Ep. 8: Dallas Freyer – Four Tips to Improve Staff Satisfaction | This Week in Surgery Centers

Here’s what to expect on this week’s episode. 🎙️

Has your ASC become a revolving door of staff coming and going? Staffing has steadily grown to be the primary concern on every admin’s mind. Retaining current staff and hiring new members to join your team seems like a never-ending battle right now.

Dallas Freyer is the Administrator at Corpus Christi Outpatient Surgery and the President of the Texas Ambulatory Surgery Center Society. She joins us this week to share tips for improving staff satisfaction and ensuring you close that revolving door once and for all.

In pre-COVID days – staffing was a lot simpler. A single job opening could have 30 applicants, and competing with hospitals was easy as ASCs offer no weekends, a reliable schedule, and a great work/life balance. But now, with a reduced pool of potential applicants and hospitals offering huge sign-on bonuses, those same job openings might have one applicant if you’re lucky.

What can you do?

📅 Get creative with your schedule. Dallas created a 12-hour, 10-hour, and 8-hour model to accommodate staff preferences and ensure she has proper coverage. This gives staff the autonomy to choose their shifts, swap shifts, and work the number of days per week that works for them.

🔎 Lead with transparency. If you’re not transparent about how hard hiring is right now, your staff will get frustrated and might feel like you’re not trying. Let them know how hard it is right now and what you’re trying, and see if they have better solutions you might be missing.

💕 Change management styles as needed. Like love languages, each team member prefers a different management style—some like autonomy, whereas others might like you to be more involved. You have to adjust between personalities, skillsets, career goals, and even generational differences.

👩 Make high-quality managers accessible. ASCs naturally don’t have a lot of mid-level managers, but for the ones you do have, make sure they aren’t as busy as your front-line staff and are ready to provide support and build camaraderie within their departments.

Find the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube to hear all the details!