time to do the lockdown things you need to do and get it organized. And also let yourself cool off. We've all of us who are parents have heard this at one point. People say, don't discipline your kids when you're angry. And I'll say exactly

the same thing. Don't fire your employees when you're angry because you will say more than you should or you will fail to follow some steps that you should. So when somebody does something that should get them immediately fired, send them home. You are suspended until further notice. And just stop stop. And then you know, get the HR advice you need, get the preparation done that you need and then fire it. So the financial difficulty was clarified. It says due to the practice. financial difficulty.

Yeah, absolutely you can't. I mean, if you can't pay your staff, you can't pay your staff. Just be clear to that employee that that's the reason. Certainly if this is a current question that it probably is related to COVID. I mean, in both countries there are types of employment support available to people who lose their job for that reason. So I encourage them to get the government support and assuming that this employee is a good performer. In other words, assuming that this is not a disguise way of dealing with corporate performance, I mean, tell them, you've been a good employee.

I really hate to do this. I'll be happy to give you a good reference. And even take it further. I mean, if you know of another practice that might be able to use them, then say, look, you know, someone's so down the road is, I know it was looking for a high genus. Let me call him and explain that we don't have a place for you anymore, but he might want to talk to you. Great. What we probably shouldn't do here is the avoidance thing where it's really not a good employee.

And we're just latching on to the financial issue is a convenient way to deal with the problem. If you're in that place and the employee doesn't have any idea that there is a standard performer. You've kind of, you've, you've not done the things that you should have done in HR terms.

Yeah. Definitely. Right. So here's another great question. What happens if the person that you are turnin' a meeting takes what you said in a meeting? After you let them go and turn to create a situation where they are now saying you were violent, aggressive, or discriminative. But when that was not the case, this is, is this where you feel it would be better and safer to just ask a letter across the table? I think there always should be the termination letter. You know, that's a permanent record.

And the other thing that, that I'll remind you of is that normally when you do that exit interview, you should have a third person in the room with you. And that's really to refute the allegation that you became violent or whatever. As long as we have a third person there who's able to give their own independent version of events, then that shouldn't happen. So, you know, it could be your spouse. It could be another employee. I mean, careful about a subordinate. So if, you know, if you're terminating every section, your office manager could be the third party. If you're terminating the office manager, I'm a little uncomfortable doing it in front of somebody who used to be there, supportant like a receptionist.

You know, if you are terminating your office manager, the other option is somebody like your accountants. You know, maybe a friend. I mean, clearly this person's not going to be objective, but the court system tends to believe people who justifi under oath and have no, have nothing in particular at stake. Here's the interesting one day. My employee is on maternity leave for three months already. She may not want to come back to work as she promised because of the COVID virus. Can I terminate her? Probably that's one of those cases where I talked to one of those HR people that I mentioned.

We have to be really careful with with people who are pregnant because that's one of those protected discrimination classes. So I think the way I would handle it and there's probably a better answer, but the way I would handle it is I would say to that person, you know, there's a job here for you if you want it. What you have to tell me is if you want it or not. And let them say, no, I don't want to come in because of COVID. Okay, that's why I know I accept your resignation and at that point it really is a resignation. Rather than say, you know, I'm terminating you because there's some possibility you may not want to come back in that sort of looks preemptive. I don't remember that person, I'd be screaming that I was discriminating against because, you know, I just had a child or something. I want about terminating over the phone with a phone call versus.

And writing people grow some courage, okay, have be prepared to meet this person face to face and say I'm I'm sorry, but for various reasons we don't need you anymore. You've got into the business of owning a dental practice in my mind, that's something that came with it. Now, if that can't happen, then there are lots of reasons why it can't happen. Where I live, which is Nova Scotia, Canada, we're still locked down and we're probably going to be for another month. So there is no face to face meeting here because you're really not allowed to do it. And that's a case where the termination might end up happening by phone or maybe by Zoom

or something. But it's not because you're scared to do it, it's because it just structurally can't help. You are always better meeting that person face to face and having the conversation with them and doing it in a way that is the least hurtful possible. And telling them, you know, here's why you don't have a job anymore. The benefit to you of doing that is that they're furless likely to retaliate if you do that.

