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The business case for leadership training in your dental practice: invest in success

By Jamie MorleyJanuary 16, 2025

In the fast-paced world of dentistry, where cutting-edge technology and clinical expertise often take centre stage, an unexpected factor is emerging as the true differentiator between thriving practices and those merely surviving: dental practice leadership.

While technical skills are very important, it's the invisible hand of effective leadership that's steering the most successful dental practices towards unprecedented growth and patient satisfaction. But, less than 30% of dental professionals receive any formal leadership training, leaving a staggering 70% navigating the complex waters of dental practice leadership without a compass. This article delves into the compelling business case for Dental Practice Leadership Training, revealing how this often-overlooked investment can transform your practice, boost your bottom line, and create a harmonious work environment that patients and staff alike will rave about.

What is the impact of leadership training?

This will obviously depend on the type of leadership training that is undertaken. There is a significant difference between a dental practice management one day course and the Level 7 Certificate or Diploma in Dental Practice Leadership. Based on the Academy of Fitting Leadership Level 7 Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership modules and content there are 4 key ways in which leadership training will impact your dental practice:

• Reduced staff turnover
• Reduced sickness levels
• Practice culture
• Practice growth

Reduced staff turnover

Staff turnover is the level of people who leave your dental practice divided by the number of people in your dental practice.

If your dental practice has 20 employees and 2 people left over the last 12 months, then your staff turnover for the last 12 months is 10%. You can calculate staff turnover at the end of each month to see how it tracks.

How does leadership training help reduce staff turnover?

There are multiple ways in which leadership training helps reduce staff turnover.

It helps develop an individual's self-awareness and leadership style. This, in turn, means the leader can be aware of how their approach impacts the people they lead and can adapt their approach according to the situation and the individual. This will likely reduce misunderstandings and improve communication with everybody on the team, helping to reduce the likelihood of staff turnover.

The course covers specifics about how to be human and connect effectively whilst also having honest and sometimes difficult conversations. This increases the leader's ability to connect and reduces the likelihood of these difficult conversations going sideways.

The course creates clarity for the leader about where the practice is going and how to get there. This increases engagement and reduces the likelihood of team members leaving.

Understanding team dynamics and reducing dynamics that can be toxic is also covered. These toxic dynamics are highly likely to cause people to leave.

What is the financial impact of a person leaving a dental practice?

To calculate the cost of one individual leaving a dental practice, you need to consider several factors:

Direct Costs

Recruitment expenses: This includes advertising costs and time spent interviewing candidates.

As an example to recruit a nurse:

• Advertising costs - £200
• Time of Practice Manager to review CVs and administer and communicate with candidates. 3 Hrs. £18.62 per hour gives £55.86
• Time of Practice Manager interviewing for 2 Hrs (1st & 2nd interview) - £18.62 per hour (based on £35k salary) gives £37.24
• Time of Principal Dentist interviewing for 1 Hr (2nd interview) - £250 per hour

Total - £543.10

Onboarding and training: The cost of training a new employee, including materials and the time spent by other staff members.

• Time of Practice Manager to train new employee - 2 full days in total - 14 hrs @ £18.62 per hour. £693.41
• Time of another senior nurse to train new employee - 7 full days in total - 35 hrs @ £15 per hour. £525

Total - £1,218.41

Overall Total of Direct Costs - £1,761.51

The direct costs alone of replacing one nurse would cover the cost of the Level 7 Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership. These are highly conservative costs.

The direct costs of losing a Practice Manager, an Associate, or a therapist would be significantly more.

Remember that over time, having done the training, the number of people that will not leave that would have left over time could be very considerable, meaning the direct costs saved would run into thousands. If it was one person less who left every year for 5 years after the training, then you multiply the cost by 5, giving £8,807.55. This is a 650% return on the investment in the training.

Indirect Costs

The bigger costs are likely to be the indirect costs of that individual leaving.

Lost productivity: The time it takes for a new hire to reach full productivity levels.

Decreased patient volume: Practices may need to reschedule or reduce patient visits when short-staffed.

Impact on team morale and efficiency: The remaining staff may need to take on additional work, which could lead to burnout.

Calculation Method

A comprehensive formula to estimate the cost of turnover for a dental practice employee is:

Cost of turnover = (Recruitment costs + Onboarding costs + Lost productivity + Reduced revenue) x (1.5 to 2)

The multiplier of 1.5 to 2 accounts for additional hidden costs and varies based on the employee's role and experience level.

Take the dental leader scorecard to learn where you can improve your leadership. Then, you'll receive a FREE copy of my book, Lead Your Dental Practice!

Reduced sickness levels

Sickness levels can be measured by dividing the days of sick leave taken in a month by the total days of the workforce's capacity in your practice per month.

If you have 20 staff and 10 of them work full time whilst 10 of then work 2 days a week this gives a total capacity of 300 Days (10 x 20) + (10 x 10).

Let’s say you have had people off for 10 days in the month, which is 2.5 days per week. This gives a sickness level of 3.33%

How does leadership training help reduce sickness levels?

There are multiple ways in which leadership training helps reduce staff turnover.

When a team member is engaged in their work they are much less likely to ‘pull a sicky’. Creating alignment helps further this engagement.

The course covers specifics about being human and connecting effectively while having honest and sometimes difficult conversations. This increases the leader's ability to recognise, understand, and deal with any health challenges an individual may face.

