Hiring Therapists: How to Build and Retain a Strong Team

If you're the owner of a mental health practice and need to hire therapists, you want to ensure you're seeking quality employees and psychotherapists. If you haven't ever had to hire therapists, you want to ensure you retain good therapists at your practice, but you may not know how to do this.

Retaining quality psychotherapists will help your practice grow and could potentially increase client retention and growth. How do you know where to find strong psychotherapists? What do you need to do to attract strong candidates? Finding employees who will stay depends on many factors, but having a positive work culture, benefits package, attractive salary, and manageable caseload may all increase applications. But what causes someone to stay? How do you keep a good team member once you find one? There are various ways to ensure you have a strong team.

With a high demand for therapists, and mental health services, you want to ensure you offer a complete package rather than just a high salary. A good employee-company match can help good psychotherapists stick around longer. Because so many individuals seek mental healthcare, it's tempting to go with the first therapist you can find, but doing so may be risky. Taking the time to find a therapist who can meet the needs of your agency long-term may take patience, but it can be worth it.

The hiring process

The hiring process is the first step in retaining and building a solid team of psychotherapists. You might want to ensure you're calling candidates that match your company's needs. For example, hiring someone who prefers to work with only adults is probably not wise if you need a clinician to work with children regularly.

You want to ensure that the therapist's background and your needs for your practice are a match. Finding someone with matching needs will not only help your company, but the therapist is more likely to stay where they are valued, which matches their training level and ideal clients.

If you need someone urgently to take on new clients or help with the caseload at your facility, hiring for this reason alone is guaranteed to produce a high turnover.

To determine if the clinician may be a good match for your practice, consider asking yourself these questions:

• Does this psychotherapist have the training and skillset to thrive at my practice?
• Does this individual have the specialized training I desire? (Works with couples, trained in EMDR, etc.)
• Do we serve the population that this therapist desires?
• Does this therapist seem like they would fit into the office culture?
• Does this therapist's needs match what I can provide?

These questions help determine whether or not a clinician may thrive at your practice. From there, you can structure your interview questions to understand the therapist's skills, background, and needs. You can also ask them questions about their desired population and caseload, which are essential to know so you both can be happy moving forward.

Benefits and Compensation

When hiring new therapists, consider what benefits and compensation you offer that help you retain your employees. You can compare the average therapist's salary for your area and meet this standard or pay more than the standard, making your practice attractive.

When offering benefits to a clinician, you may want to consider the following:

• Do you offer health insurance, dental, and vision insurance?
• Do you offer a retirement plan?
• Does your practice pay for therapists to gain additional training?
• Do you offer any student loan forgiveness?
• Do you offer HSA or FSA accounts?
• Do you offer any incentives, bonuses, or raises for your employees?
• Does your company sponsor training or retreats?
• Do you offer any additional activities that may help prevent employee burnout?

Suppose you don't offer these benefits to your employees. In that case, it may be time to consider doing so if you want to retain the best psychotherapists, as many people are drawn to a high-quality benefits package that may be more appealing than the compensation.

Besides offering these benefits and making sure the person is a good match for your organization, some additional factors should be considered. Studies about hiring and retaining therapists provide helpful information.

What does the research say about therapist retention?

One study of 247 therapists found that 30-60% of therapists leave their organizations annually. Many factors can cause therapists to leave their organization, but this study found that the biggest reason people leave their organization is because of financial strain. This study suggests that offering competitive wages, salary, and benefits is necessary if you don't want to lose high-quality employees. Especially in times when many employees are being struck by inflation.

This same study noted that some common reasons for turnover among therapists include high-stress work environments, burnout, and lack of support. Offering psychotherapists reasonable caseloads and support and using preventative methods to lower burnout could lead to higher retention of employees.

Offering a supportive work environment

What constitutes a supportive work environment? Any therapist might answer this question differently; however, some common themes that support encompasses may exist, such as:

• Providing the therapist's tools to succeed
• Helping therapists work with reasonable caseloads within their areas of expertise
• Providing opportunities for additional education
• Offering fun work retreats or activities
• Being open to feedback and making improvements

Tools such as Mentalyc, an AI that writes your progress notes for you, can help therapists experience less stress and burnout by alleviating the burden of writing progress notes. For example, with Mentalyc, you upload a recording of your psychotherapy session, and the AI software writes your progress note for you in less than 2 minutes. This is faster than many people can type progress notes. You even have the freedom to choose what format you want it written in.

Our users have reported less stress with documentation and ease of including all pertinent information required by third parties, and they are happy with the HIPAA-compliant forms Mentalyc provides. If you'd like to try this out for your company, you can sign up for Mentalyc here.

Additional tools include helping therapists market themselves in popular directories such as Psychology Today or Therapy Den. You may also add them to a full-scale electronic health records system where you keep client charts. You may also connect therapists to tools they can use in session to assist clients, such as workbooks, electronic resources, or other points of reference in your office.

Reasonable caseloads are highly dependent on each therapist. It may be tempting to assign new therapists loads of clients right away if your company's demand is more than you can keep up with, but giving therapists too many clients can lead to a high-stress environment your therapists may get burnt out quickly. Honoring what the therapist can handle is a much better option for retaining your employees.

Continuing education is necessary for most therapists as a part of licensure requirements. If you can pay for your employees to gain additional training, provide funds or reimbursement for continuing education, or sponsor your employees to go to relevant conferences and training, this could be a big pull for retention. If you serve a specific niche population, you can seek out training in this area or host guest speakers with expertise.

Providing a supportive work environment also means remaining open to feedback from your employees, listening to areas for improvement, and making changes to the work culture when necessary. It also provides an environment free from discrimination and harassment. Employees will not stay if you can't provide a safe environment.

Overview and Resources

There are many areas of work life to consider besides offering a generous salary when hiring psychotherapists. Benefits, opportunities to grow, tools, and work environment may also play into a therapist deciding whether they want to work for someone. You also want to ask new employees questions that help you understand whether they match your current work culture.

High levels of stress, burnout, and financial strain are all reasons employees tend to leave. When you hire a therapist, taking preventative steps to help mitigate stress, burnout, and financial pressure can fall on you. If you're looking for ways to add therapists to your practice, consider looking on LinkedIn, joining networking groups in your area/state, and looking for opportunities to post about your position in professional groups and organizations related to therapy.

Remember, you want to ensure that the therapist organization match is good so you have a higher likelihood of the psychotherapist staying long-term. Consider what benefits you want in a company and offer those to your potential employees. You don't have to be perfect, but you have to offer something that other people don't. Therapists will stay in places where they feel valued and where they feel that their voice is heard.

Sources:

• Adams D, et al. (2019). Therapists Financial Strain and Turnover: Interactions with System-Level Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7083521/

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About the author

Marissa Moore, MA, LPC

Marissa Moore is a mental health professional who owns Mending Hearts Counseling in Southwest Missouri. She specializes in providing affirming counseling services to the LGBTQIA+ community. Marissa has 11 years of experience working in the mental health field, and her work experience includes substance use treatment centers, group homes, an emergency room, and now private practice work.

Learn More About Marissa