And if they get a letter in the mail from you or you do it by phone or, um, the way I really hate to see termination is by text message. And yes, people have done it. Actually, my son, who's a high school senior, broke up with his first girlfriend by text message. And we had a long conversation with him after that. He won't do that again. He texted her to break up and it's just a really bad idea.

So this person has worked for you, you know, you've, for some period of time and you've, you've brought them into your special place, your practice. Please have the courage to meet them and tell them that, um, there's no place for them in your practicing. Yep. Okay, here, here's a possible question that I think a lot of practices are going to see in the future. Uh, one of them, uh, staff member leads, uh, because of the virus.

And then we get the PPP loan and we put them back on payroll and they've informed us they do not want to return and continue to collect their benefits. How would you recommend we do an exit interview? My, I would ask them very clearly. You know, are you intending to come back or not? And if they say not, then that's a resignation, that's not a termination. You've been totally willing to give them their job back. In fact, you really want them to come back and you should say that.

You know, if somebody feels unsafe and let's face it, there are a lot of your staff right now who are terrified of the fact that they might catch COVID and they might pass it on to, you know, their, their senior citizen, mom who lives with them or whatever. You know, that's a totally valid feeling. I know it interferes like hell with your business. But if somebody's in that position, then we just need to let them resign and make it clear that it's a resignation and not a termination. And, you know, this whole theme today has been dealing with people who really don't want to or don't think they should be fired.

When somebody doesn't want to work for you, you know, they can't, at that point, a ledge discrimination. I mean, you ask them, do you or do you not want your job back? And they said, no, there's no, it doesn't matter whether they're pregnant and, you know, meet four other categories of protected class employees, they resign. So if somebody wants to resign, let's, all we need to do is make it clear that that's a resignation. Okay. Hey, what are your recommendations? If you do have someone bad-mouthing you on social media, such as our example.

All right. And we, we might ask a little bit of clarification as to whether that's bad-mouthing you while they're working for you or bad-mouthing you after termination. And maybe, maybe the best way to answer that is both ways. One of the things that I hope is in your employee manual is a policy about what people can and cannot say about the practice in social media. In other words, there should be a prohibition against saying something negative. So if somebody does that while they're working for you, assuming that you set the groundwork properly, that's a very good ground for termination. If it happens after the fact, that's a little bit tougher to control.

And I'm really not sure how, how you're going to stop that. Certainly if you aren't giving somebody some kind of severance payment, it's very common to ask them to sign an agreement that your lawyer prepares that contains another thing, so it's called a non-disparagement class. So if you're giving somebody a payment of whatever, two months of pay or something, then it's quite reasonable to ask for some things in return. So if that's the case, you want their agreement that they can't do it. If you don't have that agreement, there's just really not much you can do. I mean, if they are defaming you, here are the defamation criteria. I mean, employees can defame you too. If they have, you're quite welcome to sue them. What you have to think about though before you sue somebody is if I win, they'll be able to collect.

And if the answer to that is no, then assuming doesn't serve a lot of purpose. Was this defamation? Absolutely it was. He made a false statement. He knew it was false. And I'm very sure that this harmed Dr. William Downey. However, if Shannon Martin is the guy with the picture on the screen, you know, if he's kind of living hand-of-mouth And he's sue him for a million dollars and you win, you can't collect. So what that did to you was it cost you the amount of attorney fees that it took to sue him. So I'm not sure that assuming Shannon Martin would have called much.

But if somebody is disparaging you and it is false, then it probably meets the criteria for defamation. What if an employee has done wrong and realize that it does not come in for the face-to-face meeting? You can't make them come in. You really have no basis to command them to appear in front of you. And if they don't want to come, they don't want to come. My real point is I know that a lot of the audience would love to find some excuse not to have that face-to-face meeting. If it doesn't happen, that should be because they choose for it not to happen. That's really the message. You need to be prepared to do that.

To me that's just a basic part of the leadership that comes with the leadership requirement that comes with owning a practice. Here's another question that relates to that. If you have attempted to reach an employee by phone text or email and they haven't responded, do you recommend sending them a letter that they contact you or do you just terminate them via a letter in the mail? I would send them a letter first asking them to contact you. And whenever I give a letter like that, I encourage people to give a deadline. So please contact me within X-rays. This should go by certifying mail, which means that you can confirm that they received it.

