{ the dental team } by Jodi Schafer, SPHR, SHRM-SCP It’s All About the Benjamins
I need to get my compensation house in order. My employees’ wages are all over the board and based solely on their negotiation skills. When I recently hired a new (and highly experienced) hygienist, I had to pay her much more than I was paying anyone else in order to bring her on. Unfortunately, she told her coworkers what she was making and you can imagine what happened next. I need to figure out how much these employees should be paid, but I don’t know where to begin. How do I go about fixing this problem?
discipline your new employee for discussing her pay. Many employers think they can prohibit an employee from doing this, but according to the National Labor Relations Act, employees have the right to discuss their wages, hours and working conditions with others. If left unresolved, pay dis- crepancies can result in potential claims of discrimination, as well as resentment and anger among your team.
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You’re right to want to fix this! The goal is to do so with the least amount of damage possible. Your first order of business is to get a handle on how much your current employees are paid. I suggest you develop a spreadsheet with the following headers:
NAME POSITION DATE OF HIRE YEARS EXPERIENCE ADVANCED TRAINING/DEGREES BASE WAGE PER HOUR INCENTIVE PAY (if any)
This spreadsheet will give you a visual so you can see how far apart each member of your team really is from one other.
You will then need to determine the market value for each of your positions. A job’s market value varies based upon a number of factors including: the current economic situation, location of the practice, supply of
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hile I understand the predicament you are in, let me start by congratulat- ing you for not wanting to
qualified candidates, credentials needed and, of course, the success of the practice (amount of money you can afford to pay). By learning what other practices with similarly situated positions are paying, you can determine each position’s value.
One way to do this could be to contact your dentist friends and colleagues to find out what they’re paying, but a better resource is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)¹, which is a national database of all job titles broken down by state, region and profession. Other resources are the ADA’s Employment of Den- tal Practice Personnel survey² or professional association surveys for dental assistants or dental hygienists. The Dental Assisting National Board³ has a salary survey available
and the Dentistry iQ⁴ provides a state-by- state comparison of hourly rates for dental hygienists (based on reader surveys).
Use the data you compile to establish a sal- ary range for each position (that fits within your budget) and then compare the wages you’re currently paying your staff with the salary ranges you’ve established. Identify any outliers that you feel need to be adjusted in order to bring more equity to the practice. The hardest part will be implementing this change. This is what I would do:
1. For employees paid below market value, increase their pay incrementally over a period of time until you get them inside your newly established wage band (as long as they’re doing their job well).
