Episode 246 03 Jul, 2024
Increasing Staff Retention with Shelli Warren
-
With Shelli Warren

In recent years, retaining top talent has become more challenging than ever for group practice owners.
The hard truth? Your staff are likely leaving because they no longer feel connected to you or their work.
So, how can you keep your team engaged and committed to your practice?
In this episode, I sit down with Shelli Warren, a seasoned team and leadership coach, to uncover the secrets of offering your staff a career, not just a job. Shelli brings a wealth of knowledge on creating meaningful career paths, even in smaller group practices, and emphasizes the importance of fostering a deep sense of connection among your employees.
We’ll explore the unique challenges group practice owners face, especially with the surge in telehealth, and provide actionable strategies to keep your staff motivated and engaged.
Join our conversation to hear about:
- How the rise of telehealth has impacted staff dynamics and what you can do about it.
- The importance of offering meaningful career opportunities, not just jobs, to enhance staff retention.
- Strategies to help your employees feel genuinely connected to their roles and your practice.
- Why it’s important to educate staff on the complexities of running a group practice.
- Suggestions for maintaining leadership visibility and why that has an impact on staff morale.
- Tools and techniques for fostering career growth within your team.
Don’t miss out on this invaluable conversation filled with insights and resources designed to help you retain your top talent and create a thriving, connected practice.
Thanks for listening! Like what you heard? Give us 5 stars on whatever platform you’re listening from. Need extra support? Join The Exchange, a membership community just for group practice owners on our website www.thegrouppracticeexchange.com/exchange. Talk to you next time!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Connect with Shelli Warren:
This episode is sponsored by TherapyNotes. TherapyNotes is an EHR software that helps behavioral health professionals manage their practice with confidence and efficiency. I use TherapyNotes in my own group practice and love its amazing support team, billing features, and scheduling capabilities. It serves us well as a large group practice owner.
Do you ever wish for a financial therapist who could relieve you from the last few months of bookkeeping, talk you off the edge when you’re running into issues with Quickbooks, or help you work through a profit plan for growth? GreenOak Accounting does just that! GreenOak Accounting is an accounting firm that specializes in working with group practices. Their value goes WAY beyond bookkeeping; they can help you get on track for financial success. Schedule a free consultation by going tohttp://greenoakaccounting.com/tgpe
Transcript: Shelli Warren
Maureen Werrbach (00:00:02) – Welcome to The Group Practice Exchange Podcast, where we talk about all things related to group practice ownership. I’m your host, Maureen Werrbach.
This episode is sponsored by Therapy Notes. Therapy notes is my favorite EHR, and it’s one that I’ve been using in my own group practice since 2014. They’ve got everything you need to be successful in your group practice, and they’re constantly making updates and have live support. If you want two free months of therapy notes, go to therapynotes.com/r/thegrouppracticeexchange.
Need a new accountant, bookkeeper or fractional CFO? Green Oak Accounting is an accounting firm that works specifically with private practices. I’ve been using their fractional CFO services for many years in my own group practice, and I couldn’t grow my business without them. Mention TGPE to get $100 off your first month.
Hey everyone! Welcome to another episode of The Group Practice Exchange Podcast! I’m excited. I have another person who’s been with us before. Her name is Shelli Warren and I’ll introduce her in one second. But we’re going to be talking about different ways to increase staff retention, specifically around a concept called career pathing.
Maureen Werrbach (00:01:27) – So. Hi, Shelli, how are you?
Shelli Warren (00:01:29) – Hello, Maureen. Happy to see you. Happy to be back.
Maureen Werrbach (00:01:31) – Happy to see you too. I was just telling you right before I clicked record that I’m really excited about this topic specifically. So I really appreciate you spending some time to come on and and chat with our listeners. So I guess I’m trying to not jump too far forward because I just want to go to what is career pathing, but talk a little bit about, I guess, you and where your expertise comes in when it comes to staff retention. Obviously, everyone knows that something that’s been a struggle since Covid began and everyone’s trying to find ways to retain staff from anywhere. You know, to having a billion extra benefits added to paying more to all of this stuff. And a lot of the things that leaders and business owners think are going to be what keeps people in the door longer aren’t necessarily working. So tell me a little bit about, you know, where you fall in all of this and how you have expertise in this and then maybe go right into career pathing, because I’d love to know what that means for you.
