Name: How to automate onboarding at growing dental practices
Uploaded: 2026-09-08T17:48:07.344Z
Duration: 32 min 8 s
Description: How to automate onboarding at growing dental practices

Transcript for "How to automate onboarding at growing dental practices": Alright. Hello, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. We'll give everybody a few minutes here to, circle in. But in the meantime, would be great for you to just drop in the chat where you're calling in from. I always like to get to know the audience, a little bit. So we'll give everyone a few minutes here, before we dive in. Allison, how are you doing today? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Yeah. It's great to Yeah. To be here. Yeah. Cool. Alright. Well, we'll have we'll continue to have some folks trickling in, but while they do, we'll go ahead and get started. So thank you again, everybody, for joining us. We're gonna be talking through the hiring and onboarding systems that actually work for scaling your your dental practice today. And we'll do quick intros in a second, but I'm excited to be joined by Allison Norris, who's the founder and CEO of the Dental Group. So let's go ahead and dive right in. Yeah. So up first, just a a few housekeeping notes on my side. You have the chat. I just referenced that. Thanks for dropping in where you're calling in from. You can go ahead and, you know, drop any comments, in there throughout the presentation, connect with other attendees in the chat. We also do have a q and a tab. We will circle through a few of these questions, here at the end, but if anything comes up, throughout the webinar, feel free to use that tab. And then lastly, this session session is being recorded, and we will circle back, tomorrow or soon with the in with this in your inbox. Okay. Before we dive into intros, just to kinda set the stage, with a quick agenda. So, you know, we'll chat through kinda who I am, who Allison is. We'll go through the core problem, today, around kind of why simplifying hiring and onboarding is important. We'll talk through a few frameworks for how to do that, show a quick demo, of rippling in action, talk through a case study and kind of a before after framework there, and then, hit some next steps. Okay. So, yeah, just by way of introduction, my name is Brett Stanton. I lead, vertical marketing, at with a focus on hourly industries, health care being one of them. And we do have a lot of, customers in the dental space. And I'm thrilled to be joined today again by, Allison Norris. Allison, would love, for you to just introduce yourself to the audience. Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm Allison Norris. My background is a little bit unique. I started out as a dental hygienist, and it really gave me an actual ground level view of what it actually feels like to be onboarded into a dental practice. From there, I moved into nonclinical operations and recruiting, where I was responsible for building the systems that practices, used to hire and onboard clinical staff. So now through the Dentel group, I consult with practices who are trying to, you know, grow without a ton of administrative overhead. So I've been on all sides of the problem at this point. Yeah. For sure. I mean, it sounds like you your background is is really unique and and gonna be super valuable, for the audience today. Is there anything else you kinda wanna share about, yeah, just like, you know, your journey and where you've been, on the next step? Sure. So, I wanna spend just a minute on this because I think that context matters here. When I was a hygienist, I experienced onboarding as a new hire, and I can tell you it was not a smooth experience at all. There were days where I spent, you know, the first few hours just filling out paperwork. And I should have received, you know, the that weeks earlier or, you know, and it and it's frustrating as an employee, and it sets a bad tone right away. So when I moved into the operations side, I quickly, you know, I understood, why that happened. So, because the tools, a lot of times, they don't talk to one another. So, and then HR teams are trying to hold everything together manually. And, and so yeah. So that's what drove me to build better systems, and that's why I'm here. Yeah. Awesome. I'm excited to to continue that conversation. And I think before we do, would love to just kick us off with our first poll of the day, which, again, you can go ahead and use the polls tab, here in Goldcast. So we're we're really curious, like, what does onboarding a new hire at your practice look like today? And we set up, some examples here, everything from, like, it's chaotic. There's no sort of repeatable process, changes every hire to, you know, we have a great system. I tend to doubt that if you're here today, but, would love to see those answers, and you can just go ahead and drop them, into the polls tab. We'll give everybody just a second on that. And as those answers come in, like, we'll we'll react to those, live and chat through it. But just to keep moving here, I kinda promised that we would talk about why this matters. Again, like, I think all of you are likely here today because you felt why this is a problem. And, really, like, inconsistent onboarding is not just an inconvenience. Like, it does come with these real business consequences. And so, like, one thing we talk a lot about at Rippling is when every new hire starts from scratch and, again, you're cobbling together these systems, you're spending time that, like, you probably just don't have. Right? Like, you all are really focused on running your practices or, working closely with the leaders, who do. And I think, like, what we're really trying to do is offload some of that, kind of work that is super manual and is gonna fall on your plate. But we start to think about, like, a few things that we see, as as recurring problems. Like, I I've got four of them listed out here. But, Allison, I'd be curious, like, on your side, maybe which of these is most resonant, and kind of, like, what you've seen in your time in the industry. Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, the compliance piece, you know, in dental, you have a hygienist, you have assistants and clinical staff who need specific licenses and certifications. And, you know, if someone's license lapses and you don't catch it, you're not just dealing with an HR problem. You're you have a liability. So when you're tracking that in a spreadsheet or relying on staff to self report, you know, things can fall through the cracks. So I've seen practices where a hygienist was working for weeks after, you know, her license expired because nobody was, you know, was there to catch it. They don't have a system there to catch it. So that's pretty scary. Yeah. I mean, for sure. Compliance, credentialing, like, those are huge. We also, like, hit on a few of these. But, really, like, when you don't have that repeatable system, that is going to both lead to the compliance risk that you talked about, but also, again, like, some of these, like, manual delays. We also talk a lot about how the technology stack itself is really creating that those gaps in manual work. And because all of these different systems that you need to onboard an employee and get them credentialed and ready for their first shift are disconnected, that's gonna lead to, like, errors and risk. And so, you know, all told, like, the results here is that inconsistent onboarding is gonna cost time, money, and retention, and I think that is kind of, like, the, higher level lens or framing that, like, we'll talk through, kind of all of our frameworks for how we can really, like, start to streamline that for practices. So, yeah, as I think about these, frameworks, like, a few definitely, come to mind. And I think, like, I've tried to, like, distill this into kind of, like, what we see as a top four. And so just to kinda talk through each of these, one by one, and then, like, Allison, like, definitely wanna get your take. But first here is a centralized place to hire. So, essentially, like, the ability to recruit and then tie those, like, new hires directly into your core HR systems. Similarly, it's really important that you have automated onboarding workflows. So the minute you make that hire, you just sort of flip them on for lack of a better word, and then all of the various things that need to get done throughout that onboarding process happen automatically. You're not relying on, you know, either yourself or somebody on your team to kinda manually kick any of these workflows off. We just chatted through credentialing and compliance. That is super important. Being able to tie those core credentials directly to the employee profile and actually gate them from scheduling or access or any of these other things when there's a lapse. And then all of this, like, you can see this on the bottom, is really encompassed, and only possible when you have, like, a single unified core system. So, again, we'll go through each of these frameworks here, one by one. But, yeah, this this is, I think, like, the first one here just on, like, this centralized hiring hub, which I'm happy to say a little bit more about. But, Allison, would be curious on your side, like, how you're thinking about this centralized hiring hub and maybe, like, where some of the issues, start to break down. Yeah. Well, the, the multilocation piece is where it really breaks down. I mean, I've worked with groups where, you know, each office was basically doing their own thing, hiring independently. And so they were using different job boards, different processes and no visibility at the group level. So when you're trying to standardize care and patient experience across locations, you know, you can't have that kind of inconsistency in how you're bringing people in. So Yeah. I mean, I think it it it sounds basic, but it's actually, like, a a big problem that we see across, again, particularly, multilocation practices. Really, like, if you don't have a clear picture of, like, what open roles you have, who's in the pipeline, or how long it's taking to fill these roles, you're gonna have a really hard time streamlining the onboarding experience because, like, things are effectively broken, like, further upstream. So as you start to think about, like, the key question, and we've, like, framed all of these frameworks this way with, like, kind of, like, these core, things that you really need to hit as well as a key question for you to, like, assess for yourself, like, kind of how you're doing on each of these. I think, like, I would ask, like, if you're able to get a clear view of candidate pipeline across those locations. And if the answer is no, like, that probably means, again, that you're gonna have a really hard time, hiring and getting people ready to work, efficiently. Yeah. And so up next, we talk a lot about, these automated