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Retain your speech pathologists with better professional development systems

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Retaining talented speech pathologists is both a top priority and challenge for most private practices. 

Practice owners can increase staff retention in several ways, e.g. with money, clear career paths and promotion opportunities, and by offering flexible work schedules, e.g. part-time and remote working options. 

An often-overlooked retention strategy is on-the-job professional development. It doesn’t have to be expensive and gives speech pathologists something they really want.

Studies in other industries show that:

  • 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development;
  • bored employees are twice as likely to leave;
  • employees who get professional development are 15% more engaged, and have 34% higher retention; and 
  • organisations with a strong learning culture are 92% more likely to develop new services and processes; 52% more productive; and 17% more profitable than their peers.  

To improve professional development in your practice without ‘breaking the bank’, private practices can:

  • build professional development into their onboarding and induction processes, with training on practice strategy, employee motivation, teamwork and key technical skills;
  • set aside time every month for employees to explore an area of professional interest unrelated to their current caseload;
  • create training rituals, e.g. by scheduling “Drop Everything and Learn” (DEAL) sessions, where everyone stops what they are doing and takes an online course, or by hosting regular journal club meetings led by team members; and
  • offer one-to-one coaching sessions beyond day-to-day supervision, with access to experienced clinicians.

By focusing on professional development, private practices can reduce turnover, improve their reputations as employers, and make their workplaces better for everyone (including clients). 

Key source: Keswin, E. (2022). 3 Ways to Boost Retention Through Professional Development. Harvard Business Review, April, 2022.

Retain your speech pathologists with better professional development systems

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.

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9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in one-to-one supervision sessions

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9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in one-to-one supervision sessions:

  1. If we could improve in any way, how would we do it?
  2. What’s the number one problem with our practice? Why?
  3. What’s not fun about working here?
  4. Who’s doing a great job? Whom do you admire?
  5. If you were me, what changes would you make?
  6. What don’t you like about our services for clients?
  7. What’s the biggest opportunity we’re missing out on?
  8. What are we not doing that we should be doing?
  9. Are you happy working here?

Source: Horowitz, B. (2014). The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Harper Collins, NY, NY. 

9 questions speech pathology practice owners and supervisors should ask employees in supervision sessions

For more on supervision, check out our book “How to supervise speech pathologists properly in private practice“.

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.

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9 ideas to increase engagement and reduce burn out by designing work your team will love

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If less than 20% of your work consists of things you love to do, you are far more likely to burn out. Practice owners should design work with love in mind:

  1. Encourage staff to set goals, both for their career and personal life.
  2. Invest in each employee’s ongoing education, either directly through training or by giving employees time to pursue their own projects.
  3. Stay connected with your alumni.
  4. Don’t over-rely on standardised competence tools: there is more than one way to be a great speech pathologist.
  5. Organise around teams: workers who feel part of a team are 2.7 times as likely to be engaged, 3 times as likely to be highly resilient, and twice as likely to report a strong sense of belonging.
  6. Hire interesting speech pathologists: each person’s “loves and loathings” can be combined with others to make the team greater than the sum of its parts. Assign projects based on each individual’s strengths and interests.
  7. Discard rituals that erode team trust, like staff rankings based on output-based KPIs.
  8. Pay individual attention to each speech pathologist. Supervisors who check in 1:1 every week drive their team member’s engagement up 77% and reduce turnover by 67%.
  9. Schedule once-a-week 1:1 supervision check-ins. Ask four key questions:
    • What did you love about last week?
    • What did you loathe?
    • What are your priorities for the next week?
    • How can I help?

Source: Buckingham, M. (2022). Designing Work That People Love. Harvard Business Review, June 2022.  

This infographic also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists and speech pathology students.

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12 early career tips for Australian speech pathologists and students considering a career in private practice

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About a quarter of current Australian speech language pathologists (SLPs) joined the profession after May 2019; and about half of all SLPs work in private practice. 

If you are an early career SLP in private practice – or if you are an SLP student considering private practice as a graduate – here are some early career tips: 