Shelli Warren (00:02:35) – All right, let’s do it. So I’m a team and leadership coach, and I teach women who own small business how to find, keep and lead their teams. And specifically, I help them introduce a leadership team for their business so they can get out of the day to day. So where that background comes for me is I have always led teams, specifically winning teams. So I’ve led winning teams in sports as well as retail, not for profit board work that I’ve done and as well as a fortune 50 corporation for decades. So I’m used to working with really smart people who have a lot of expertise, and I love to help them hone those skills even more so whether they’re the actual team member or the the founder. It’s really about making sure that people find worthwhile work and feel like every single day is worthwhile.
Maureen Werrbach (00:03:28) – I love it. So jump right in. What is career pathing?
Shelli Warren (00:03:33) – Well, career pathing is something that I learned in corporate. So as I mentioned, I worked for a corporate 50 corporation that if I told you the name, everyone would knows and your house is full of their products.
Shelli Warren (00:03:44) – That’s where I learned how to lead people and how to create a structure of coaching and mentoring people, including career development, that helped people stay with the company. I worked for me and then I definitely helped others through that. So now that I work with small business owners, it’s really about helping those small business owners understand that we need to offer people careers, not a job. And that’s the first thing you need to distinguish yourself as a small business owner is that you are offering careers, and you don’t need to be a fortune 50 corporation to offer careers. We can offer really a wonderful, life changing careers within our small businesses. It’s really more about positioning yourself as that. Backing it up so we can’t just make that claim. We have to back that up. And then having that become part of your brand and part of what you’re known for, because what we do know is that grade-A team members like to work with other grade-A team members. So if we focus in on your highest performing people, they will naturally bring more high performing people to you.
Shelli Warren (00:04:57) – And that’s how we can stack your team.
Maureen Werrbach (00:04:59) – That’s awesome. So I was telling you right before I hit record that specifically in our industry, since Covid, there has been a lot of turnover in group practices because the shift to telehealth in the digital world really made it easier for people to go off solo with minimal expenses, which historically with starting a solo or group practice required, you know, some upfront investments that aren’t there anymore. And so there’s been a lot of turnover. You know, since 2021, 2022. And business owners in our industry are looking at what are the ways that we can retain people longer. And they’re kind of throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks from, you know, paying more if they can to adding, you know, obscure random benefits that maybe people don’t even care or want, but just to like, sort of stack the list of things that you can get, even if there are things that they don’t want. And something that I do that’s not those things specifically is creating alternate opportunities for people to grow so that they’re not burnt out.
Maureen Werrbach (00:06:05) – So not just doing therapy session after therapy session, but diversifying their workload into areas that are more of a passion for them. Obviously in alignment with the business and offering kind of growth opportunities. So what are you seeing with small businesses that are struggling to retain clients or retain their clinicians or staff?
Shelli Warren (00:06:27) – Well, the biggest reason why people are leaving you, it’s It’s really because those individuals, for whatever reason, and there’s a number of reasons why this happens, but they’ve come to a point where they literally do not feel connected to you or the work any longer. So when people do not feel connected to you, their leader, or to the work that they’re doing every single day, they literally become bored. They’ll start quiet quitting, they’ll start looking elsewhere, and they’ll start getting these grandiose ideas that they can have their own practice to. And so as leaders, we own part of that problem as well. So with my clients, I’m always encouraging them to teach their team members how to think like business owners.
Shelli Warren (00:07:12) – So what we want to do is we want to stop them from thinking like employees and start them to be thinking like business owners. And how we do that is we start to reveal some key information about what it takes to run a successful business. Because I can tell you right now, most people on your team think all of you are millionaires. They do not understand the concept of cost to keep your doors open. Whether you’re virtual, a brick and mortar, or you’ve got a hybrid business model, they truly don’t understand the cost of running a business, so we need to start teaching them about that and making them more aware of what it really takes to keep the doors open and to be able to continue to offer them a career versus a job, which was why we saw so many people make that mass exodus over into working for these. I’ll call them an app, you know, working for those types of outfits where they promise them the moon and they really honing in on what team members are disgruntled about over the years.