workflows, And I I kinda hit on this a little bit, earlier, but, Allison, we'd be curious for your take on this one here. Yeah. So, you know, this is the one that I feel most strongly about. The volume or the amount of of manual steps that are involved in onboarding someone in a dental practice is huge. And, I mean, you have your offer letter, you have your w four, your I nine, background check, benefits enrollment systems, you know, and, and then the their trainings. And so in most practices, someone on the HR or the front office team is kicking off each of those steps manually. They're chasing down, you know, the responses and then tracking the completions on a spreadsheet. And so what you actually need is for most of that to happen automatically the moment an offer is signed. And then so paperwork would just go out all on its own. You know, tasks get assigned based on role and then, you know, so a hygienist, you know, would get different training assignments than a dental assistant would or front office hire. You know? So, and then someone can see at a glance what's been completed and then what's still pending for that first day. So or actually before the first day. So Yeah. I mean, exactly. Right? It's just, like, simplifying this is gonna save time. It's also gonna, like, reduce gaps and errors. And so I think, like, what we think about here is, like, how many steps in your onboarding process still require a manual start. And if the answer is, like, more than zero, like, there is risk and there is, you know, a lack of efficiency or it's, like, a really inefficient way to set this up. So I think, like, that one is definitely probably one that, the audience can resonate with, and we'll ask a little bit more about that, later. But, up next, we also have compliance. So I know, Allison, you touched on this a little bit, but curious if you have anything else to add on this one here. Yeah. I mean, I definitely I know that we already touched touched on this, but, you know, I think it deserves its own slide because it's so specific to dental. You know, every clinical staff member has licenses and certifications that need to be current background checks, required trainings. And so in most practices, there's no system tracking when those things expire, which means that someone either catches it last minute or they don't catch it at all. And so the ideal state is one where the system is monitoring that automatically, you know, and alerting you when something expires or making it easy to see, for any employee at any location and, you know, basically, what's current and what needs attention. So that's not a nice to have. It's just a basic requirement, really. Yeah. And and I think, like, one of the things that it really comes down to is, like, how long before a new hire is actually ready to see a patient. So maybe they go ahead and complete all of their onboarding tasks, and you haven't yet captured their license and credentials that they really need again to be, like, legally qualified to see patients. And there could be, like, a serious lag there, where, like, maybe all the basics are handled, but the the license is not yet sorted. And so, really, what we're trying to do with, like, subsequent steps around, like, automated workflows and whatnot is, like, getting those licenses in hand situated so that, again, like, you mentioned, Allison, like, before the first day, they're ready to go in and hit the ground running. Yeah. And then I think, lastly, we're gonna chat through a unified system. And I think this is really the one that makes the other three possible. And it's it it all comes down to having that single unified system where employee data lives in one place and then flows everywhere to, like, different modules or areas of your business. When you have that, like, centralized HRIS payroll scheduling, onboarding separate, you're constantly moving data between them. And, again, it's gonna be manual and also very error prone. So if you have to go grab, like, one piece of information from your scheduling software, try to pull it into your HR software, tie it to an employee profile, that's gonna break. Right? Approved hours are not gonna make it into payroll. A new hire is set up in HR, but doesn't yet have system access to, like, IT or devices. It's all just, like, really siloed, and that is just, like, a major major problem. So I'd be curious, Allison, like, if you've seen this, across your practices and folks you consult with and maybe how you would think about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing that gets underappreciated here is what this what this does for your team. You know? I mean, when when HR isn't spending hours every week reconciling this data across systems, they can actually be more strategic. You know? They can look at turnover patterns. You know, think about hiring ahead of seasonal demand, you know, support the managers instead of just, you know, keeping keeping the the lights on administratively. Yeah. Exactly. And I think, like, this key question is sort of downstream of that. It's like, how much time are you spending moving this data? And, like, even further, if you had that time back, what would you use it for? And oftentimes, like, it's exactly the stuff you're describing. It's, like, actually making the business better, not just, like, pushing papers and kind of handling all of this, like, admin junk. So I think, like, that is that's huge. And as we, like, transition here