How to Retain Your Physical Therapist | Physical Therapy

It is absolutely crazy trying to recruit physical therapists right now. In another video I'm going to explain why that's occurring, especially so in this market. Post Covid or mid Covid for all we know.

But right now we're going to talk about the number one thing all PT owners should be focusing on, which is how to retain your physical therapists. Whether you had a physical therapist leave and you need to stop the bleeding, or whether you need to find creative ways to get those physical therapists to engage with your company so that they don't care about anything else that's going on outside in the industry. We're going to review those topics right now. So let's kick it off right away with the very first concept that we need to get through to the PT owners, which is that the first way to retain talent is by developing a long term BHAG together. What is a bhag? BHAG is an acronym that stands for Big Hairy, Audacious Goal. BHAG is what you ultimately want for yourself and your company in the next five, 10, maybe 20 years. But the way it works with retention is getting our team pts to really see how staying with you is going to help them get to their bhag. But the problem is they don't usually know what that is. So it's one of the funnest conversations to have is to sit down with the physical therapist and say, what is it that you really want for yourself? What do you dream about having one day? In that discussion? You can also share what it is that you want to create so that when you talk about whatever it is that they want, maybe it's to own their own practice, maybe they want a cabin in the woods. It almost doesn't matter. What matters is that after you hear from them what it is that they want, they'll associate you and your company with with their future. Then when you share with them what it is that you want for yourself and your company, the last thing you do is you start talking. Not from a place of overselling, but really trying to create collaboratively how together you're going to build both of your futures as a team. That right there is a small thing that makes a big difference for retention because they can't look forward to the thing that you help them identify without seeing your company as the means to get there. Now, the next thing you want to focus on and helping your physical therapist retain and stay with your company in an engaged way is to collaborate on your company's culture. Remember, a company's Culture is something that is experienced. It can be used in values and purposes. It can be used with these words that help people define the feeling. But at the end of the day, a company's cultures is something that you can't describe. It's felt. And so what you want to do is you want to get together with your physical therapist. You want to ask them what would make our company culture amazing? Like, what is it that you think we could do? Maybe we pay for gym memberships or maybe we have company outings on a quarterly basis. If your company culture is so far torn apart that a company outing seems impossible, start with the basics. Flexible schedules. Or maybe it's a matter of understanding how we can collaborate as a team to build each other's bee hacks. At the end of the day, the coolest part of this idea is that if they get super excited over something that they can suggest as a cultural change, we want to put them in charge of it. To us, it's going to feel great because they're coming up with the idea, but they're going to do the work and they'll do it gladly because they'll feel seen and heard as you start acting through them on their own suggestion that gives them even further buy in and helps them create a culture where if everyone's doing that, it's truly a team. So the very last of the three things that we can do to create maximum retention within our team is to create long term win win agreements. What does that mean? Well, we're all familiar with employment agreements, but we don't usually do a very good job of creating win win agreements. Usually when physical therapists sign on, it becomes a game of managing expectations between the PT owner and the pt. Have you ever been in a place where you're doing the yearly review, if you even do them, and you're just hoping that you can afford to keep them based off what they want to pay, what they want to get paid, that's an absolute indication that we don't have a win win agreement in place. So what you want to do first in creating win win agreements after you've created the mutual bhag, after you've worked on your company culture, is to define your pay scales for each position. So you know roughly, competitively what you're going to pay every physical therapist based on experience in your company. Then when you bring people into that financial discussion, you want to make absolutely clear to them that once that minimum target of visits per week has been obtained, that the win win goes in into effect essentially, and that everything can start moving forward. Of course you want to have a bonus for not just your pts, for everyone who works hard enough to go well above what the minimum standard is. And that's different. And I can do separate videos on that if you'd like. And if you do, please hit subscribe and like and make sure you add that into the comments below and I'll do a video on that. But ultimately we want to have those physical therapists knowing that they can make extra money by achieving more. Now listen, money isn't everything, but it's something important. More important than most pts will admit. And this is where it all comes together. It's one thing to get paid, it's another thing to get praised. So in this case, where you have this wonderful bonus structure in place and people are hitting their amounts, what you want to do is have a weekly meeting rhythm. And that weekly meeting isn't about just the numbers. You do want to review metrics. But the first half of whatever meeting you do is about recognizing your team members and celebrating wins. If someone hit well above a mark, they get applause, they get recognized. It's an atta boy or atta girl. It's all about helping them see that they are honored, seen and heard within the company. And if they can do that, if you can do that in a way to where they have a long term vision and they feel like they're co creating that company feeling of culture and they can sense the praise and financially feel the impact of their work, there's no way they're going to go anywhere else. What else is there to help retain physical therapists? I would love to hear from owners on what their best practices are for retaining physical therapists in the comments below as well. Until next time, thanks for watching.