Shelli Warren (00:08:16) – But those symptoms of being like disenchanted with their work, it really comes down to they are no longer feeling connected to you, their leader, or the work that they do.
Maureen Werrbach (00:08:29) – So in large part because this is a good point of connection to you as a leader. And I think about this even for myself. I have a large practice. My role is in the visionary space, so I actually don’t connect with all 60 something people in my practice. I’m not a part of the hands on sort of stuff. I have a team of ten people in leadership who are those leaders, and so I know a lot of practice owners who fear that they’re being less involved directly translates to it. And I think there’s this middle space of ensuring that you’re training your leadership team to lead in a way where they are connecting or creating community with the people in their practice. It was something that I saw years ago when I really first started to create a leadership team, and I just have 1 or 2 individual leaders is realizing that what I was doing just in the community creation sense looks different, because I have a different type of personality than every leader in my practice, as they all do.
Maureen Werrbach (00:09:30) – And it wasn’t until we realized that. How do you translate that on to your existing leadership team? If you’re a business owner who now maybe sits in that more visionary role and isn’t in the day to day of the business?
Shelli Warren (00:09:42) – Well, I think the first thing that kind of gets away from business owners as they start to let go of control and they start to pour into their leadership team members, and they really start to set them up for success. They really start to feel like excited about how much time they’re getting back and all the things that they can do. You know, they can really move into program development or brand development or, you know, open up a secondary, complimentary business and on and on. There’s so many opportunities for you when you do have that leadership team put in place. But here’s the clincher. You still need to show your face, and your face needs to be out in front of all your team members, regardless of their particular role, regardless of whether they’re remote, part time, seasonal or their, you know, you call them in on a specific project base.
Shelli Warren (00:10:30) – You need to show your face on a regular basis with those individuals, because that’s how you stay connected to them, and that’s how you reinforce that what they’re doing every day is incredibly, just incredibly helpful to what they’re doing. And a lot of people do not hear enough from their direct leader or the CEO and founder about what they’re doing every day, how it’s really impacting the strategic plan, how it’s really helping the brand grow, how it’s helping your local community. They know this intellectually. They do. They absolutely know it intellectually, but it’s not as meaningful for them to write their own affirmation, to kind of walk themselves, you know, kind of giving the pep talk and leaving the car and coming into the clinic that day. What they need is to hear those validation moments and comments that are genuinely truthful. They need to hear those from their direct leader and the CEO and the founder. And they absolutely need to see you that CEO, on a regular basis. You can’t abdicate your leadership duties solely over to that leadership team, even.
Shelli Warren (00:11:40) – They’re the most incredible leadership team ever. You still need to show up and show your face on a regular basis.
Maureen Werrbach (00:11:49) – So for those that are maybe larger practices that have a fully functioning leadership team, what are some suggestions that you have that are realistic for a business owner who maybe is sitting in that visionary role? They’re not in the day to day like their offices are filled with the leaders on the team that gives employees what they need to feel connected to you. Also, knowing that you know you’re not going to be in the office every day working because maybe that’s not part of your role anymore. What are some ways that like as an example, in my role, I don’t hire, I don’t fire, I manage my leadership, I’m part of the leadership team, but even my executive director is the one that truly leads even the leaders. And my space is to come into leadership meetings and work with all of the leaders on, you know, pivoting what I’m seeing research wise, forecasting in the future of mental health and outpatient work and like advocacy, like, those are the things that I’m a part of.