to a poll, I think it's a it's a good, tie in to something we were talking about previously, which is really curious for the audience how you're tracking licenses, certifications, and compliance, for your staff. And, again, we can pop this into the polls tab. But, really, the thought here is, like, do you have a consistent process? Are you relying on staff to self report, or is this, like, getting tracked, in a spreadsheet or somewhere that's very manual? Hopefully, we'll see a lot of d answers, but my sense is we'll probably see a lot of, a's, b's, and c's. And so go ahead and use, the poll chat. And as we continue to flip through those and and see some of those answers come in, I'm gonna actually kinda show, like, ideal state. Right? We've painted the picture of kind of what's been broken across, compliance, a lack of automated workflows, not having unified system. Right? All of these, like, key frameworks and essentials. And really, like, onboarding should be easy, and you should be able to automate changes to your workforce without interrupting care delivery. It's like, what does that look like? All of the changes that you would have, with your clinical or nonclinical staff should be possible in ninety seconds. So you should be able to onboard in ninety seconds, meaning you can set up payroll access, all the other stuff we talked about without delaying that first shift. You should be able to transition employees in ninety seconds. So that could look like maybe you have a hygienist at one location. She picks up and moves her family, wants to work out of one of your other locations. You should easily, in the system, be able to transition that in ninety seconds. And then similarly with offboarding, whether, you know, you have somebody who leaves the practice or, like, whatever the circumstances might be like there. When they leave or change status, that should be possible in ninety seconds. So that's kinda like the ideal end state that we are really working towards. And I actually wanna show everybody, with a quick demo kind of how this is possible. So I'm gonna turn this over to a solutions consultant on our team to just, like, walk through in just a couple minutes, like, what the, kind of ideal end state looks like here, and what is really possible in Rippling. So we will kick it over there and then be right back, to continue chatting with you guys. Hi. This is Steven, a platform solutions consultant here at Rippling. Today, we'll be going over the onboarding tracker built right within Rippling. The value of the onboarding tracker is to track all the new hires, match them with their associated prerequisite tasks outside of standard things like, offer letter signature, signing of w twos, and then track the progress of the task completion over time. Let's take a look. I'm going into my onboarding tracker here, and we're seeing three different tabs. The first being the actual progress and a quick look at where your new hires are, how many tasks are there total, and how many tasks are remaining. And then we scroll further down, and we're seeing different breakup data, notably, expected onboarding completion, by task remaining and completed as well as task remaining and versus task completed. And so we're seeing, I, Steven, have more, have fewer tasks remaining than Christopher Collins. Let's let's keep keep, digging in. So how do we know which tasks get assigned to which people? This starts within the task reference table where your your organization is able to set up, various tasks, assign them to different categories. And so whenever an employee starts, it recognizes which category they fall into. So we have ones for everyone, salary full time, hourly, so on and so forth, and then assigns it to those specific employees. Now this can certainly be by different categories such, such as department, maybe team, or location. In our case, we have it by employment type. Now let's dig further into the new hires and the tasks. And so whenever there's a new hire that starts, we're a we create a record for them with an expected onboarding completion date. And so if we look at the Steven record, we're seeing the start date is December 1, expected completion date, total tasks completed, percent completion, and then we're seeing the associated tasks. Now this is looking at the tasks that Steven has specifically been assigned to. And so we can see that a bit deeper when we go to the tasks tab and dig in further specifically to in progress completed or assigned tasks where employees are able to enter, the specific task description, any additional notes, and any other relevant information. Now that your organization is able to truly dig in to the various tasks, that are required for new hires by your specific category and then have full visibility and notifications associated to them, you'll see a lot of value within using Rippling as well as tracking it within this app. Thank you so much for watching. Okay. Yeah. Thanks, so much. Excited to kind of continue the combo here with our third poll. This calls back to the, unified system that we've been talking about and just, like, how important that consolidation is. And so we're really curious for you folks in the audience how many tools, your team is touching today to get a new hire fully set up, from offer to first shift. Is it one? Again, hope that's the case, but suspect it's at least a few different tools. And so go ahead and and just drop your answer there in the