Please contact me within X-rays. I'm going to wait X-rays plus a couple. And if you haven't heard back, send the Termination letter and say, as I have not heard from you, as per my previous correspondence, please be advised that your appointment is in it. That's kind of how I handle that. Okay. But you know, you... With anything we do here, we want to be able to show third parties that we had an open life.

You know, maybe the reason you haven't heard from this person is, you know, they got hit by a car in there in the hospital. I mean, hopefully there's somebody in their life who will realize that they have a job somewhere and they need to let they employ or know this. But maybe not. And I mentioned one thing, and I'll... Let me see if I can find the right slide. Was this a suspension termination? Let me see where that was. This one. Yeah. I just want to explain...

This point here. So what we're talking about is this let's say that for example You have money missing from the front desk and you go to the receptionist who has the the custody of this and you say Rather than fire the motorbike what you say is there's money missing That you had custody of we never say that this employee stole it we simply say that there's money missing that That person was in charge of and I'm going to suspend you for 48 hours And if you are able to explain the missing money within 48 hours to my satisfaction I will reinstate you and pay you for the time you were on suspension if you can't explain it Then you're terminate that's that's what a suspension termination means and the real point of doing this is optics

What we're trying to do is show that Not really the employee because you know, they took the money and they took the money But if they later scream that you fired them and it was discriminatory What you want to be able to say is no I told you Why you are going to be let go and I gave you a chance to explain and either you didn't or you you know your explanation was was implausible You know because if their explanation starts with well when the alien ship sucked me up into it You know, I had your money with me and then when they put me back down on earth it was not you know

If you get that kind of explanation then Well nobody's going to believe it, but you have given them a chance to explain and

That always looks better if some objective third party like a judge is looking at this and saying okay I'm trying to decide if this was a discriminatory firing or if it was a a legitimate termination So that's what that's what suspension termination's about and I that goes to the answer that question I think

What if you do not hire back a part-time employee that you have laid off because of the virus? What do you have to document that?

It employment it will says you don't But you've heard our theme which is that it's better to have a reason if the reason is economics I mean that's a there's nothing wrong with that reason as long as it's not discriminatory, you know as long as you're not Not bringing somebody back because they're a member of a visible minority or whatever so it's it's important to me that This person know that they're not being brought back because you know the practice headed down size because You know of of cost incurred due to COVID Let's let the person know why if they're a good performer and you just can't bring them back. Let's let's tell them that

I see what I'll take here and somebody asked how does a person know that he or she is being Immbezzled if everything looks normal That's really a little outside of our topic today What I mentioned about person is that we did a previous session a previous webinar where we covered that exact topic All of our webinars are on our website so if you if you go to our website There's there's one of the the menu items called prosperity in the news and And the first drop down item is called prosperity and power our least webinars are called power our so if you if you go there You have to do a couple of clicks, but you can you can see all of our

For her Webinars and there's one specifically on investment and I've encouraged that person to have a look there and they should get the answers If not feel free to email us I see another one on take oh go ahead ever sorry If you're firing for instance the front desk, can you do it immediately or do you recommend giving them a two-week notice?

I guess it depends why you're terminating if you know is the three eyes You know in support of that in support of nation in slons and toxication that kind of thing I would if somebody noticed if it's You know if it's an economic issue or You know kind of a Performance issue generally I think giving them notice is better If if we're talking to US employment at Will State if if if if it's a Canadian practice unless you're firing them for what's narrowly called Deskosh you have to give notice. There's just no other choice if it's a if it's a US practice Then

You know if if you can give notice you should if it's something really egregious like a bezel-nend or You know that hygienist who uses the same profile all day

No, they you know you you need to remove them from the practice So that shouldn't be noticed so it depends why okay?