Maureen Werrbach (00:12:48) – And then coming into, you know, our leadership meetings to talk about what I’m learning and how that impacts us and what, you know, what do the leaders think we need to all do together to sort of pivot in that way? What is your suggestion for leaders who, you know, are really doing that outside work to stay in the business, but not in a way that would be overwhelming because, you know, you saying that initially I’m thinking I have 67 people. There’s no way I could spend all of my time. That would be a full time job trying to, like, get to know every single of those 60 people so I can affirm each of them. And I think that’s why I have a leadership team that leads on a sort of smaller spaces so that they can really get to know those team members. What are some like middle ground spaces that maybe are helpful for those practice owners that just are advocating and are out in the communities and doing that kind of stuff, and it would take them away from all of that.
Shelli Warren (00:13:39) – I’m happy to hear that you’re doing all of those things, marine, because that is the work of the visionary leader. That is the work. That’s what you’re getting paid to do. Absolutely. And I’m happy to hear that you’re not clawing back any of the ownership that you’ve given to your leadership team. That’s wonderful, because that can sometimes be a problem, too. But as someone who has led massive teams, I’m talking seriously large teams. I can tell you that there’s ways to do that without thinking. I have to have a 1 to 1 with 60 team members. Yeah, what you can do, there’s a couple of things you can do. One is you can make it part of your role. It’s definitely part of your work plan to show up for these individuals. And you can do it in small groups. You can do that through setting office hours. You could do a particular lunch and in-person lunch every month, with a group of six of them at a time. And your team leaders can coordinate all this and, you know, match the people that make sense.
Shelli Warren (00:14:32) – But here’s where I want to challenge you with Marie. Those ideas, that direction, that foresight that you are creating, a plan for your getting educated about, your watching the trends. You’re starting to see what’s you really want to be able to lean into the next iteration of your strategic plan, and then you go and share those with your leadership team. I want to challenge you to share some of those big nuggets, those big projects that you’re working on, those big pivots with your extended team. That’s how they feel connected to you and that’s how they start to realize, oh, okay, I might not be 100% thrilled about what I’m doing today, but oh my gosh, I am sticking around because look at where we’re going. Look at the direction in which we’re going. And by the way, I’d like to raise my hand. I’d like to volunteer for that. You know, if you’re looking for a small sub team to put together, you know, a piece of that, I’d be thrilled to be able to part of that team.
Shelli Warren (00:15:24) – That’s how you rally these people around these bigger strategies that you’re putting into place. And it could be as simple as deciding that on a specific day of the month. And I would encourage you to create this on a drumbeat so that everyone always knows the next time they’re going to see you, because that’s very meaningful as well for your team members to know, hey, when’s the next time I’m going to see marine? What you can do then is decide on that particular day. This is a day for this month. I’m going to do three mini videos, one specifically talking about this, one talking about this, and one particularly for this particular department. And I’m going to share those. It could be you do like a CEO newsletter that goes out on the same day we do those things.
Maureen Werrbach (00:16:07) – Yeah.
Shelli Warren (00:16:07) – You can also do where you are literally creating face time for these individuals, where you’re literally showing up for them. They’re invited in advance. They’re told just some key points about what you’re going to talk about, because what you’re wanting to show them is that you are open to hearing their point of view, and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to take their ideas and totally flip your plan on its head.
Shelli Warren (00:16:29) – But what you are saying is, oh my gosh, thank you for sharing your points of view with me. I’m going to look at this deeper, and we’ll look to see what we can incorporate into the overall plan. I’ll get, you know, I’ll reconnect with you by the end of the month. So it’s really about just showing up for them. It literally could be getting in a car, going to one location, picking four of them up, going and touring something, picking them up, taking them out for coffee, doing a lunch, showing up in the practice itself, booking out a treatment room and literally having it open where people can just drop in and say hi. It’s going the extra mile for them to demonstrate that you’re interested in seeing them, talking with them and learning more about them. And then as far as your leadership team goes, what they can do to help your team members feel connected to them and you is host regular one to ones with everyone that they’re responsible to and have a key component of those wonder ones to be talking about their careers.
