5 Top Tips for Dental Practices To Consider When Choosing a Locum Dental Agency.

When your dental practice needs to book a locum dental nurse, what factors do you consider when choosing which dental agency to contact?

With more and more dental agencies than ever before to choose from, it can be tough to decide who gets your first call.

Every Wednesday for the past 4 weeks we've been be sending you our top tips on what factors you should consider when choosing, or changing, your locum dental agency.

To follow on from last week’s ‘factors to consider’ article on ‘Quality of Service’, our final week's Top Tip No.5 focuses on 'Quality of Staff'……….

'Q U A L I T Y  O F  S T A F F 

Quality of staff – Probably the biggest factor of all when choosing a locum dental agency is the quality of the agency’s locum dental nurses. It top tumps all other factors and is ultimately what the agency is judged on. The quality of the locum staff the agency has on their books will help the agency build their reputation (factor 1) and contribute heavily towards providing the agency’s clients with value for money (factor 2). No matter how good the quality of their locum staff, they do still need to compliant (factor 3) and they need to be supplied to you by a conscientious agency who provide you with a first-class service (factor 4). But at the end of the day, a skilled and experienced locum dental nurse who is confident in their own abilities and who is happy to help wherever needed is ideally what a dental practice needs a dental agency to provide them with.

It’s difficult to gauge what the quality of an agencies dental nurses are like without having them work in your practice first (although we did give you a few tips on this in our ‘factor 1’ blog!), but locum dental nurses will generally perform better when they are happy with the agency they work with. A highly valued and appreciated team member is an enthusiastic and productive team member! So, if you book a locum dental nurse through an agency, how happy they are in their job roles should shine though into the quality of the work they do for you.

As well as our stringent recruitment process to help ensure we recruit suitably skilled and experienced dental nurses, S4S Team also get to know our team m,embers, highly value each and every one of them and create a team atmosphere for our nurses to help them through their journey in what can sometimes be a lonely job role. This helps to ensure that when our locum team members work in your dental practice, they are enthusiastic, hardworking, provide excellent patient care and are proud to represent our agency.

5 Top Tips for Dental Practices To Consider When Choosing a Locum Dental Agency.

When your dental practice needs to book a locum dental nurse, what factors do you consider when choosing which dental agency to contact?

With more and more dental agencies than ever before to choose from, it can be tough to decide who gets your first call.

Every Wednesday for the last 3 weeks we’ve been sending you our top 5 tips on what factors you should consider when choosing, or changing, your locum dental agency.

To follow on from last week’s ‘factors to consider’ article on ‘Compliance’, this week Top Tip No.4 focuses on 'Quality of Service'……….

'Q U A L I T Y  O F  S E R V I C E'

A big factor when considering which locum dental agency will get your bookings is the quality of the service the agency provides to their clients. How friendly and approachable are their office staff? How quickly do they confirm your bookings with you? How easy is it to book locum staff? Are they available when you need them? What other services do they offer in order to make your life easier?

The level of service doesn’t stop there either. You also need to consider the invoicing and accounts aspect too. Are their invoices accurate? Do they offer your practice fair payment terms? Do they quickly sort out any accounts queries you may have in a timely way? All of these questions should have positive answers if you want to receive a good all-round quality service from your locum agency.

Having said this, no agency is perfect and in a service sector such as locum staffing, mistakes will happen. It’s how the agency deals with those hiccups that sets them apart from others. The people you deal with at the agency need to take responsibility for any errors and understand the impact those errors may have on your practice, and your patients. You need to know that you are dealing with people who hold themselves accountable and who are able to truly empathise with your situation to enable them to resolve matters in a satisfactory way.

S4S Team is run by both dental and recruitment professionals with extensive experience of providing highly valued clients with a first-class level of service. We know what it takes to run a good temp agency and we know what it takes to recruit good locum dental nurses to our team too. We do know however that we aren’t perfect and we do occasionally make mistakes. Sometimes our locum nurses get sick and can’t fulfil their bookings. This unfortunately is unavoidable. What we will guarantee you is that we will take ownership for our mistakes and do our very best to redeem ourselves. We always work to our company’s core values of honesty, integrity and always working in an ethical manner. We pride ourselves on the quality of service we provide to you! We also know that you can never stop improving and never stop learning, so will always act on constructive feedback from our clients.

Keep your eyes peeled for next week's Top Tip where we'll be looking at 'Quality of Staff'!

5 Top Tips for Dental Practices To Consider When Choosing a Locum Dental Agency.

When your dental practice needs to book a locum dental nurse, what factors do you consider when choosing which dental agency to contact?

With more and more dental agencies than ever before to choose from, it can be tough to decide who gets your first call.

We've been sharing our top 5 tips on what factors you should consider when choosing, or changing, your locum dental agency.

To follow on from last week’s ‘factors to consider’ article on ‘Value for Money’, this week Top Tip No.3 focuses on 'Compliance'……….

'C O M P L I A N C E'

Having touched on this last week, a huge factor to consider when it comes to choosing your locum dental agency should be the agency’s compliance and vetting procedures. Any agency worth their salt should have set-in-stone recruitment processes that meet all legal requirements and mirror CQC guidelines.

Don’t be afraid to ask the agency what their recruitment processes are and ask them to provide you with evidence of this when you book a dental nurse with them. Not only should the agency hold copies of a locum dental nurse’s Right to Work in the UK documentation, enhanced DBS certificate, indemnity insurance and proof of GDC registration, they should also have two employer references on file.

