Solo practice · 9 person team
The hygienist who quit for reasons nobody could name
Two hygiene departures in a year, both blamed on pay. An anonymous Team Health Pulse pointed at role clarity and recognition instead and gave the owner one thing to change at the huddle.
Illustrative composite scenario. Built from the DentalDNA™ instrument design and common deployment patterns to show how a wave runs in a working practice and how an owner reads the output. It is not a report of a named client engagement and the figures are modeled examples rather than measured customer results.
- Setting
- Single-location general practice, one owner dentist
- Respondents
- 8 of 9 team members
- Instruments
- Dental Team Health Pulse™ plus Leader Readiness for the owner
- Cycle
- Baseline pulse, 90 days of actions, re-pulse at day 90
The situation
- The practice replaced two hygienists in twelve months and each exit conversation landed on compensation.
- The owner had already raised hygiene pay to the top of the local range and the third hygienist was wobbling.
- Nothing in the schedule or the numbers told the owner which condition was actually driving people out.
How the wave ran
Define the team
One team, not departments, an eight person practice cannot be sliced without identifying people.
Announce at the huddle
The owner introduced the pulse in two sentences and stated they would never see who said what.
Five business days, one reminder
Short window, one nudge on day three, no pressure language.
Read the spread, not the average
The consultant worked dimension by dimension rather than the headline number.
What the data showed
| Dimension | Reading | What it meant |
|---|---|---|
| Role clarity | Lowest dimension | Hygiene and the front office both believed the other owned recall and rescheduling. |
| Recognition | Second lowest and widely split | Half the team felt seen, half had not heard anything positive in months. |
| Speak-up safety | Middling | People raised issues once and stopped when nothing visibly changed. |
| Intent to stay | Weak, as expected | The lagging indicator, used as the baseline for the re-measure, not the headline. |
What the practice changed
- Wrote down who owns recall, in one line and read it at the huddle.
- Owner named one specific thing a team member did well at every Monday huddle.
- Started a standing "you raised it, here is what happened" item at the end of each week.
- Owner ran their Leader Readiness development priority: chairside correction in the moment.
The ninety days
- 1.Days 1-30: results shared back to the team within a week; recall ownership written down.
- 2.Days 31-60: recognition and follow-through items running at the huddle without prompting.
- 3.Days 61-90: re-pulse the same team and compare role clarity and recognition first.
Owner takeaway
A pay raise had already failed. The pulse showed the two conditions the owner personally controlled and both were free.