  1. You’ve made a great decision: We have a clear purpose. Demand is rising. Our practice scope is widening. Our evidence-base is growing. Technological innovations are accelerating. We’re striving to become more diverse; and to reflect the communities we service. But we’re short on numbers, with mushrooming waitlists. We need you! 
  1. Big questions: Who do you want to serve and how? Who do you admire, and why? What’s your timeline? How are you learning and growing? What seeds do you need to plant now? What relationships do you need to build? (Hiatt, 2021)
  1. Long-term relationships and meaningful work > money: You need to be paid properly. But, on our deathbeds, few will care about money or business influence as much as we think we do. Meaningful relationships and useful work matter more. (Coleman, 2022) 
  1. Constant change: SLP work is complex, the profession is evolving, and general economic and health system volatility and uncertainty continue to increase. Stay open to possibilities, and keep your options open – don’t deskill. Stay curious. Read widely across many disciplines. Keep learning. Be flexible so you can adapt to change.
  1. What employers want to know: What will it be like to work with you? How will you affect existing team dynamics? Can you learn? Do you take initiative and contribute? Do you take feedback constructively and act on it? Do you ask good questions? (Gallo, 2022) 
  1. Criteria to evaluate job offers: Do the practice’s vision, purpose, and strategy intersect with your goals? Do salary and incentives support team and individual growth? What is the job content and caseload? Workload. Respect. Supervision. Training. Safety and compliance. Quality control. Systems and resources. Clear career path. Turnover and burnout rates. Flexibility.  
  1. Getting up to speed: Figure out the ‘informal org chart’. Find leaders (supervisors, mentors, colleagues) who help to get things done. Make people around you feel valued, with good listening and engagement. Look for gaps and help fill them. (Cross, 2021) 
  1. Professional learning curve: Aggressively expand your ‘Circle of Competence’. Invest and track new technical, communication/advocacy, and leadership skills. Get educated on business: strategies, people management, systems, cost structures, break even,  and cashflows. Learn, then share new knowledge. Apply new skills as soon as you can. Contribute new ideas!
  1. Hanging in there! “Patience is annoying…But the truth is, in almost all cases, our most meaningful goals require effort and perseverance – and time…You might have to keep making the effort, even when it seems pointless, boring or hard. There will be dark moments when it’s unclear whether you’re making any progress at all” (Clark, 2021). Don’t give up too early! Professional growth is not always linear and is often a result of conflicting variables.
  1. Don’t job hop for the sake of it: Consider moves only if they’ll increase your skills and opportunities. Fast leaps may not lead to long-term success and contribute to burn out. Don’t be distracted by titles – focus on substance. Think about whether the move will help or hinder your ability to achieve your long-term goals. (Hamori, 2010)
  1. Don’t ‘specialise’ too soon: In the long-term, specialists often prosper. But, if you are unsure, stay general and focus on learning transferable skills. If you decide to focus on one practice area, choose one that’s growing quickly. Retaining intellectual breadth is important. (Gulati, 2012) 
  1. You only get one reputation: Relationships matter more than jobs and transactions. Think long-term. Respect your colleagues. Don’t burn bridges. Stay ethical. When you run into conflict – and you will – take the high road and stay professional.

For more, free private practice tips, check out our ‘12 Days of Tips for SLPs in Private Practice‘ series.

For more information about proper supervision of speech pathologists in private practice, download our “How to Supervise Speech Pathologists Properly in Private Practice” book, templates and video course on our Banter Speech & Language clinic website. ⁠

When is a casual employee really a permanent employee?

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In Australian employment law matters, the real world substance of a work relationship often trumps what the contract says.

For example, sometimes people called independent contractors in contracts are really employees. Similarly, sometimes people called casual employees in contracts are really permanent employees – a point recently made clear by the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia (the Court) in WorkPac Pty Limited v Skene (see case citation and link below).

Casual v permanent employee: Why does it matter?

Unlike permanent employees, casual employees are not entitled to lots of benefits under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (the FW Act), including paid leave, notice of termination, redundancy pay and paid holidays. To compensate for the lack of these entitlements, casual employees are paid a “casual loading”, currently 25% of base pay for Monday-Friday hours for speech pathologists in private practice under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award (see clause 26.2).

To be a true casual employee, the employee must have no advance commitment as to the duration of their employment or the days (or hours) worked. Some indicators of casual employment include:

  • irregular work patterns;
  • uncertainty as to the period over which employment is offered;
  • discontinuity; and
  • intermittency of work and unpredictability.

Can you side-step the issue by simply defining an employee as “casual” in their contract? 

No.

Things like what the contract says, payments of casual loading, the need to submit timesheets, and the right to terminate at short notice (e.g. 1 hour) are relevant, but not of themselves decisive. Instead, what matters is the real world “objective” substance of the relationship between the employee and employer at the time. For example, there must be no long-term, firm, advance and mutual commitment to work an agreed pattern of hours.

What happens if the employer gets it wrong?

If the employee is really a permanent employee, she/he is entitled to annual leave and other entitlements under the National Employment Standards and/or the Award. In theory, employers should be able to set off any casual loading paid to the employee against these payments. But, in the Skene case, this didn’t happen because the employer had not designated a specific amount or percentage of wages to be casual loading.

Another consequence of getting it wrong is that the employer might be liable for penalties under the FW Act. The Court made it clear that ignorance of the law is no excuse, and that it’s a serious offence to mis-classify a permanent employee as a casual employee.

Bottom line

When deciding whether an employee is casual or permanent, Australian courts apply a substance over form test. Simply labelling an employee as “casual” in the employment contract and/or paying casual loading is not enough to guarantee the employee is truly casual from a legal perspective.

To mitigate the risk, employers should ensure that any casual loading paid to employees is specifically quantified in the employee’s contract and payslips. This may allow the employer to set-off that amount against any claimed entitlements. But the risk cannot be eliminated by legal drafting, as Courts will look at the true relationship between the employer and employee. Employers should therefore seek legal advice to assess the level of this risk for their businesses.

Case: WorkPac Pty Limited v Skene [2018] FCAFC 131. Full case access via the Federal Court of Australia website here.

Principal source: De Flamingh, J. & Kiley, E. (2018). Another casual conundrum: substance over form prevails (again), Law Society of NSW Journal, 72-74.

Image: httpss://tinyurl.com/ycvxcayp

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