Gig Workers In Dentistry

The “Gig Economy” doesn’t just refer to Instacart shoppers or Uber drivers. Such less-than-full-time employment has infiltrated our dental industry as well and this has both up and downsides. You should be aware of both.

A gig economy job can be daily, weekly, or any part-time schedule amenable to both prospective workers and their employers. 

For such gig workers, the upsides are schedule flexibility (allowing for a better work/life balance,) continuing interest (as the gig worker can switch employers whenever they choose) and even the ability to travel or work remotely as one of the new gig nomads.

So, for example, a parent can choose to work only when their child is in school and not have to arrange or pay for exorbitant childcare expenses necessary in a standard 9-5 job. Depending on their job, if, for example, the gig worker were in charge of updating records or confirming appointments in your dental practice, it is possible the gig worker might even work from home, avoiding childcare expenses and a commute.

Or say the gig worker wants to travel. They can undertake limited projects for your office such as refreshing your website and then move on to another dental practice in another state and do the same for them.

Perhaps someone training for a marathon, with a committed workout schedule, can come in mornings only as a temporary consultant to help you streamline office processes, leave instructions for your more permanent office workers, and spend afternoons whittling down their time for an upcoming 5K.

So what downsides are there for such a gig worker?

The gig worker must constantly solicit new clients or projects and manage their time accordingly. There is no reliable paycheck without such personal oversight. The gig worker doesn’t have a consistent work environment either and must be adaptable to different office cultures. The lack of social connections built up over time with their client’s full-time staff might be a disincentive too. But the biggest pitfall in gig work is the lack of benefits. Gig workers must manage their own paperwork, pay quarterly taxes, and have no access to an employer’s benefit packages, including insurance, which is very expensive for freelancers like a gig worker.

On the employer side, the gig economy has historically been given a bad rap. 

Permanent employees are deemed more reliable, better trained, more efficient, and less of a management hassle all around. Gig employees are the bane of the Human Resources department due to their hard-to-track working hours, lack of paperwork (including proof of Social Security and immigration records,) and a distinct void of background vetting and previous work references. When remote work is thrown in the mix, equipment must be provided (and tracked and returned at the end of the gig) and someone must provide oversight to make sure the gig worker is actually working while they are home or working remotely elsewhere. There is generally more babysitting involved in managing gig workers.

On the plus side for employers, however, is that gig workers usually cost less (with the exception of high-priced consultants,) as they are paid hourly, (though their timecards must be checked for padded hours.) A gig worker can also fill-in any gaps in a full-time workforce, sometimes at a moment’s notice. If Covid or flu sweeps through your office, there are administrative gig workers to answer your phones and look up records and even gig hygienists working around the country (like as in the popular trend of travel pharmacists.) You can keep up your clinic schedule temporarily or even use gig workers for longer-term projects, as long as you keep their work hours under 40 a week, the federal cut-off that defines a full-time employee.

At Midtown Dentistry, we make use of a hybrid model. Permanent full-time employees form the backbone of our group, bringing their historic knowledge of our culture and processes. Gig workers fill in our temporary or short-term needs thus helping to keep our employee costs under control. 

One caveat is Important to point out here: You must observe potential gig workers closely, noting the differences between those qualified professionals who choose to become gig workers for their own reasons and those who have to become gig workers because their lack of work ethic, sloppy execution, or inability to grasp the instructions they are given to properly perform the task at hand mark them as people who can’t get a full-time job and so turn to gig work as a quick fix. They may work a week, or a day, or not show up at all—wasting your full-time staff’s time (and therefore costing your practice money.)

Learn to discern between the hit-and-run gig workers and those who are productive professionals and hire the latter. 

Properly chosen and utilized, gig workers can provide a creative way to save money, fill in staff for needed tasks, and help your practice keep humming along.