{ association insights } by Vicki Wilbers • MDA Executive Director


Reskilling & Upskilling: Keeping Workforce Stress From Crushing Us


T


here is a bulls eye target on us all related to stress in the workforce. It can take on dif- ferent shapes and sizes within


different professions and businesses, but since the pandemic, I’ve not heard of any employer who’s not been affected by it in some way.


It hits us square in the face with new healthcare or industry regulations and requirements. It swarms us with dra- matic shortages of workers, and it flexes its large muscle with transformational changes desired by employees—but often reluctantly adopted by employers—to stay ahead of the new way of doing things.


It’s disheartening to hear from so many of you struggling to find employees. Everyone is affected—rural and urban settings and all areas of the state: north/south/east/ west. You’re telling us you’ve not been able to rehire dental team members: assistants, hygienists and front office staff members for many months if not more than a year. We know there are assisting and hygiene pro- grams on the brink of closing, as well as one dental assisting program that has closed, and hygiene schools down from 10 to six over the past several years. We know training oppor- tunities just to onboard dental assistants for working within a dental setting are lacking.


MDA has created a taskforce to address these matters, and last month, more than 300 of you took a survey from the State Office of Dental Health and the MDA to help us identify post-COVID workforce needs and shortages. We thank you tremendously for this, and Dr. Guy Deyton dives into some of the outcomes from the survey on page 20. Additionally, we have been in contact with many of the schools to address the concerns and help identify what we can do to assist.


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efficiency while adding an additional benefit to keep team members satisfied and engaged.


With one dental assisting program closing (that’s one too many), MDA’s EFDA program stepped up to assist the final students in be- coming EFDA permitted before graduating. We also are creating a program to provide better training to successfully pass the Basic Skills Exam, one of the pathways to become EFDA-certified, and we know of programs working toward assistant training in high schools. Yet, we realize all this is not enough.


So, what else can be done? I believe we must start thinking more about the following: transforming the way we educate dental team members; permitting teams to work at their highest level of education; adjusting ideas on having only a 9-5 job schedule; purs- ing different modalities to provide care; and, at the same time, relinquishing the mindset that our way is the only way. This is not only something healthcare professions are considering, but something all industries and professions are having to consider—often with reluctance.


Even within the MDA executive office, our way of running our business is changing. Fortunately, we can offer remote work to our team members, which has increased


It might be that within your office set- ting, you’ve had to adjust your think- ing on allowing team members to have shortened or adjusted schedules, while ensuring these continue to allow for progress within the practice and provi- sion of quality patient care. In addition, with current team members or lack of some team members, adjustments seem to be likely for who is doing what. I’ve heard from dentists, “I’ve had to do prophys again for the first time in 10 years.” What else do we look at? Do we figure out a way to reskill or upskill who we have employed?


I borrowed those terms from a blog post¹ recently shared with me titled, “Reskilling and Upskilling: A Strategic Response to Changing Skill Demands”. The ideas within the blog dis- cuss the upskilling and reskilling of employ- ees both being ways to combat the expected shortages within the workforce. Reskilling is the process of learning new skills so you can do a different job, or of training people to do a different job. Upskilling is the process of learning new skills or of teaching workers new skills. The person sharing it suggested this is perhaps how we need to look at our current dental teams and workforce short- ages—can they be reskilled (or upskilled) to meet the current demands and help practices to run efficiently, even while you try to add the team members you need?


I like the terms because it can help us to think more along the lines of maybe we do have the team we need, and we just need to reconfigure some things for optimal performance. And just so you don’t feel this is occurring only in your practice, within


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