Constructing an Effective Team-Building Reward System for Your Practice
© 2025 HMP Global. All Rights Reserved.
Any views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and/or participants and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of Podiatry Today or HMP Global, their employees, and affiliates.
Transcript
Jennifer Spector, DPM: Welcome back to Podiatry Today podcast where we bring you the latest and foot and ankle medicine and surgery from leaders in the field.
I'm Dr. Jennifer Spector, the Assistant Editorial Director for Podiatry Today, and today we have two opinion leaders with us that we are just so excited to touch down with to begin a series of practice management episodes. Our guests today are part of the force behind Lexington Podiatry and Modern Podiatrist, Dr. Nicole Freels and Cody Meier. Dr. Freels is the founder and CEO of Lexington Podiatry and Modern Podiatrist and has created a multi-specialty podiatry practice that focuses on treating all conditions of the foot and ankle, focusing on conservative care. She pays special attention to comprehensive biomechanical care and is dedicated to patient education and innovative treatments. As with today, she often lends her education and insights to other podiatrists with a focus on guiding new practitioners through the nuances of podiatry practice management. We also have Cody Meier, who's the director of operations at Lexington Podiatry and Modern Podiatrist, who has an extensive history in healthcare administration. He's over 12 years in healthcare management and a career that began during his active duty service in the United States Air Force. He began as a hospital administrator within the Air Force and has successfully led and optimized healthcare services across numerous global military treatment facilities.
Thank you so much to both of you for your valuable insights today. This episode will be part of a series on some unique and innovative practice management strategies. So be sure to stay tuned for several more topics, but let's get started with the first one today. First of all, welcome to both of you, and thank you so much for being here.
Nicole Freels, DPM: Thank you for having us. We're excited.
Dr. Spector: So can you start us off by briefly explaining for listeners the basics of how a team-building reward system can apply to a podiatric practice?
Cody Meier, MHA: Yeah, I would love to. So It's one of those often overlooked areas with them practice management, but especially for a small practice It's so necessary because in general something that I've all continued to go back to is in fully buy-in equals employee engagement. Being able to get your team on board with what you're late. What you're tracking to accomplish within your own practice to show what a strategy, mission, vision, values or just equate to a better quality of employees that are tracking to meet your own goals internally and help your patients on whatever direction you've gotten to accomplish.
So that's where a lot of people get kind of stuck and thinking that we have to forgo some of the rationale behind creating a strong building system because we compete against these large hospital systems that just have a quantity to round the day-to-day functions in bodies. But we're not lucky enough for that. We are in a quality game instead of a quantity.
Dr. Freels: We've found since implementing our latest reward system, which I'll tell you over 16 years has been by far the most successful reward system we've ever had. It really encourages engagement from your employees. They really want to root for each other. And so instead of maybe this person gets a nice lunch from their main provider, everybody wins with this. And everybody wants to see the outcome of these rewards. And it's kind of fun because they never know what they're going to get. And so again, they're just kind of rooting for each other. And that really helps the practice morale overall. It continues to keep it on the up and up. And also helps connect with the vision. And they understand that, you know, we are striving towards a family-like atmosphere. We completely, I don't say we get into their business, but we wanna know if there's something going on at home so we can pivot and really kind of help them overall.
Dr. Spector: From your experience, what are the core elements of an effective reward system that fosters teamwork in that way and how do those elements contribute to motivation both for an individual team member and maybe collectively for the whole team?
Meier: Yeah, so I mean, I'm a strong believer in bringing your team up and making it super clear to them of what your goals are. Where we have a Christmas party upcoming and tomorrow, actually, we're taking a look back over the last year and saying, "What were the highs and lows? What did we on board? What was successful? Who did we lose?" But then, more importantly, we're looking forward to the future and we're going to find, "Where are the key things that we're focusing on and what do we want to tackle from a senior leadership perspective? And how does that relate back to them? And how can they help us achieve these goals?” I think incorporating them on the overall strategy from an annual perspective allows them to, right out of the gate, be into what you're trying to achieve and building your appreciation systems around achieved and said strategies and said goals helps from a larger perspective and we'll get into some more weeds of individual stuff. But I think from a strategy side, bringing in annual goals in some beats from the point.
