A dental college teaches students while running a busy patient clinic. Here is how to hire, roster and keep clinical faculty, demonstrators, dental assistants and technicians when teaching and patient care compete for hours.
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Share your requirementsA dental college trains undergraduate and postgraduate students and runs a teaching dental hospital that treats patients for fees. The team includes professors, readers and lecturers in departments such as oral surgery, orthodontics and conservative dentistry, demonstrators, house surgeons, dental assistants, dental technicians, sterilisation staff, nurses, receptionists and administrators. Faculty split their time between lectures, supervising students in clinics and their own patients. Equipment, materials and infection control matter every hour. Inspections look at faculty strength and records. See also HR for education. People work balances teaching duty with clinic duty, keeps specialist faculty from drifting to private practice and trains support staff in safe procedures.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in dental colleges. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A teacher is wanted in the lecture hall and on the clinic floor at once, and one of them gives way.
Faculty can earn more in their own clinics, and attendance at the college slips.
Qualification, experience and teaching hours of each teacher must be shown, and files are rarely complete.
Chairside assistants pick up skills informally, and practice on instrument handling varies.
Sterilisation cycles, waste sorting and surface cleaning are done well by some shifts and loosely by others.
The dental lab produces crowns and dentures against fixed appointments, with little notice of changes.
Long clinic hours with teaching, case work and exam preparation produce fatigue and complaints.
Reception and clinicians face upset patients over waiting, fees or results, with no clear route.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Employee Administration; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for education, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a dental colleges business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A weekly sheet of lectures, supervision and patient sessions for each teacher, using attendance, shift and leave methods.
A weekly sheet of lectures, supervision and patient sessions for each teacher, using attendance, shift and leave methods.
A written position on outside work, hours and conflict, confirmed with a qualified professional and placed in HR documentation.
A written position on outside work, hours and conflict, confirmed with a qualified professional and placed in HR documentation.
Qualification, experience, registration and appointment copies in one place under employee information management.
Qualification, experience, registration and appointment copies in one place under employee information management.
Chairside skills, instrument handling and patient communication taught in order, using the learning and development process.
Chairside skills, instrument handling and patient communication taught in order, using the learning and development process.
A checklist for sterilisation, waste and surfaces, signed each shift, supported by workplace health, safety and wellbeing practice.
A checklist for sterilisation, waste and surfaces, signed each shift, supported by workplace health, safety and wellbeing practice.
Shared calendar so technicians see appointments and changes early.
Shared calendar so technicians see appointments and changes early.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Faculty files complete and ready for review.
Visible teaching and clinic rosters for each teacher.
A taught route for assistants and technicians.
Infection control routines checked every shift.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in education, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Faculty, administrative and support staff leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it within the academic calendar.
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A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
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Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
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What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
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Record both in one weekly sheet for each teacher, set fair limits and protect lecture hours. Review overload with the head of department.
State your rule on outside practice, hours at college and conflicts in writing and apply it the same way to all. Confirm wording with a qualified professional.
Qualification and registration copies, appointment letter, experience, teaching hours and training notes. Confirm exact needs with a qualified professional.
Teach chairside skills, instruments, sterilisation and patient handling in a set order with sign-off by a senior assistant or dentist.
Use a signed checklist for each cycle and shift, spot-check it and retrain when habits slip.
Give patients one route, log the issue, reply by a stated date and brief the staff involved on the outcome.
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