The training will cover understanding team dynamics and reducing dynamics that can be toxic. These toxic dynamics can cause people to go off on sick leave.

What is the financial impact of a person going off sick?

According to various estimates, the average revenue for a dental chair in the UK ranges from £150,000 to £250,000. Typically, the £150,000 is for a fully NHS practice, whereas the £250,000 is for a fully private practice, with a mix in between.

If you are fully private, this means that with approximately 260 working days in a year, a chair costs close to £1,000 a day. If you have sickness that leads to a loss of chair time for the day, you potentially lose revenue with no compensation for a single lost day. For the NHS £600 a day. This is for just one lost day.

The other option is for another member of the team to fill in, but then they would be taken from another clinic.

The cost of a temporary nurse in the UK would range from £100 £150 a day. This is without the additional difficulties of bringing in somebody who doesn’t know the practice.

For an associate, this more directly means that revenue from a dental chair will be lost for the day.

With the Certificate priced at £1600, you would need to prevent 16 days of nurse sickness to cover the cost of replacement nurses. If you consider the cost of lost revenue for each day, you would only need to prevent 2 clinics from operating due to the training to recover the expenses. Remember, this is a long-term consideration, so it will pay back many times over the years.

Take the dental leader scorecard to learn where you can improve your leadership. Then, you'll receive a FREE copy of my book, Lead Your Dental Practice!

Practice culture

The culture of a practice is a combination of the values and beliefs of the people in the practice. Defining those and making those a reality is a very important part of leadership. It is not easy to measure but the impact of leadership on the practice culture is significant. There are some methods of measurement out there as defined in this article. These may be overly complex and burdensome for a dental practice but there are ways in which it can be measured and tracked.

How does leadership training impact the practice culture?

The Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership includes a section called alignment. In this section, we spend time understanding your practice's current culture and how you may want to change it. We then look at how to change this culture.

The being human section and having honest conversations also play a big role in changing the culture of the practice.

Understanding the team dynamics is critical in developing your culture and this is another section of the course.

What is the financial impact of leadership on the practice culture?

This will depend on what the culture is like currently and what changes you want to make with regard to the culture.

For example, one change would be that you want to become extremely focused on providing exceptional patient care, which may not currently be the case.

Let’s say that by creating this culture of patient care being a key priority, you are able to either prevent one patient from leaving the practice or you are able to entice one additional new patient compared to how it would have been. The average potential revenue of that patient over one year for basic private oral health services of 2 check ups and 2 hygiene appointments is £250. Over 4 years this is £1,000. This is without any treatments on top. This is where you see that the impact of culture on a dental practice is so huge. Dentistry is a service provided by people and therefore the culture of the practice becomes even more critical. Even 10 patients remaining or joining the practice due to a positive change in the culture would have a serious financial impact of tens of thousands of pounds. £1600 of investment in leadership training would provide financial return many times over that.

Take the dental leader scorecard to learn where you can improve your leadership. Then, you'll receive a FREE copy of my book, Lead Your Dental Practice!

Practice growth

A key element to driving practice growth is leadership. Leadership ensures resources are aligned across the practice around the things that are considered to be most important to drive the growth of the practice. Without leadership resources will not be aligned and it is therefore highly unlikely that any progress is made with the key areas that you want to progress. To draw an analogy it is like a football team or sports team not knowing how they are meant to be playing which means that nothing comes together and it is highly unlikely that any success or results will be achieved.

How does leadership training impact practice growth?

Part of the Certificate in Dental Practice Leadership involves a section called alignment. In this section, we analyse your dental practice's current situation and the environment within which it operates. We then look at the practice's future vision and key strategies that will drive it forward. This gives you something to get your team behind, and we also look at how to do this. This is a key part of growing your dental practice.

Other sections, such as creating a culture of feedback, will help you execute this strategy and make the growth happen.

What is the financial impact of leadership on practice growth?

This will depend on what the vision for the practice is and how you can plan to make that growth happen.

For example, you could decide to develop the orthodontic side of your dental practice.

By focusing on this, you can generate 10 new orthodontic cases that you didn’t have the previous year. If the average price is £3,500, this is £35,000 of additional revenue. Growth!

If on the other hand everybody is either doing lots of different things, there is unlikely to be any growth and rather just wasted energy. The other alternative is that that is just a lack of energy and proactive drive to make anything happen. Instead, people just do the minimum to keep things ticking over. The result again is no growth.

£1,600 of investment in leadership training on the Certificate would again provide financial return many times over that.

£3,500 of investment in the Diploma would ensure you have dedicated support and coaching in making the change you want in your practice and would provide that return many times over.

You may think the link is not that concrete. All I can do is reiterate that, from a pure financial perspective, this is where leadership potentially has the biggest impact and the biggest return on investment in this area.

Conclusion

Leadership can sometimes be viewed as this ‘nice to have’ that will help develop an individual and keep the team happy. It isn’t often prioritised and other technical or sales courses seem to take precedence.

Yet, as the above article shows, the financial return from great leadership is significant. Therefore, leadership training is essential. Leadership can be learnt and developed, so undergo some training in it!

Take the dental leader scorecard to learn where you can improve your leadership. Then, you'll receive a FREE copy of my book, Lead Your Dental Practice!