FOR Dental & GP Practices,

Specific modules have been designed, specifically for Practice staff to develop leadership skills and knowledge.  Participants should ideally attend the whole programme for maximum benefit but can opt in and out to meet specific needs.  All modules are a half day duration to fit in with Practice needs and support Continuous Professional Development.

All programmes are delivered at hotel locations across the UK. Costs are reduced by 15% for those signing up in 2009 at only £90 per person per session plus vat.

At the end of this programme of leadership training modules, Practice Managers will have a good understanding of how to manage  people issues  within the legislation, understand best practice and implement HR policies and procedures effectively.  They will have a greater understanding of their role and how to support the principal GP or Dentist in driving the people agenda to maximize individual and Practice performance. The whole programme is designed to equip Practice Managers and team leaders with the essential skills and knowledge required to meet their role requirements effectively, professionally and with confidence.

Module 1            Introduction to leadership skills

Setting the scene, course objectives and outline programme
Leadership skills
Habits of effective leaders, what does good look like
Lessons to be learned from great leaders in business, politics and sport
Guidelines to good leadership and main courses of failure
Assessing your personal leadership skills and style
People and task, getting the balance right
What the Practice needs from its Practice Manager/team leader
Review expectations, roles and responsibilities
Ownership, responsibility, making things happen
Action planning and preparation for module 2

Module 2            Performance management

Review module 1, learning into action
Managing team performance, measuring success
Driving Practice performance, setting and meeting targets and objectives
Setting objectives and monitoring performance
Introducing performance appraisal systems- best practice
Developing appraisal and feedback skills
Coaching and developing
Action planning, preparation for module 3

Module 3            Managing within the law

Review module 2, learning into action
Managing underperformance- conduct and capability
Managing resources
Clarifying expectations and setting standards
Coaching and counselling
Disciplinary and grievance procedures, terminations
New statutory guidelines and ACAS
The legal framework
Assessing risks
Auditing your HR policies, procedures and practices
Action planning, preparation for module 4

Module 4     Managing absence and stress

Review module 4, learning into action
Short term absence
Long term absence
Stress awareness and management
Minimum standards and procedures for effective management and control
Documentation
Action planning, preparation for module 5

Module 5     Recruitment and selection

Best practice process
Competency based interviewing – design and practice
Discrimination- the risks
Record keeping
Clarity of match to job description and person specification
Validity and reliability of selection methods/assessment tools
Cost effective selection routes
Action planning, preparation for module 6

Module 6      Team building

Creating your effective working team
Team working, team building
Tuckman model- forming to storming
Morale and motivation
Understanding motivation
Motivation theories
Practical application
Practical, effective communication
Decision making, problem solving, managing time and resources
Action planning

Module 7            Health & Safety

Health and safety risk assessment
Internal ownership and compliance
Best practice
Legal requirements
Documentation and reporting
The role of the practice manager and key responsibilities to meet the legislation

Additional Development Activities for individual practices

Team Building
Lead dentist and GP- business owner strategic planning
Coaching for the top team
Facilitation to support the management team in identifying, clarifying, documenting and implementing focused business plans and key objectives
Financial planning.

So you don’t have the need for a costly, full time HR specialist on site? We can help. If you have no HR specialist in the division, or are worried about your processes and policies, and whether you meet all legislative requirements, fear not.  Routledge Blakey Associates, can provide your total HR support, services and consulting.

Our services include:

Risk assessment and surveys.

24/7 telephone advice line.

Ad hoc advice and support for all one-off people issues.

Designing staff handbooks, contracts and policies.

Mentoring and developing an internal HR practitioner

Provision of employment law updates/newsletters.

Cost-effective one- or three-year retainers available.

3 year retained HR services.

Set up maintenance of HR requirements & files.

Assessment Centres and bespoke activities can be tailored to also support your recruitment and selection of new employees, or to support staff development, career or succession planning and talent management. We support clients by delivering the approach most suited to their needs, including:-human resources,human resource,outsourcing

Role analysis.

Motivational assessment.

Assessment and development centres.

Occupation and personality testing.

Analysis, feedback and creation of development plans.

360 degree performance appraisals.

Psychometric assessment.

Behavioural assessment.

Personality profiling.

Case studies.

The Health & Safety service is delivered by our own Risk Management professionals, all of whom have minimum NEBOSH qualification and experience in applying Health & Safety in the “real world”.

By subscribing to the Health & Safety Audit your business will benefit from:-

• Full Health & Safety audit of your premises and work activities
• Preparation of a bespoke Health & Safety Manual
• A consultant visit to “install” the system
• Access to 24-hour telephone advice service
• Regular updates to keep your business abreast of relevant legislation changes
• Scheduled visits to advise and monitor
• Liaison with enforcing authorities, customers, suppliers, insurers….etc (acting as your “competent person”)
• Provision of monthly newsletter to keep you informed of changes to Health & Safety Law

Health and Safety Training

Designing and delivering health and safety training courses tailor made to your needs covering a whole range of topics including how to carry out an internal risk assessment, health and safety awareness for managers and legislation updates.

RBA bring a vast expertise and history of succession planning to ensure that clients achieve the full benefits – in terms of motivation, performance and cost saving - from a professionally planned and implemented process.

Through the RBA succession planning process, clients find that they also retain superior employees because they appreciate the time, attention, and development that the organisation is investing in them.