Shelli Warren (00:17:31) – Yep. What are you interested in? What are you curious about? Is there a particular aspect of the business that you’d like to learn more? Are you seeing something happening out in the marketplace or within our local region? Are you seeing a need? Is there a gap there? Did you want to, you know, participate in helping us build out a program for that or an event for that or a partnership with that? But it’s really about making sure that and you mentioned this earlier, marine, that you already realized that your therapist. It’s really hard to just back to back to back to back to back to back sessions. Right. I’m sure you’ve done that yourself. You’ve had tons of feedback about that. So you’re looking at ways to really offer a variety of work. But it needs to be meaningful work and it’s best if it’s literally connected to their career aspirations versus just having a to do list. Right. And then running down the list and oh, sorry, Hillary, it’s at the end of the list.
Shelli Warren (00:18:27) – So here’s what’s left over. Did you want to pick something from the the left over list? Right. Yeah. You want to make sure that there’s some thought put into it. But it’s really about as a leader recognizing that these individuals want face time with you. And it doesn’t have to be a massive amount of time. It’s more about the consistency of it, but with consistency. And they always know when the next time they’re going to see you. Yeah.
Maureen Werrbach (00:18:54) – Related to the idea of career pathing, can you explain, like what tools or resources are out there that can help support practice owners or leaders and practices kind of get into that area.
Shelli Warren (00:19:09) – Well, I have tons of tools within my program, but just to give you like a bit of a recap, so here’s how you offer someone a career versus a job. Yeah, they come in because they got hired to provide a particular core skill. You and your leadership team have decided that you need to hire within this particular skill set because there is demand.
Shelli Warren (00:19:32) – Yeah, because you’ve run into capacity issues. So you’re hiring someone to come in for a specific core skill that they’re going to provide. And preferably they’re already good at it. Okay. That’s what you want to hire people that are already good at what they’re doing. So you’re going to bring them in, and then you offer them a path forward so that they learn, hey, here’s what the company requires me to learn next. And we call those cross training skills. And those you would have one cross training skill that is on the need, like the needs of the business. The second cross training skill would be directly linked to their career aspirations. So they come in with the core skill. Now they’re going to move forward with the plan in place and a trainer and criteria and all the things to ensure that they become well versed in that, and that offers the whole business a ton of more agility. So we don’t just train them and then call it train with the check mark and they get a sticker.
Shelli Warren (00:20:28) – You have to actually like use those skills that they’re continuing to develop them, and then you start to offer them what we call value added skills. So those value added skills would be looking at the trajectory of the practice. Where are we going? What direction? What is our reputation? Do I need more of this? Do I need to start introducing that? What is the marketplace demanding of us? How do I get my consistently high performing individuals that have demonstrated to me the commitment to the practice, their team and me and the community? How do I acknowledge that? By offering them opportunities to learn and become masters in additional value added skills. So it’s not like someone just like throws an idea out there. Oh, I would love to, you know, learn how to do this. There has to be a compelling reason for them. You’re not going to invest in them time, money and energy to help them develop this value added skill if the practice doesn’t actually need it right now.
Maureen Werrbach (00:21:32) – Which I see a lot of people struggling with, is that they, out of a fear of not wanting to lose people, will start saying sure to things that they don’t either need, or they haven’t actually done a lot of research on looking at, you know, how long will it take? Because a lot of things that we offer, we have a lot of different arms of the business that were made because of employees that wanted growth.
Maureen Werrbach (00:21:54) – That aligns with our business. And a lot of those things are almost like whole new businesses when you think about it and require enough money to, like, fund a year or so worth of just building the thing out before seeing any profits. And I see a lot of practice owners who then struggle with either high expectations of assuming that person was going to create something that immediately brings in enough income to pay for it and just, you know, just didn’t do the research to realize that some things take a little bit of time.
Shelli Warren (00:22:24) – Yeah. So we don’t want to just start saying yes to everything to appease people. But what we want to do is be able to say to someone, oh my gosh, I love your enthusiasm about this. I guess it’s so obvious that you have a passion for this. The business is not prepared to provide that opportunity to you right now, but let me paint a picture of when the business would be ready to support that. Yeah, because what you’re doing then is you’re tying criteria to these big strategic moves.