poll section. And as you do that, we will move forward to a case study. So, yeah, just to kinda make this concrete with an example, I'm gonna, like, format this as, like, kind of a before after. And so before, Rippling, an 18 location, dental group in Central Texas, was losing hours to manual onboarding and payroll mistakes. And really, like, what that meant in practice was kind of the opposite of, like, the ideal state that we've been talking through today. New hires were spending, their first day chasing missing paperwork and often, like, delayed, on actually being able to deliver patient care. Their payroll and scheduling lived in separate systems that didn't sync, so that was, like, really challenging both for employees and admins. And all of this, again, was because the practice was held together by a patchwork of tools. And you have a quote here from, Swish Dental's HR director, really just on, like, as they continue to grow. All of these different platforms were, like, being cobbled together and, like, we're not speaking to one another. So as we think about, like, how Rippling is different and how that, like, helped Swish Dental and others, kind of get this, like, back on the rails and, like, really improve and streamline the efficiency of their operations, We are different because we sit on a rich and robust employee graph. And, really, what that means is, like, any change that happens for an employee, any status update, we talked about this with, like, the ninety second onboarding, offboarding, etcetera, flows to all these different modules which are all connected. So they're all built in house by rippling. There's no, like, middleware or anything blocking connectivity between each of these modules, and so it makes it really easy for all these things to flow to one another. So you kinda see that here with this visual. Maybe this is, like, your practice management software here on the right. Like, we have Epic listed, but this could be any number of other tools, that, like, you might use to run your patient data. But all of it is connected with the employee at the center, and, like, what that allows is for practices like Swish Dental to really completely overhaul their back office. So for Swish, they saved fifteen hours per month onboarding new hires. So, like, a very significant amount of time by automated onboarding, seamless scheduling, and a true all in one platform, that is rippling. And so, really, like, you can start to, again, see this with the quote. We talked through, like, cobbled, really messy stack, and then end stage is, like, being able to hire at the push of a button, send all the documents the employee needs. It's really, like, a life changing thing for their practice. Okay. I think, Allison, did you have any thoughts on, like, Swish Dental or anything, that we just chatted through? Yeah. I mean, it's, it the, I think that that life changing sounds, dramatic until you've actually experienced what it was like before. You know, when you've spent years manually sending onboarding emails and tracking down missing paperwork and, you know, running payroll corrections, and then all of a sudden that just goes away, it genuinely changes what your job feels like. So you go from being more reactive to to more proactive, and that's a huge deal. So Yeah. Absolutely. Could not agree more there. And I think, like, obviously, you've you've lived in this world for a long time, so appreciate that. Before we get to q and a, we did wanna make sure we leave you all with a few useful resources. So here are three, that we have available, and the links are gonna be in the resource panel, on your Goldcast. First, we have a new hire onboarding checklist designed specifically for dental practices. Excuse me. That's gonna be a practical starting point that you can use right now to, like, really start to implement a lot of things and frameworks that we talked about today. Second is an AI prompts guide for health care leaders. So maybe you're curious about, like, how you can bring AI, into your practice. There's obviously, like, a lot of chatter about that, both in health care and generally today. And so this is, like, a great practical guide for how you can make your HR workflows faster. And then third, hits on, like and expands on a lot of what we talked about today on streamlining operations, and how that can, like, actually help you improve recruitment and retention in your practice. Allison, any of these, you know, really jump out to you in particular? Yeah. I'd I'd like to point out the onboarding checklist. I mean, even if you already have a process, it's a good good, gut check. You know, you might find steps that you've been missing or skipping and and or doing out of order. So Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I think that's, like, obviously, like, the most directly relevant to today. So definitely grab that one. Feel free to also access, like, any of these other, resources as you think about kind of next steps coming out of today. And then, yeah, just the last poll here would be whether you're interested in a personalized work through work, excuse me, walk through of how Rippling can help you get a handle on your clinical onboarding. So go ahead and drop an a in the chat, for a yes, and our team will be sure to follow-up with you, about that. But in the meantime, we are going to take a few questions. So Allison and I will monitor the q and a tab and kinda tag team these, as we go.