Need Better Performance Review Intel? Try This Dental Employee Evaluation Form

Let’s get to the bottom of what’s driving good patient care and what might be holding your practice back. For that, you’ll need a rock-solid dental employee evaluation form to measure your employees’ performance. We’re going way beyond numerical performance ratings. Sounds like a lot of work, but you don’t have to start from scratch. We’ve developed a dental performance review template that works to measure technical skills, patient interaction, and team collaboration. All of these things directly impact patient satisfaction and practice success. 

What Belongs on a Great Dental Employee Evaluation Form?

Employee performance management measures more than whether your workers are doing a “good job” or doing a “bad job.” You need to assess the full range of responsibilities and competencies if you want to see real improvement. Plus, proper employee evaluation has a positive impact on your practice culture while creating trails of compliance and legal protection.

A good employee evaluation process is two-sided. This is a great time for the employee to reflect, consider where they see themselves in your practice today, where they’d like to take their career in the future, and see if they have any specific goals for growth and improvement. 

Consider these performance eval categories:

• Clinical skills and technical competency 
• Patient interaction and communication skills
• Infection control and safety protocol adherence (super important for OSHA compliance!) 
• Professional development and continuing education maintenance
• Time management and efficiency 
• Administrative accuracy in patient charting
• Problem-solving abilities 
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Adherence to your practice’s policies
• Reliability, punctuality, and attendance

Focus on Role-Specific Evaluation Criteria 

You can find some type of teamwork measurement on any employee evaluation form. The difference with a great dental employee assessment is customizing criteria to reflect specific responsibilities and industry expertise. For example, a dental hygienist’s evaluation should emphasize clinical skills, patient education abilities, and accuracy in periodontal assessments. A front desk coordinator’s assessment focuses on patient communication, scheduling efficiency, and accuracy in insurance processing. Balance quantitative metrics with qualitative assessments for a more comprehensive view of employee performance.

Set SMART Goals and Meaningful Performance Metrics

Now that you’ve got the basic dental employee evaluation form, you can use it for better performance management. Instead of guessing, use the tried-and-true framework of setting SMART goals, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

SMART goals in a dental setting can look like improving charting accuracy, achieving certain patient feedback metrics, staying within certain treatment timeframes, hitting safety protocol goals, and so on. Consider the individual’s skill levels, experience, and job descriptions when you set relevant goals, and of course, make sure to come back and measure them at certain milestones.

Annual and mid-year performance reviews are a great place to start. Consider quarterly, monthly, or even weekly check-ins along the way. That might sound like a lot, but remember, the idea is to improve employee performance and provide support. The less pressure you put on these conversations, the more precise your feedback will be and the more comfortable your employees will feel when asking questions. Trust us on this, dental team performance improves significantly when employees understand exactly what’s expected of them and have clear pathways for achieving their objectives.

Performance Reviews Support Decision-Making and Legal Compliance 

These evaluations are great for employee development and hitting practice goals, but they’re also extremely important for compliance. 

When it’s time for decision-making about promotions, raises, and disciplinary actions, your completed dental employee evaluation form is your documentation. With this record, you can point to specific examples of great performance and areas of improvement, plus clear timelines for addressing them both. In the hopefully unlikely case of an employee complaint, these documents also provide legal protection for your practice. 

In either case, regular documentation also supports succession planning and internal promotion decisions with clear records of employee development and performance trends over time. Dental employee assessment should focus on supporting employee success rather than simply documenting problems. Celebrate wins and pave pathways for improvement and ongoing support.

By the way, HR for Health clients often have questions about how much raises ought to be and whether they’re mandatory. A typical annual raise is somewhere around 1-5% and no, they aren’t legally required. They’re not a bad idea to keep your practice competitive, though. Our handbook policy for performance reviews automatically comes with the verbiage that a positive performance review doesn’t guarantee a raise, that way you’ll have the flexibility to determine when and how much raises should be.

How HR for Health Helps Your Practice Make Progress 

We’ve been talking about improving employee performance for a while now. How about some ways to set SMART goals for your practice? 

HR for Health automates documentation so you don’t have to worry about misplacing or falling behind on your performance review schedule. And to help you fill in those blanks, you’ll get comprehensive timekeeping, CE and credential tracking, violation logging, and your employee handbook all in one place. If you get stuck, our on-demand HR experts are here to help. That all sounds pretty specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely to us!

Ask us how HR for Health can help you meet your practice goals