Dr. Freels: Absolutely. You know, we do this every year at the end of the year at our Christmas party, we have superlatives for them. And that's when Cody rolls out the year vision. So there's no question, you know, January 1st, they know exactly what we're trying to achieve and when everybody has their eye on the ball and we work as a team, we get there much faster. So kind of taking out or avoid being siloed with your management team and then you're, 'cause you've got your management team and when you've got your employees. So having everybody on the same page and working together, I think, just sharing whatever you're wanting to do with them helps go a long, long away. They appreciate it. They want to know what's behind the door. What are we talking about? So being transparent and honest with them, and when you get the high-quality people, like fortunately we have, they only just add to the vision and then come up with new ideas. And then next year's vision may be a little different. So we pivot as a team together, but everybody is aware of what that goal is for the practice for that year.
We were talking about yesterday how we really promote growth professionally and personally within the practice, which is pretty unique. Most of the times, you know, you're hired as an MA and they think, I'm going to be an MA forever. I have no upward growth. And then they bounce to another practice because maybe there is an elevated position, an office manager. So really creating a stepwise fashion with concrete details to move them up that ladder. They really appreciate that as well. 'Cause they know that they have a future with the company. And then of course being involved in the vision every year, they want to hang around and they want to be a part of it.
Dr. Spector: Yeah, it makes them feel like they're part of something important and something special, that they're making a difference as part of that entire construct.
Meier: Well, nobody wants to come to work and feel like they're not making the difference. You know, that's how you lose your staff is if they feel like they come in and they're just checked the clocking in, clocking out and not making the true difference or getting behind a vision that has some kind of subsidence to it, then they're not into it. They're gonna lose them. I’ve seen a lot of that and it's kind of where we're trying to shake it up and have those upfront conversations about what do they want to do in their long-term career plans and identify this positive turnover opportunities while also building it into the strategy of our organization.
Dr. Freels: We have a unique criteria for hiring. Cody, during his interview, he's only hiring people that have ambition and that want to move up the ladder, because we know they're going to be high quality. However, we make it a lifer that sticks around, which is great, but more than likely they're going to go somewhere else. So why not have an employee for two years that is at the highest level of their game or maybe pre-med or going to be a physician's assistant? They really are—they learn quick, and they appreciate that we are really cultivating and massaging them in the right direction, if you will, and really improving their skill set overall. So it's a win-win.
Dr. Spector: So then how do you balance the decision-making process? When it comes to the type of rewards or incentives that you're putting out there, like monetary versus non-monetary, tangible versus intangible. Can you give us some examples of different forms that have worked for you in your practice?
Meier: Absolutely, and Dr. Spector, do I have a book for you. It is called The Five Languages of Workplace Appreciation. We have read it, it's about two years ago, when we put it on our book list and we headed and they kind of decoded it for the rest of the team. But what it teaches you is how to identify the manners in which your team will want to be appreciated. I'll say in that that everybody wants a gift card or everybody wants to be told they're doing a good job or everybody likes a little pat on the back is simply not true anymore. Everybody appreciates that a little bit, but we're also in the business of how to get the most bang crew buck. And I highly recommend reading that book and sitting down with your team and creating an Excel workbook of your entire staff and filling them into one of these five buckets.
Are they, again, a gift-giving type of person? Are they information? Are they quality time? Where do they fill in and then build your reward system, a reward system around your majority, if possible. But then even better than that is the power of the people. We make sure that our middle-level managers have some say-so in what is given to whom, different areas of appreciations, that way our tangible gifts are more meaningful. So, in general, answer your question, I'd say spend the time to get to know your staff a little bit better and then corporatize the manner in which you are budgeting out new efforts.
