Maintaining employees can improve practice efficiency, lower costs, and create a great team. However, making certain HR errors lowers morale in your practice and causes you to lose some team members. Here are five key HR mistakes dental, optometry, veterinary, and other medical practices should avoid.
1. Lunches and Breaks
Federal and state governments have specific policies about work breaks and lunch hours. Despite this, some practices don’t provide breaks at the right time, leading to compliance issues. Others also fail to monitor when employees clock in, making it tough to identify appropriate break times. To prevent this mistake from occurring, healthcare practices should develop the appropriate systems to track lunches and breaks. HR for Health can create customized systems that are designed to meet state-specific requirements. They also provide notification to employees once they clock in, explicitly reminding team members to take their breaks on time.
Recommended Reading:
Meal Break Cheat Sheet
2. Overtime
Practice owners must pay non-exempt employees, like dental hygienists, overtime. Still, some don’t classify their teams correctly and/or pay the wrong amount. Another common issue is employees claiming timesheets don’t contain accurate information, and that money is owed to them for missed hours of work and/or overtime. Practices must ensure that they follow the local or state rules that are specific to overtime. Doing so can protect them from wage claims regarding missed overtime payments.
Luckily, you can avoid such issues with an electronic timesheet from HR for Health.
Recommended Video:
Top 5 Mistakes Practices Make
3. Wrongful Termination
Office managers and practice owners often ignore the right process when terminating a team member and fail to provide clear reasons. As co-founder and CEO of HR for Health, Ali Oromchian notes in this video, terminating someone for pregnancy, disability, or age-related reasons is illegal and sure to bring about a lawsuit.
Before releasing an employee, you must have credible reasons and the proper documents to record the process. Dental, optometry, veterinary, and other medical practices should ensure that they have the right documents, according to their state, and that they provide the right documentation to all employees in a timely fashion. It is important to note that each state has its own rules regarding final paychecks and the
timing for those. Be sure to stay up-to-date with your state’s requirement to avoid late penalties.
Click here to learn more about employee offboarding tools, including document storage and checklists that ensure you are providing all required information to outgoing employees. With HR for Health, your practice can ensure that they are providing all necessary documents and staying in compliance. Once documents have been received, you can upload completed ones, allowing our cloud-based storage to manage all document retention.
4. Retaliation
Some practices retaliate against employees when an employee does something they don’t like. There are many forms of retaliation, including removing sick leave, cutting worker hours, or reducing pay. Making this mistake is risky and can be costly as well.. Remember, it is illegal to retaliate against employees for using any benefits that they are legally or contractually allowed to use.
5. Employee Handbook
An employee handbook is a significant asset in every dental, optometry, veterinary, or other medical practice. Sadly, most offices don’t have this document or use an outdated one, which can potentially be a liability if you have outdated policies that are no longer compliant or meeting regulatory requirements. HR for Health provides customizable employment handbook templates. With such a document, you can protect your practice during lawsuits.
Recommended Resource:
2022 Handbook Update Checklist
How HR for Health Can Help You Avoid These Common HR Mistakes
Making HR mistakes can affect your practice and lead to costly lawsuits. HR for Health provides the ultimate software to help you manage your team. We also provide you with access to HR professionals that can ensure that you do not make potentially costly mistakes. Contact us today to set up a no-obligation fifteen minute call, and learn more about how we can help your practice succeed and thrive.
