How Staffing Shortages Impact the Growth of Your Dental Practice (#6)

Dental staffing shortages continue to challenge dental practices across the country, especially when it comes to hiring and retaining hygienists. In this episode of Dental Business Made Simple, I’ll explain why this problem extends beyond labor shortages and often points directly to leadership, communication, and practice culture.

Throughout this episode, I’ll break down the financial and operational impact of turnover in a dental office, including lost production, scheduling disruption, increased stress, and declining patient experience. I’ll also be sharing how unclear expectations, inconsistent leadership, workplace drama, and weak communication create environments where strong employees disengage and eventually leave.

This episode also provides practical leadership strategies dental practice owners can implement immediately to improve retention and strengthen team culture. Join me as I discuss market-based compensation, stay interviews, accountability, efficient team meetings, predictable scheduling, and the importance of building a practice where employees feel respected, supported, and motivated to grow.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Dental hygienist shortages impact production, scheduling, patient experience, and team morale across the entire practice.
• Employee retention often depends on leadership quality, workplace culture, communication, and operational clarity.
• High-performing dental team members value consistency, growth opportunities, predictable schedules, and professional respect.
• Strong dental practice systems such as morning huddles, defined responsibilities, and weekly meetings reduce stress and improve accountability.
• Dental practices that intentionally develop culture and leadership create stronger teams, lower turnover, better patient experiences, and long-term operational stability.