An application/registration form should also have been completed by the locum dental nurse with criminal conviction declarations signed for and their GDPR consent given to enable the agency to share this documentation with your practice. If CQC came to inspect your practice you need to feel confident that the agency you use to supply locums to your practice have carried out the correct vetting procedures and that their locum dental nurses are as compliant as your own staff members.

S4S Team take our compliance procedures and recruitment process very seriously. We know that the implications of not doing so could be very damaging. Not only to our business but to your dental practice too. We take the time to get to know the people who apply for work with S4S Team before inviting them to register with us. We have a fully compliant electronic candidate registration system in place where candidates cannot proceed with their application to join our team without providing us with the required evidence and electronically signing the forms to declare that the information they have provided us with is genuine.

When this initial process is finished we then check, and double check, that the documentation is valid and apply for employer references. Only when this process is complete do we then introduce our new recruits to your dental practice. We also regularly compliance check our existing locum dental nursing team to make sure their qualifications and certifications are kept fully up to date.

Keep your eyes peeled for next week's Top Tip where we'll be looking at 'Quality of Service'!

5 Top Tips for Dental Practices To Consider When Choosing a Locum Dental Agency.

When your dental practice needs to book a locum dental nurse, what factors do you consider when choosing which dental agency to contact?

With more and more dental agencies than ever before to choose from, it can be tough to decide who gets your first call.

Over the next 5 weeks we’ll be sharing our top 5 tips on what factors you should consider when choosing, or changing, your locum dental agency.

To follow on from last week’s first ‘5 Factors’ blog about ‘Reputation’, this week we are focusing on ‘VALUE FOR MONEY!’

‘VALUE FOR MONEY!’

When looking into using a locum dental agency there are various factors that should be considered and while pricing is definitely high on the agenda, actual value for money should be your biggest cost consideration. When people think about value for money, a lot of the time they tend to think about who will provide them the lowest price. Choosing the lowest price isn’t always the best option with any kind of purchase. But having said this, you don’t want to pay over the odds either.

There are some seriously astronomically priced agencies out there at present taking full advantage of the fact that there are staff shortages in the dental industry. Things that need to be considered are; What do these agencies offer for their high prices that other more reasonably priced agencies don’t offer? Are they offering something extra to justify this price? Or just overcharging?

At the same time though practices need to be weary of the very cheaply priced agencies out there too. Why are they so cheap? Running a compliant employment agency and paying locum dental nurses a competitive wage is certainly not an inexpensive affair. So where are these agencies saving on their costs? Compliance and vetting? Can the agencies provide you with evidence that they have undertaken full compliance checks on their nurses? Are they flying under the radar of the HMRC? Are they paying for the correct insurances in order protect your business and your patients, such as employer’s liability and public liability insurances?

Although some of these considerations may not have a direct effect on your dental practice, they should still be taken into account when looking into choosing your locum dental agency.

S4S Team offer dental practices fantastic value for money. Not only do we supply your practice with expert locum dental nurses at a very fair price, we do so without cutting any compliance corners. All of our nurses go through a rigorous vetting process which we can provide you with evidence of. We have all the necessary insurances in place to protect your business and we operate with the highest levels of honesty, integrity, and always work in an ethical manner.

We also go above and beyond our competitors when offering your dental practice something more for your money. S4S Team have recently introduced our new online Locum Shift Rota where you can log into your personal account and check any dates you have booked with us and which nurses we have booked in for you. This can save you a lot of time when confirming bookings, double checking the dates you have booked and can really help ease the stresses of managing staff rotas. Value for money right there!

Keep your eyes peeled for next week's Top Tip where we'll be looking at 'Compliance'!

5 Top Tips for Dental Practices To Consider When Choosing a Locum Dental Agency.

When your dental practice needs to book a locum dental nurse, what factors do you consider when choosing which dental agency to contact?

With more and more dental agencies than ever before to choose from, it can be tough to decide who gets your first call.

Every Wednesday for the next 5 weeks we’ll be sending you our top 5 tips on what factors you should consider when choosing, or changing, your locum dental agency.

This week we’ll start with…….

REPUTATION.

When it comes to choosing your locum dental agency, the agencies reputation within the local dental industry should definitely be a huge factor that needs some serious consideration. Maybe even more so than what price they actually charge?

If your practice hasn’t used a particular agency before, or you are looking into using a locum dental agency for the first time, then it is wise to do a bit of digging beforehand. Word of mouth referrals and seeking out recommendations are a great way of deciding which agency will get your call. Ask yourself the following;

- Have any of the other practice managers/principal dentists who you know used this agency before?

- What was their experience like?

- Do you or any of your staff know any locum nurses that work for this agency, or have worked for them in the past?

- Do they employ good nurses?

- Do their locum nurses have good things to say about their experience of working with the agency?

If your struggling for people to ask, other useful tools to use are taking a look at the agency’s reviews on Google, client testimonials on their website and good old social media reviews!

At S4S Team, we have built up a solid reputation of working to our core values of honesty and integrity and always working in an ethical manner. This is evidenced in how quickly our company has grown over the last 6 years and is also reflected in the outstanding feedback and reviews our agency receives.

Keep your eyes peeled for next week's Top Tip where we'll be looking at 'Value for Money'!