Shelli Warren (00:22:52) – And sometimes they’re real Maverick moves, like really Maverick moves that would really move the business to the next level. However, you know, as a business owner, there has to be sustainability there. We just can’t go and start introducing all these things, because then we end up confusing our clients and our customers. And then what can also end up happening is we end up out pricing your local market. And now people literally start going to different practices because they can’t afford you any longer. Right? So it’s just there’s a lot of risk with that. But so within career path and that’s what we do. We bring people in with a core skill. We introduce to them what the business requires them to learn next and master next as a first cross training skill. And then what is their second one? Preferably the second one is attached to a career desire or an interest level that they have. And then we move people on to developing value added skills. And there’s really the sky is the limit for your highest performing people who can figure out, how do I match my interest with what I’m seeing happening in the marketplace, both locally and nationally, and with what is really on brand for us? How can I be of more service to the company through just developing my own idea of what worthwhile work is? Right? Because that’s really what it’s all about.
Shelli Warren (00:24:14) – If you can keep people engaged within their roles week on, month on, year on, You’ll have less turnover, incredibly high retention rates. And then those individuals have a lot to talk about with their colleagues, friends and family to help entice other people to come over. And I’m a huge fan of showcasing the incredible people that you have to help you in hiring. They should be showcased at every chance you get.
Maureen Werrbach (00:24:40) – Yeah, I agree, and if you’re doing it right, you know your existing team members are going to be your highest referral source for more clinicians or team members that are similar in work ethic and drive and desire. Okay. As we’re wrapping up, I wanted you to share just where people can find you, in what ways you support them. I know you know, leadership is your thing. And that, I feel like is one of the, you know, main reasons that people come to TGP. So being able to hear from you and what you do to support leaders would be really helpful if you could share it.
Shelli Warren (00:25:19) – Absolutely. Well, the easiest thing that you can do is go to www.stackingyourteam.com/listener, and you’ll be able to access the podcast through there. I’m now in my sixth year of podcasting. The podcast is under the same name, Stacking Your Team. And then, of course, there’s all kinds of goodies that you can just literally download. There’s some assessments there. There’s also a pretty cool guide, 12 Ways to Motivate Your Team Without Giving Them a Pay Raise. There’s a bunch of really great ideas in there, things that you could literally implement right now. So they’re low cost, no cost ideas. There’s also a really great guide in there to help position yourself as their next best career move. So that’s all about trying to attract these individuals by positioning yourself as a small business who offers careers versus a job. So I want to encourage you and your listeners to jump on over there just to download that stuff and start applying it today.
Maureen Werrbach (00:26:13) – Awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge yet again to my audience, and I appreciate you taking that time out.
Shelli Warren (00:26:21) – Well, I’m happy to be here. You and the therapist that you serve and the work that they’re doing individually with their teams, in their practices. It’s what the world needs right now. So let’s make sure we support them.
Maureen Werrbach (00:26:32) – Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Give us five stars on whatever podcast streaming service you use, and I’ll see you next week.
Thanks For Listening
Thanks for listening to The Group Practice Exchange podcast. Like what you heard? Give us five stars on whatever platform you’re listening from. Need extra support? Join The Exchange, a membership community just for group practice owners with monthly office hours, live webinars, and a library of trainings ready for you to dive into. See you next week.
Resources
Here are the resources and guides we recommend based on this episode
GreenOak Accounting
Specialized Accounting for Private Practice
At GreenOak Accounting, we offer accounting services that cater specifically to solo and group therapy practices. Our services range from bookkeeping to budgeting & forecasting, Profit First support, profitability analysis, payroll, tax preparation, compensation analysis, and much more.
Through working with over 100+ therapist clients, we have seen what works and what doesn’t, so our team can help guide you on the path to financial. Our specialized services can be customized based on the size and needs of your private practice.
For more information about our packages and the different ways to work with us, please visit our website at https://www.

Therapy Notes
*Need a good EHR for your group practice? TherapyNotes is it. I’ve been using it for years in my own group practice, and it does really well when it comes to having the features group practice owners need. Try it out for FREE for 2 months by clicking here.