Connect with Coach Matt Doherty at dohertycoaching.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Dental Business Made Simple, a podcast dedicated to helping dentists build valuable practices through talent, systems, and culture. Now, here's your host, Coach Matt Doherty.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome to Dental Business Made Simple. I'm Matt Darty, executive coach and founder of the Darty Dental Cohort. I've been working with dentists for five years now. I've seen firsthand the struggles that you deal with. Trying to run a business from the chair is certainly a challenge. Let me start with the reality every dentist knows. Your book's solid, patients are waiting, production goals are set, the schedule looks great. Then your hygienist quits. Suddenly, production drops, the team's stressed, patients wait longer, the front desk scrambles, you start doing hygiene checks all day. One resignation can ripple through the entire practice. This is happening everywhere right now. Dentists across the country say the same thing. I cannot find hygienists. I hear that from all my clients and throughout the cohort. But here's the uncomfortable truth. It's not only a supply problem, it's often a leadership and culture problem. Today we'll break that down. Let's acknowledge the obvious. There is a hygienist shortage, no doubt. Several factors are driving it. Hygiene schools are graduating fewer students. Many hygienists left during COVID, and burnout is real. Demand for hygiene services continues to grow. Now, some numbers. The American Dental Association has reported hygiene vacancy rates above 10% in many regions. In some markets, some practices are offering signing bonuses, higher hourly wages, flexible schedules, and shorter work weeks. The labor market changed. Dentistry did not fully adjust, however. But here's the key point: some practices will have fully staffed teams with very low turnover. Why is that? What are they doing differently? Turnover hurts far more than most dentists realize. Let's break down the real costs, the direct costs, recruiting fees, advertising, training time, temporary staffing. That alone can exceed 10 to 20 grand per hire. But the bigger cost is hidden. Operational costs, production loss, schedule disruption, team morale drops, patient experience suffers. If a hygienist produces fifteen hundred per day and you lose them for 40 days while recruiting, that's 60 grand in lost production. And that assumes patients don't leave. Turnover is expensive, but the emotional cost may be worse. You feel it, the team feels it. Everyone gets tired of starting over. Most dentists say the issue is hiring, but often the real issue is retention. People don't leave jobs, they leave environments. Let me give you three warning signs. Number one, constant complaining. If your team complains about communication, fairness, scheduling, unclear expectations, that's a culture signal. Number two, drama between team members. When the front desk blames hygiene, when assistants blame scheduling, when gossip becomes normal, your culture stinks. Number three, lack of clarity. Many practices operate with zero clarity on the following roles, accountability, expectations. A players don't like that. Without it, people get frustrated. Frustration leads to disengagement. Disengement leads to turnover. This is why culture matters. Culture drives retention. Let's address the obvious. Compensation matters, no doubt. You cannot pay below market value and expect loyalty. The labor market has changed. Many hygienists now earn $45 to $60 an hour, depending on the region of the country. Some dentists fight this. They say things like, We never paid that before. That's true, but you got to adapt. Markets evolve. Good leaders accept the new reality. However, pay alone does not create loyalty. High-paying practices still experience turnover. Why? Because money removes dissatisfaction. It does not create engagement. Leadership creates engagement. It goes back to culture. Great dental practices have strong leadership, not just clinical excellence. Leadership, soft skills, we're talking here. Here are four leadership behaviors that drive retention. Number one, respect. People want to feel valued. Simple actions matter. Do you say thank you? Do you listen? Do you include them in discussions? Number two, clarity. Your team should know what success looks like, what their responsibilities are and aren't, and how performance is measured. Clarity reduces stress. Number three, growth. Good employees, smart people want to grow. That might mean the following: continuing ed opportunities, expanded responsibilities, leadership roles. If people cannot grow, they eventually leave, especially A players. Four, consistency. Nothing destroys culture faster than inconsistent leadership. One day you're holding people accountable, next day you're not. One day you come in in a great mood, the next day you don't. Rules change, expectations shift, favorites appear. Great leaders are consistent. They bring it every day. The team knows where they stand. The best practices tend to share several traits. Strong team culture. The team actually enjoys working together. Predictable schedules. High GNS value stability. Some of them are mothers and fathers. They want to be home when their kids get off of school. They want to be home to go see their kid participate in a sport after school. They want to be home to have dinner prepared for their family. They want to be home. They have a life outside the practice. Respect for their clinical role is key. They are treated like professionals. Another thing, clear systems. Do you have a morning huddle? This is simple. It could take three minutes, three minutes to go over your core values, the emphasis of the day, and key patients that you might have coming in that day. Defined handoffs, efficient scheduling. These things reduce stress. My wife was a hygienist, and I've heard this. The burnout when patients are stacked and the time that she had with the patients was shrunk to like 30 minutes. And then all of a sudden the doctors get them running behind. That was disrespectful. And that caused tremendous stress. Reducing stress improves retention. Let me give you four things every dentist should evaluate. Number one, market compensation. Know the market rate for hygienists in your region. Boom. That should be bottom line. Don't guess. Number two, conduct stay interviews. What is that? Ask your team members why do they enjoy working here? What frustrates you? What would make this a better place to work? All right. Mind for the truth. Number three, improve communication, weekly or monthly team meetings matter. I say weekly, weekly, and and run a meeting efficiently. Don't waste time. It could be 30 to 60 minutes. But people want to feel a part of a team. Clarity prevents resentment. Okay. So in these meetings, you're clear. Speak clearly. Define roles. Hold people accountable. Number four, define your culture. What do you stand for as a practice? More importantly, what don't you stand for? I stand for respect, teamwork, patient care, growth. Culture cannot be accidental. It has to be intentionally driven. You have your core values, three to four values, and then you have your behaviors rooted in those core values. And as a leader, you've got to recognize those behaviors, good and bad. Accountability is not just pointing out someone making a mistake, right? Showing up late. Accountability can be, hey, thank you for showing up on time or early. When you say that to someone in front of the team, everyone gets it. Your culture must be intentionally driven. Staffing shortages are real, but leadership shortages are more damaging. If you build a strong culture, if you treat people well, if you create clarity, your practice becomes a place people want to stay and people want to work at. And when people stay, everything improves. Production, patient experience, team morale, and your sanity as a practice owner. Because dentistry is not just about teeth, it's about people. You're not in the teeth business, you're in the people business. In the practice that remember that, win. Thank you for tuning in to Dental Business Made Simple.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Learn and grow. Thank you for being part of this episode of Dental Business Made Simple. If you'd like to discover how Coach Matt Doherty can help you strengthen your dental practice, be sure to visit DohertyCoing.com and set up a free consultation today. That's DohertyCoaching.com. Find the link in the show notes, and we'll see you on the next episode of Dental Business Made Simple.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Success comes from standing out.