I'll take the one there's a question here that says what if we have employees at home the school-aged children And not working or only working part time So I think what this person saying is that that some of their staff right now I have to be home doing childcare and and can't work and this person says we need staff now not at the end of the school year. How do we handle? And The answer to that is when we've given before You ask these employees if they want to come into work and if if they can't that's a resignation It's not you firing them is that you know you have a job and your your practice has been cleared in in your jurisdiction to resume and they can't

So They they can't meet the call Obviously if you can accommodate them you should try you know can we job share can we is there some work? They can do from home whatever if best not workable and it sometimes isn't I mean if if you're a hygienist working from home is not really an option You know if you're a recall coordinator it probably is I would try to accommodate them first If that can't be done then You know it's not you firing them and they just they just can't can't do the job

Exactly Dave one of our viewers Janice Keller said that she wanted to let everybody know that in your policy manual rather than saying a probationary period a lot of times it's better to work it as a training period for that first 90 day Because if you use the word probationary period or you're on a 90-day probation that once that 90 days is over employees will think that their job is 100% secure. Thanks, Jan. What a great suggestion. You know, Jan is a friend of ours and we mentioned her in the earlier session as well.

And yeah, she's a, she's a practice management consultant and a great resource. You can find her Jan. If you have a chance, why don't you just message us with your website or your email address so people can contact you. If you don't get that and you want to talk to Jan, you can do it through, I know through the academy of dental management consultants website. We've had a couple of questions about prosperity and where we live and where we work. We are a by-national company.

So our head offices in health, acts, Canada and that's why I'm speaking with you today.

I see a few of my friends from locally and I mentioned the vet corny who lives about three hours drive for me and I also see my friend Ellen Driesdale. Well, thanks Jan. It says triplew.jannl.fr. I think I can make that public can type.

We just do that so that everybody can see her and her website. Yeah, thanks Jan. Anyway, our head office is in health acts, which is on the East Coast of Canada. And we have a total of five people who work here. Most of the rest of our team live in the US and Amber Mike like goes today. It is speaking to us from Texas, from her beautiful ranch.

Our people are all over the continent, but we work in both countries. So if you're a Canadian dentist and you have a mental in-ishings, we can help you. If you're a US dentist, we can also help you.

Whoops, okay, Jan's just given a couple of email, a couple of websites now. So I'm not absolutely sure which one works, but I'm just going to put them all out. You can try to see if you get lucky.

Okay, I'll put those both out. There's a great question here. How much harder is it from employees who've been terminated for cost to find new employment? I'm going to give you an answer that's a little bit of unsatisfactory. Okay, Jan, stop it now. I think he keeps giving us new ones. All right, I'm sorry, you don't know what your website is, but people are just going to have to figure it out.

Last my train of thought there.

When we're talking about a difficult it is for people to find new employment occupant terminated. Thank you, Amber, for rescuing me.

Yeah, the sad answer to that is it's a lot easier than it should. A lot of dentists when they hire, do a really miserable job of checking people's backgrounds. Before they hire them. And we see a lot in our work of what we call serial and business version. These are people who steal in one practice and get caught and get fired. Two weeks later, they're working across the street.

One of our previous sessions was on hiring. And again, I'd have a look at that webinar. We talk a lot about what you should do to background check people before you hire. A lot of dentists don't do really important things like check the foreign employers. So there are people who get hired and should. It should be really hard for somebody who's terminated for cost to get another job. Sadly, some of you guys are are lacks that hiring. And that gives these people a total of the issues never held.

Yeah, Dave, what is the best way to start the process? To terminate the office bully and how do you recommend responding to other employees when they come to address how that employee is bullying them?

Let's go back to one of our cornerstones, which is policy.

I'm hoping that you're employing that manual talks about the beliefs specifically and makes it clear that it's not yourself.

The problem with not having that in your manual is that now you're in the realm of subject. If it's in the manual, then when somebody complains about this person bullying them, you're going to listen to the complainant and understand what they're on out below. And you're going to talk to the person who's being accused of being a bully because let's let's be cognizant that there are two sides to the story.

Tell them that I'm not sure what happened here because there are two sides to the story, but I want to let you know that bullying staff and whatever form that takes is not acceptable and not something will fall right. When the second or the third employee comes forward to complain, now you have to be convinced that they're something to it and you start the progressive discipline process. So it all comes back to having the right foundation. And when you don't have that,

you get put in some situations of bad traits. The front desk person who is not collecting copies is in a lot of the position when their job description says collect money.

