Supervision for Agencies: Why It Benefits You to Invest in Your Clinicians
By Shannon Heers
If you’re a clinician, manager, or leader in agency work that employs therapists, counselors or social workers, you might be wondering, how does external clinical supervision work? And why would it benefit the agency to invest in your clinicians by providing this level of specialized clinical support?
External clinical supervision is becoming increasingly popular with agencies like yours that may have only a few clinicians or that offer specific clinical services to specialized populations. Much of the time, within agencies, a clinician’s direct manager does not have the same credentials and specialized training as the clinician. Thus, the clinician doesn’t have anyone to staff difficult cases with appropriately, learn new clinical skills, or learn how to provide more effective care to their clients.
How Does External Clinical Supervision Work?
How external supervision for agencies works is that the agency contracts with a trained and experienced clinical supervisor that has similar specialty areas as the therapists and social workers you’re wanting to support. Your clinicians then get individual or group clinical supervision or consultation on a specified-upon frequency. With more effective clinical support and supervision, your clinicians can provide better client care, feel more supported by your agency, and stay in their jobs longer.
Here are several quick reasons why investing in your clinicians by providing external clinical supervision is a good idea:
- Decreases costly employee turnover
- Improves client care outcomes more efficiently
- Boosts Clinician Retention
- Develops leaders within your agency
Decreasing Employee Turnover
Of course, every agency is unique in its cost of employee turnover. However, some studies say that the cost to replace an employee is between 6 to 9 months’ salary. If your agency can provide more effective and specialized clinical supervision to your clinical staff through contracting with trained and experienced external supervisors, you have a better chance of decreasing employee turnover.
Improves Client Care Outcomes
It just makes sense that the more training, experience and learning that a therapist, counselor or social worker has, the better services they can provide to their clients. Having an external clinical supervisor that specializes in the same services that your clinician(s) does can help improve the client care of everyone on that clinician’s caseload.
Boosts Clinician Retention
Employees, especially therapists, social workers and other clinicians, want and need to feel supported in the workplace. Because there are so many options available for other jobs at this time, your agency needs to step up and provide them with something that other places don’t. Specialized clinical consultation in areas that your clinicians work in and are passionate about, will help boost your employee retention.
For example, if you have a sole clinician on your hospital team or agency that works with primarily trauma clients, that is an emotionally difficult and draining population to work with and not get burnt out. Providing specialty trauma consultation by an experienced trauma clinical supervisor can support your clinician in staying in their job longer while preventing burnout.
Develops Leaders Within Your Agency
When a great clinician or employee joins your agency, you want to keep them. One of the ways that you can keep them is by nurturing their development, continuing to offer learning opportunities, and show that you care for them by investing in external clinical supervision.
I remember one of my business school professors once saying that you should spend the most time and resources on your best employees, not your worst ones. In reality, if you have a great clinician at your agency, you tend to turn them loose and assume they don’t need much. Then you spend more time and energy on those under-performing employees. However, to develop future leaders, clinicians require mentorship and professional development from experienced clinical supervisors. It’s up to you to figure out how to make that happen!
How can we help
If you’re interested in learning more about how Firelight Supervision provides Clinical Supervision for Agencies, check out our Agency Supervision page. We provide external clinical supervision and consultation for a variety of community agencies, public health departments, hospitals, private practices, and treatment centers, and we’d love to chat with you about creating a custom package that fits your needs.
Author Bio
Shannon Heers is a psychotherapist, approved clinical supervisor, guest blogger, and the owner of a group psychotherapy practice in the Denver area. Shannon helps adults in professional careers manage anxiety, depression, work-life balance, and grief and loss. Follow Firelight Supervision on Instagram.