Dr. Freels: I will tell you, whenever I read this, it was an “aha” moment because for a decade and a half, we've been throwing money at dinners and lunches every week and just at random things as you can think about. They always want to get together. Well, they think they do, but in reality, you know, we spend all of our time together. And so kind of working through what, how much time do they want to spend out of the office with us? That's our annual Christmas party. But a lot of them want that quality time and that's free. You know, they want to know or they care about, do you know the name of my kid.
So this has really—I highly encourage you guys to read this because this has saved us more money than you could ever imagine. It doesn't make sense, right? You think you'd be spending more, but you're not. So there's so many different things that you can do that cost nothing that is more impactful and meaningful to the employee, just because you took the time to write them at a card, good luck on your test or something like that. It goes a long way. Highly recommend. I think we surveyed everybody, didn't we, Cody? Or just did we interview everybody after that was read to see, and didn't the ELT team as well sit down and try to guess where everybody was?
Meier: Yeah. We kind of did a two-fold process where we read the book and I do a quarterly or biennially and then how much time I got on my end. Engagement service, I call it entirely just to come and see where we're standing culturally, that's a question that I'd like to ask and back them up, data to see according to increasing decrease in the year after year. The part of that post-survey interview was engaged on this platform. Asking them, trying to give them a rundown on what this book means, and where we're going, and how we're going to be budgeting our appreciation on the future, and having them kind of answer it for me of where they think they feel.
But before we did that, we had our debrief with our extended leadership team, but ELT stands for it, and we had them kind of guess where they think their team landed. And it was super interesting to see where we at the time, you know, our leaders are doing how the same mentality is everybody else. So it's either gift giving or worth of affirmation. Nobody thinks they fall within the acts of service bucket. And it's surprising to see how many people actually do. So actually sitting down and having those dark conversations and with your reality checks, it's super insightful.
To answer some of the questions to Dr. Spector, I had given some tangible, successful efforts from our front. Our team really values our family-like atmosphere and employee camaraderie. So a big thing for us is monthly potlucks. It's inexpensive, but we need to kind of give them the opportunity to block out an extra half an hour of our day during lunch and encourage them to bring in their favorite dishes. We just got done with, I think it was like an ethnic favorite dish, pop up, brought in all of the weird things that they like to make and I want to try out, and kind of have a little competition in the way. We do a pumpkin contest for, for Halloween last month. Remember when he got a little tiny four by four pumpkin and painted it, decorated it, and then we had a contest where the patients were voting on it, the person that won ended up getting a reward of some sort.
From a financial perspective, we have a “good foot” concept. Literally a foot that's on a wall on the team, right on little sticky notes throughout the day of who they think did something great for the day. Val stepped up and helped the room and extra patient but because so-and-so was getting behind then so-and-so would lie down at the sticky moment and say well thank you and whenever the put gets full we add up the sticky notes whoever gets the most gets a little reward of X dollar amount and that reward is built around what they appreciate. We have a gift card system that kind of builds into our strategic direction of we really value our Google reviews we've got over 2,500 at this point. And that's because in the team of course so any time we get a four or five star Google review. Then it adds a point to the bucket. Once we get over 150 points, then it automatically everybody gets to draw out of a bucket for a forget card. Fun little engagement activity they loved me walking around and saying a little notes. It's gonna be a fun little fun.
I mean, the coolest thing we just came up with actually a couple of days ago, we're going to go into a UK football game, have the team come out with us and they'll invite other folks to come over and check us out and talk to us. We're going to have them wear these big foot costumes and just block her out and kind of promote us. We'll come challenge us to cornhole games if we beat us, then we'll get 15% off of or decisions or something along those lines. Make it fun and engaging. They want to be out there and promote your brand. They want to be part of it, but with you every single day. So put them in a foot costume and slap a label on them. They will live and breathe by your brand if you let them.
Dr. Spector: That's a great and innovative idea. So it sounds like it's definitely very data-centric. You've got your engagement data, you've got your information. How do you then design your reward system? How do you take that data and turn it into something that is actionable on your end? Have you ever found there to be any ethical considerations to keep in mind?