Successful planning involves the identification of the organization’s long term goals, and the identification and understanding of the developmental needs of employees. From this foundation, RBA helps clients to ensure that all key employees understand their career paths and the roles they are being developed to fill. This helps to focus resources on key employee retention.

Identifying and developing groups of talented people will support short term replacement and longer term successors.

By engaging Routledge Blakey Associates Ltd to chart their course through the management of change, clients ensure that the common pitfalls are avoided, and that change becomes precisely what it should be – a move towards the achievement of corporate goals – rather than a destructive, negative process.

Before starting organizational change, RBA will ensure that your aims and objectives are clearly understood. You will ask yourself: What do we want to achieve from this change, why, and how will we know that the change has been achieved? Who is affected by this change, and how will staff react to it? How much of this change can we achieve ourselves, and what parts of the change do we need help with? These aspects also relate strongly to the management of personal as well as organizational change.

The RBA approach – which is based on a history of success, allied to established best practice and the most robust theory – ensures that change is understood and managed in a way that people can cope effectively with.

For complex changes, we will help you to undertake a fully project managed process and ensure that you augment this with consultative communications to agree and gain support for the reasons for the change. Involving and informing people also creates opportunities for others to participate in planning and implementing the changes, which lightens your burden, spreads the organizational load, and creates a sense of ownership, employee engagement and understanding among the people affected.

Our approach includes the following:

Training needs analysis (TNA) to meet business plans

Prioritising outcomes, action planning

Tailor-made course design and delivery

Management coaching and development programmes

Team building

Leadership development

We also run specific HR modules, equipping line managers to manage effectively within the law, including:

Performance Management and Appraisal

Absence management

Recruitment and selection

Discipline and Grievance handling

Managing Change

Equality & Diversity

Employment Law updates for managers

Best practice & new policy and procedures

Our approach is quite simple – to equip executives with whatever they need to help them become more successful at what they do. By definition, this process is bespoke, as the needs of every individual differ. However, there are several common strands – abilities that are common requirements for all successful leaders – which drive the basic requirements of executives

• The ability to motivate teams and turn them into high performing, highly motivated units
• The ability to communicate with authority and confidence to people at all levels
• To become more pro-active in the anticipation of business problems
• To become outstanding and inspirational leaders
• To improve sales performance
• To develop planning and strategic thinking skills
• To improve networking skills
• To take the business to another level

Facilitation with Top Teams

We will also work with your top team in facilitating discussion regarding where the business is now, where it wants/needs to be, how to bridge the gap, key challenges and structured action planning linked to business plans.

A review of the business and recognition of its key successes and challenges enables robust action plans and key business objectives to be created. These can be implemented with RBA support as required.

RBA understand how different people are motivated for different tasks. By engaging RBA to develop a motivational strategy and action, clients benefit from more highly motivated staff who, by definition, improve their performance, and that of the organisation.

The RBA approach is to look at all contributors to motivation, founded on a clear understanding of the aims and objectives of the organisation. Having taken this ‘holistic’ view, RBA will design and implement strategies and actions to ensure that people are motivated to achieve these aims.

Actions and outputs delivered by RBA may include:

Remuneration and reward structure.

Remuneration benchmarking.

Employee engagement.

Culture and organisation behaviours.

Employee communication.

Morale improvements.

Motivational training and coaching.

Appraisal and performance management systems.

Leadership style.

Once the decision has been taken, most organisations will find themselves seeking to achieve two partly contradictory objectives; firstly to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible in order to minimise the impact on the business, customers and the other staff; and secondly to ensure that the procedures for selecting staff to be made redundant and the processes for implementing the redundancies, are as fair and reasonable as possible. This requirement is of course one which takes significant time and resources itself and has to satisfy certain legal requirements, as minimum requirements.

Additionally, and related to the second of these objectives, employers should consider that there are two other groups of staff who, whilst not directly caught by the redundancy requirement, are likely to be affected to a significant degree.

The colleagues, of those affected, particularly those in the same department, function, or location, are likely to become anxious about their own employment security. Some, particularly top performers, may consider jumping before they’re pushed and start looking for other jobs. Others may simply become less committed to the organisation until it becomes clear whether or not they are safe; as a consequence sales or the quality of delivery may fall further – the very opposite of what’s needed at such a time. Of course some may be spurred on in an effort to ensure they are not at risk.

The third group to be affected, will be the managers charged with managing and implementing the programme. They will have to become proficient in: the application of selection criteria, consultation with staff and their representatives and most difficult of all, communicating the bad news to those staff who have been selected.

Where the in-house skills and knowledge does not exist we can support and even manage and deliver the whole process.

It is therefore a primary requisite to square the circle as effectively as possible. A redundancy programme which is over quickly and which is seen to have been implemented fairly, sensitively and reasonably is one most likely to minimise the adverse effects on the organisation as a whole. Of course the opposite is also true and should be avoided if at all possible.

In order to help people through redundancy programmes, RBA offer an unrivalled service:

Redundancy support, involving:

Design of documentation

Briefings and consultation

Managing downsizing campaigns

Re-structuring, role clarification, competency frameworks

Managing the next steps

Trade union liaison

Compliance with legal procedures

Selection criteria, design of selection matrix

Calculation of redundancy packages and final communications

Career outplacement support, involving:

One to one support

Group workshops

Open resource centres

Seminars, can include:

Looking to the future

Creating a winning CV

Marketing yourself

Interviewing skills

Financial planning

Self-employment