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Submitted by KateM on
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As part of a strategic assessment of our medical practice, my direct (whom we'll call "C") completed a global review of our "front office" (receptionists, billing staff, and telephone operators) department. 

C provided a thorough, comprehensive review.  However, one of her statements was concerning: "[Practice] does not value experience.  I've heard it said that [Practice] would rather hire fresh-out-of-school staff, so that they can be molded to [Practice's] way of thinking.  Frankly, this strikes me as arrogant, as [Practice] appears to be ignoring the potential contributions of mature staff members.   In particular, K [a new hire and one of C's directs] has a bachelor's degree but is paid less than M [who has 2 years with our company and a 2-year degree].  It is demeaning to K to be paid less than M, who has both less formal education and less experience.  I should have advocated more strongly for K when she was hired."

In my mind, M. has the more valuable skill set pertinent to our practice.  K. does have a bachelor's degree, although not in a medical discipline, and her prior work experience was not directly related to our industry.  She does, however, have a long background of loyalty to her previous employers, timeliness, and so on.  My direct appears to believe this qualifies her to be paid more than she's being paid.  Of note, K agreed to the starting salary we offered her, which was within her stated salary expectation range during her interview. 

In the military, seasoned sergeants are outranked by green lieutenants, who (if they are not stupid) will take the sergeant's advice.   The medical profession is similar: new clinical/technical folks are often paid higher than seasoned receptionists/billers.  For C, this paradigm seems distasteful.  I'm not sure if this is a reflection on her expectations developed from 20 years in a different industry, or a reflection on her age (she's older than most of the other staff.)

Experience and skills are both valuable.  However, at the end of the day, I guess I value (and am prepared to compensate) skills more highly.  Skill development seems to require more active development; experience seems to passively accumulate with time.  In our industry, the departure of an experienced individual means a service can no longer be provided smoothly; the departure of a skilled individual usually means the service can no longer be provided at all.

I welcome insights from the MT community about what I might be missing here. :)

 

 

 

 

mfculbert's picture

I argue that both experience and skills can be totally useless unless they are turned into useable outcome. THAT is called effectiveness.

Somebody with no degree that works miracles on the job is always more valuable than Doctorate that contributes nothing or a long time employee who no longer delivers tasks. 

KateM's picture
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MFCulbert, thank you for the reframe -- that's an excellent way to look at it.   What occurs to me then, in follow-up, is:

1)   When setting a *starting* salary, how does one relatively weigh skills and experience?  C is unhappy because she thinks K should have had a higher starting salary.  I agree 100% that effectiveness should be the factor in raises.  But effectiveness is all theoretical when setting a starting salary.  Someone might have been a great producer at a previous position, but until after you've hired somebody, and they start producing (or not) -- it's still an unknown quantity for your organization.  One could say, "Base starting salary on expected effectiveness," but how does one compute this?

2) C effectively manages her directs and gets top performance out of them.  She's prepared to comment on the awesomeness (or not) of K.  However, she only is vaguely aware of M's contribution - since M is in another department and not under C's chain of command.  What is an MT-ey way of saying, "Thanks for advocating for your directs -- that's a sign of an awesome boss.  But you're not really in a position to comment on what M brings to the organization (and thus what she should be paid), since you haven't been managing her, tracking her outputs, etc."  It's easy to say "Mind your own business and churn your own butter," but I don't want to discourage people from awareness of other departments -- I think that's healthy for the org as a whole.  Sometimes someone who's in another department can look more objectively at an issue in a different division.