Meier: Yeah, absolutely. I think we like to take the data and almost apply certain percentages and dollar amounts to each average. So I know at the start of each year, I've got X amount of dollars to get into which my appreciation budget will increase as well. Weekly lunches, if we're gonna do that, includes accompanying outings, it includes the Good Foot Award, and I'll just give it in. Football tickets, and everything in between. And part of the surveys that I mentioned before, figuring out where people find the most value if I have 20 employees and 12 of them are getting people then I'm probably going to put more effort into my Google review system or my good foot of reward system because there was a more get getting initiatives, but if I have people that are more quality time base, then maybe I'm gonna put more effort It was named by my potlucks. I'm gonna block out more time with my providers, being clinics that they would be able to spend time with the docs and have that on a FaceTime. Also, as in your quality design market, excuse me.
Dr. Freels: The question about the ethical consideration, I am not aware of any issues. It's not like we're compensating them and it's a direct transaction. You know, you convert on a pair of orthotics, we're going to give you $5. So I think something like that would be more of a violation if it was on one-on-one like that. But in terms of team, I don't see any issue ethically with that. Do you, Cody? I mean, you would know this more.
Meier: Yeah, my lead is definitely a fine line to walk. Anytime you're dealing with insurance, I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. But I would also be very fearful about having incentive-based programs, even to your OTC dispensing. I might get on soapbox, but I feel like clinics that go down the path of creating a reward system based off of OTC sales are still looking at OTC sales as salesmen. Not a salesman, you're dispensing, you're a medical provider. Build your OTC back into your protocols because they're bringing the patient value. Don't look at it as just a little extra pocket cash for yourself, your patient needs that. So the more that you base your reward system off of your team growing revenue stream for you. They're also going to look at you as a salesperson as well. Be really careful about it. I wouldn't say that it's completely off limits, but I think culturally, it could affect you. And then be very careful walking the line up really, really (inaudible) you as well. I would stick mostly to the team-based forward system, as Dr. Freels mentioned.
Dr. Freels: And we were, we were rewarding people based on OTC sales at one point and it became very competitive and it completely just divided everybody. And of course that's, you know, if you're dealing with a culture like that, that's one thing, but it really does push them to want to be more competitive than they naturally would be instead of building each other up. So that's my own personal experience with doing that and linking it to OTC sales. And I think that in terms of what data to collect, what's important to you? You know, number one, our baby is Google reviews. So that's our focus. And so our reward system is built around that. However, if maybe you don't care about that type of thing, what do you care about? What is pushing you towards your annual goal and helping you utilize your staff and reward them in the process to get you there and you all get there together.
Dr. Spector: It seems like it's much more focusing on rewarding relationships and actions and service providing rather than a particular metric on the financial end, which seems to just have a much more productive anticipated results. So it's great to hear you're thinking on that.
Meier: Absolutely. You know, the appreciation standards are to build into your culture, not into your bottom line. Now, at the end of the day, realistically, if the culture is good, then the bottom line is going to be better off as well. Lower turnover, higher employment engagement, will come trickle down a path, of course, but You're exactly right. The whole initiative here is building the culture and building a great place to work.
Dr. Spector: So your team and many medical practice teams will often have diverse roles amongst it, from physicians to nurses to administrative staff to potentially marketers. How do you tailor a reward system to ensure that it's gonna motivate each different type of team member effectively, given sort of their different expectations and responsibilities?
Meier: So, first off, surveys, survey, survey, I can't preach it enough. Identify where people find their value and figure out where they are within their paths and help them grow into that different area. Part of your appreciation. Expense can be that. Second part, I mentioned a little bit before but we call it the meaningful appreciation program to where our middle level managers get a certain dollar amount, which is a certain percentage of our appreciation budget, for each quarter. They can use that money however they want. Of course, they come to me because I don't want to get them straight up cash or anything along those lines. I do have my preferences and not waiting to get this legally safe, then culturally safe, but it's really within their hands.