When you don't have that in their job description, then it's a little bit harder for you to say, well, you're not doing your job because the first thing they're going to say is show where they're at now at my job is. Just like we're a doctor, a very key free screening and after the end of the door. Sention day, could that be sending an employee home without pay? Normally it is. Usually what happens is if there be a state and later, I mean the labor laws require them to be paid for the time they were there. So you know, if somebody shows up in the morning and you use them right home, a lot of jurisdictions provide for a minimum amount of pay for that appearance. So you know, if somebody shows up there and

titles the three hours a day. So you send them home, they're going to get paid for that three hours. Are they going to get paid for tomorrow and you're on suspension? Probably not. When you do that, it's a call you need to make your HR advisor to make sure that you're conforming to the law where you live. But in general, the idea is that suspension is unpaid. In a lot of cases, if you reinstate them later, you'll pay them red direct. But if they end up being fired as opposed to reinstate them, then no, they shouldn't be paid for it. How do you handle, when you give a staff member, notice that we mentioned, you know, like write-ups, progressive discipline of concerns,

are you concerned of what they could say or do over the time while continuing to work in your practice? I can answer that. Not if they have any brains at all in one their job. No. When you fall that progressive discipline, you know, and normally the way the progressive discipline works is when somebody gets their third morning, there isn't going to be a fourth and you've pulled them out. If you've told somebody that and they step out of line,

if they're thinking after doing that, they're still going to have a job, they're just diluted.

You know, if somebody who's gotten that third morning is not on their very best behavior, they really don't want the job. So Amber, I see where we're at, but we're slightly over our time limit. Okay. Why don't we, I'll take one more question. Do I, do I see what I want to, I want to take? And then we'll take our final bow and thank everybody for joining us for the past six weeks. This has been a lot of fun and a great experience for us. I really want to thank my co-host Amber, who's with us, and I'm already a co-host Wendy Askins, who's on assignment today. They've been a lot of help and some of the prosperity people behind the scenes. I'm thinking particularly of our colleague, Debbie Long, who's spent a lot of time with us, helping us put these

things together. I certainly want to thank her about their, there are lots of other people here as well who have had a hand. The final question I'll take is from my friend Allison Williams, I also. And her question is, how should we deal with people who are intoxicated on the job? I think the answer to that one is a pretty short one. Send them a home now. Do we suspend them or terminate them or simply warn them depends on a situation? You know, if Claire is a one-off thing and there's no evidence of a bigger problem depends. I tend to be a forgiving person and if nobody got hurt, you know, and we understand why it happened. Maybe we just give them the most urgent warnings we could imagine. But I think society is a lot less polar

than that than it once was when you know, when I started working the 80s, I mean, you know, a lot of people would have a couple of beers at lunch. And I think society's attitude on that have changed a lot of if any of you have ever watched the TV show mad men, you know, you can see from that from the 60s to now how much are thinking to change about that. So to me it's probably a firing offense, but I want to understand why. Ladies and gentlemen, again, thank you for sharing time with us. We've had a great time over these six weeks. We're planning on reviving this in the summer. We know most of you are getting back to work now or thinking about it. And, you know, we think that we've probably done what we can't hear any time to for us and you want. And this I can

tell you this takes a lot of time at our end. But we really appreciate having had some great audiences and some fantastic questions. So we have great ones today. So again, I'd like to go to thank Amber and Wendy in particular and everybody at Prosperity. We hope that you all get back to work soon if you're not already. And thank you very much for being part of these experience with us. Thanks, everyone. And they don't forget to leave us a good google review. So we look forward to seeing you again next time. Yes, we love it if you do that. Thank you all very much. Bye bye, you need help me. Thanks for listening to the dental practice owners podcast. Brought to you by Prosperity. You can contact Prosperity through its website,

www.pressparity.com or by calling 888-398-2327. If you have questions about this podcast, if you would like to discuss your practice or there is a topic you would like to see in a future podcast, we would love to hear from you. Amber, Wendy and David will be back soon with another episode.

Thanks for listening to the dental practice owners podcast. Brought to you by Prosperity. You can contact Prosperity through its website, www.pressparity.com or by calling 888-398-2327. If you have questions about this podcast, if you would like to discuss your practice or there is a topic you would like to see in a future podcast, we would love to hear from you. Amber, Wendy and David will be back soon with another episode.