Shawnee Love   •  
June 22, 2010

I have spent most of the last three months talking about the importance of keeping good employees for a myriad of reasons which include:

• Cost savings due to lower recruitment expenses,
• Lowered employee stress because they have a consistent team and don’t have to worry about taking on another person’s work, and
• A consistent face and voice for clients.

My dentist has the last reason down to a science. Every time I visit the dentist, I am greeted by a hygienist who knows my name, how often I floss, and the names and ages of my kids. How do they do it? In this case, they do it the good old fashioned way…I have the same hygienist each and every time I go and they keep detailed notes in my file. The one time my hygienist was double booked, she came by to apologize and say hi and, you guessed it, ask me how my kids are. Talk about consistent!

This behaviour doesn’t happen because she is the only hygienist in a fishbowl of a town. In fact, it is a busy, burgeoning office in a reasonably largish town, and that is what makes this dentist office all the more impressive to  me. I visit a large dental practice and yet each time I go, my own personal hygenist and I “reconnect” and she “remembers” me (i.e.,  does a good job of refreshing her memory from her notes).

If my hygienist were to leave this dentist and go work elsewhere, would I be tempted to follow her? Tempted maybe, but I would likely stay because my dental records stay with my dentist. If my hygienist took my file with her, I expect I would follow.

Business owners run that same risk of clients following an exiting employee if they haven’t recorded and mined the knowledge that is in their exiting employee’s head.

Next week, we’ll talk about practical ideas for retaining corporate knowledge. Hope you’ll come back.