If they know MA number one, just a dog ran into the TV and broke it, then she had an awesome week this week. Go buy her a new TV. It's well worth the effort to make that employee happy. If it's an employee that just is really getting burned out and has been busting her butt over the last couple of weeks, give her an extra day of PTO. That can come out of your budget as well. That's all good. That is just an extra little financial line you can create so that I don't incentive them to thought into it. But give the power to your people. Most of the time, the doctors that are running your own practice don't have time to spend effort figuring out exactly what so-and-so needs right now or their kid is getting ready to have a big Christmas play and they could use X, Y, Z for it. You don't have time for that. So these are your mid-level managers, your team leads. If somebody within your organizational structure will add that level of appreciation to the little funnel.
Dr. Freels: And it's so individualized. I think that's why our team really appreciates that because the doctors and office managers and directors of operation, they don't have time to really get to know everyone individually like you would want to. So your mid-levels do, you know, they're kind of out there trekking around with them, they're on that same level and they talk about personal things. And so like Cody said about the TV or an extra day of PTO, that's going, it's so impactful and it's going longer than you could ever imagine because that person feels touched. That person that is just the newest employee working the front desk answering phones—“I don't really feel like I'm doing much here ho humming around.” They really take notice and you get a great employee out of rewarding them in this fashion where it's so personalized. I think that goes a long way.
And so it's not blanketed in terms of, okay, everybody gets lunch. All right, well, we do that too, but that's not really a thing that's personal. It's like, great, thanks for the free lunch. And that costs you, I don't know, $1 ,000, and the employee doesn't care. And so here you've gone and blown money again. So personalize it.
Dr. Spector: So to wrap up this topic today, let's take it back to the data again. Once you have this system in place, what metrics or feedback mechanisms do you use to evaluate how effective that reward system is? How often are you looking at that? And how do you approach it overall?
Meier: Well, great question. I love my data. So surveys back to that as well, but I don't want to be a dead horse. But what I'll call out is, be sure to ask the same or very similar questions within your surveys. I recommend a quarterly touch point, pulse check, whatever you want to call it, but ask a standard set of probably five, four to five questions that you can track your data off of. As an example, I'm reporting out tomorrow with my team that we had a 16% increase in employee engagement and a 15% increase in employee happiness over the last year, simply because I asked the same five questions at every touch point the way I can kind of track that, put it on a little data map of how you can progress the loop.
Even more so important method to keep in line with the regular pulse checks of North Clinic is utilize your mid-level managers or your team leads to keep a handle on them. We have a weekly ELT meeting or extended leadership team meeting with myself and Dr. Carter, Dr. Freels’s partner. Sit down with our team leads and we just talk through all the cultural and day-to-day mess that we need to sort through. A lot of that's HR talk. A lot of that's so-and-so is upset because so-and-so got this type of promotion. So-and-so has really been busting a butt and could use a little pick-me-up. That's where those decisions are made, to kind of keep our hands on the wheel and make sure that we're steering the ship in the right direction we need to on a weekly basis.
Dr. Freels: I think taking the time to really sit down and, you know, survey, is very time-consuming, but what you get out of it is way more than effort you put in. With it, I'm so glad I don't have to sit in on those weekly ELT HR meetings, like that would be my worst nightmare, but it's necessary. So if you don't like doing it, fortunately, I'm not on that ELT team, you know, put somebody else in your position. So if you're not passionate about it and you don't care, you know, so-and-so's boyfriend left them, which I don't, then put somebody else in that position because that is so necessary. When you start disconnecting from your team, they're going to put you on an island and you're never going to get off. So put somebody in that seat that enjoys doing it and thank God for Dr. Carter that she does that for us.
Dr. Spector: Well, thank you so much to both of you for your valuable insights today on this topic. We hope that you'll return for the next several episodes in the series on these innovative practice management strategies. Don't forget, you can listen to Podiatry Today podcasts on podiatrytoday.com, on Soundcloud, Apple podcasts, Spotify and your other favorite podcast platforms.
