Hiring Staff – Full Time Versus Part Time

Something that comes up when we start working with people is that the owners are so busy and they really want to hire staff but worry they don’t have enough patients to do so.

If you’re anxious about whether now is the right time to hire a new practitioner, do a quick breakdown of how many patients that practitioner will have to see each week to cover their wage or salary.

Proposed Annual Salary (£/$)
divided by
46 (available working weeks in the year)
divided by
Av. Sale (£/$)
=
“x” patients per week (to cover their salary)

So, your new practitioner needs to see ‘X’ patients per week to pay for themselves – 1.5 per day.

If you’re worrying you don’t have enough patients to get someone in part time – when you look at this formula – you can see that you will definitely have a patient per day for this part timer to work with.

Something to consider –

If you’ve got someone working part time – a couple of days for you – and a few days somewhere else – it takes their attention away from your practice and prevents you from building the team and practice you envisage. So hiring full time is a more desirable option – that way they are fully invested in your business.  You would want them totally immersed and engaged with YOUR practice and YOUR patients.

A new grad full time in your practice would in theory only need to see 3 patients per day to make it work financially for you.  What would that resource be worth to your practice?

It might intuitively feel safer to invite a part-time associate to work for a percentage of total income billed, however, it’s worth comparing the option of hiring an associate with hiring either a full-time or part-time practitioner who works exclusively for you.

Can you afford to hire someone?

As your practice grows – you will inevitably have to look at taking on staff. You may worry about cash flow and whether you can afford to put someone on but if you don’t hire, you may actually lose money via lost patients because you’re too busy yourself to take on any more patients.

You can do it slowly – hire someone part time, see how that works and then increase their hours to full time after a period when you are getting more patients through the door.  This can give your cash flow some breathing room whilst the practice grows.

The end goal is always having a practice that is less reliant on YOU and to get to that position – you need to have good staff.

Can you afford to hire someone?  The question is – can you afford not to?