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An efficient pharmacy team

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An efficient pharmacy team

Real-time learning from Warman-Freed Pharmacy, London

Efficient and productive teams don’t happen by accident. Successful teams work co-operatively, sharing common goals and resources to achieve a cohesive outlook. All pharmacy businesses across the UK strive to achieve this and as, Warman-Freed shares, it takes time and effort to realise that optimally efficient, pharmacy environment.

Identifying business inefficiencies

Farah Ali has been general manager of Warman-Freed since the store was acquired by Omega Pharma to become The Learning Pharmacy. She has worked through changes in staff, operations and regulations and seen her multi-purpose role expand and expand.

Like most community pharmacies, Warman- Freed adopted a ‘flat’ working model for the team and, while the psychology of this has merit, Farah and her team found a misalignment in how this translated into practice. ‘We spent three months reviewing business operations and how this corresponded with customer flow and trading peaks and discovered a number of anomalies’, comments Farah. ‘Our team didn’t have clear job roles and instead chopped and changed their responsibilities throughout the day to meet store demands.’

‘We recognised that we could be running the pharmacy more effectively and so we undertook an audit to establish our strengths, weaknesses and opportunities.’ These included:

Business structure: We needed to review our ways of working to ensure flexibility and shared responsibilities.

Utilising team strengths: Employees were skilled and trained in various key aspects, but were not in the right roles to fully utilise their skills.

Fostering team progression: The team were keen to do well, but didn’t have a clear progression structure that fostered development or aligned with the overall objectives of the business.

 

Implementing change

With the support of an external HR company, Warman-Freed implemented a smarter structure that took into account the team’s skills and interests as well as introducing bespoke development guides for employees to track their performance. Sales data was analysed to ensure resourcing was grounded by solid evidence and this was coupled with a consultative approach taken with employees to gain their insights on the practicalities of running the pharmacy.

‘The changes ensured the pharmacy was better resourced to cope with demand and the right tasks were assigned for completion in quiet times, eg administrative duties, team meetings, staff training and stock taking,’ continues Farah. In order to increase ownership for staff members, the larger team was split into three business units: prescription, healthcare and retail.

Each unit was assigned clear, SMART objectives to drive results and sales, and activities were split into these units to ensure relevance for each staff member. Adopting a more formal approach to performance management has helped Warman-Freed maintain employee motivation. Everyone in the pharmacy now has goals and training specific to their role with development plans in place and learnings one-to-one staff reviews regularly conducted.

The career progression within and across the business units is clearly delineated all the way up to supervisor, to outline responsibilities and also drive individual capability development. This is a big motivator – staff members can see they will be directly rewarded for acquiring and implementing greater skills sets.

Evidence of efficiency

‘By providing the pharmacy team with a sense of ownership of the day-to-day running of the store, I am now free to focus on other business aspects, such as engaging with the community, driving the profitability of the pharmacy and building stakeholder relationships,’ enthuses Farah.

‘Efficiency, motivation and empowerment do not occur overnight, but in a short space of time we’ve already noticed a great deal of improvement. Staff motivation has been amplified, productivity has improved, the team’s focus on operations and sales has increased and real evidence of staff development within the new structure is apparent. Our analysis of the business showed that we had a lot of improvements to make but what we’ve seen in practice is small changes making big differences.’

Useful tools

Staff Training Matrix - Click here to download

Team Action Plan - Click here to download

 

Top tips for effective team management

  • Review resources: When are your busy times? Is downtime being maximised? Understanding the needs of your store will put you in a better position to make meaningful adjustments
  • Invest in training: Establish staff training gaps and agree a plan with employees that supports their development
  • Employee involvement and communication: Ensure everyone knows how their job fits in with the broader goals of the company and feel involved in changes and developments
  • Time for you: Delegate and empower your team and you will have more time to focus on making long-term business improvements.
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