5 Ways to Improve Massage Therapist Productivity In Your Clinic

One thing is certain when you run a massage therapy business: time is money. Most of your income is generated from charging by the minute. This means it’s important not to waste too many minutes on unpaid tasks. That’s why we created this list of massage therapist productivity hacks.

Improve your practice by improving therapist productivity

You’ve heard the phrase, “work smarter, not harder.” That applies to more than just saving your hands. Running a business is a lot of work, but there are ways to make it easier.  When the work is easier, your staff will be happier and your clients more satisfied. 

3 reasons to focus on improving massage therapist productivity:

1. Therapists are happier when their workload is easier to manage.

2. Clients will be impressed with the efficiency of the way you do business.

3. You make more money when work is completed quickly and done well.

Improving massage therapist productivity is not about asking therapists to work more. It’s about improving the workflow process. This involves finding ways to do more work in less time. This means that therapists have more free time. The workday is less stressful. Less stress and more time could result in happily seeing more clients each week. That equates to greater satisfaction from your work and making more money.

When your business runs smoothly, your clients have a better experience. They know what to expect each time they do business with you. That consistency is part of the reason they keep coming back. It’s also why they refer to their friends and family.

When you get more reviews and referrals, your practice can grow quickly. When your therapists are happy, they are more likely to stay loyal to your business. Having a low turnover rate in staffing means you won’t have to continually hire massage therapists. That saves money and keeps clients happy too.

There’s not really a downfall to improving therapist productivity. Here are some tips for making the lives of you and your massage therapists easier.

1. Use Clinic Management Software

There are A LOT of administrative tasks required to run your business. Most massage clinics don’t have an admin team. That leaves the bulk of the admin tasks up to the therapists to do. 

Massage therapists don’t get paid to do bookkeeping, marketing or scheduling, but it all needs to be done.

With ClinicSense, you can automate many of these tasks. Clients can book their appointments online and automatically receive appointment reminders. You can automatically send digital intake forms to clients to complete before their session. Accept online payments and generate sales reports with a click of a button. 

Using software to do the work for you is a no-brainer. It’s an economical solution to a time-consuming problem. Get everything you need from a full-time receptionist for the price of a small monthly subscription.

2. Create Systems for Daily Operations

When you have a system for doing things, the system becomes a habit. Habits are things your brain can do on autopilot. It takes no energy to think through, and you can practically do it in your sleep.

Create a system for everything that needs to be done in your business. Once you figure out the best way to do something, create a system. Then, do it the same way every time.

Here are some examples of systems that improve therapist productivity:

1. Create a system for doing assessments and creating a massage therapy treatment plan.

2. Use a SOAP Note template to make charting fast and easy

3. Streamline your checkout process to get more people to rebook before they leave.

4. Create a schedule for daily cleaning.

5. Organize your massage rooms, so therapists have everything they need without leaving the room.

3. Create Policies to Eliminate Decision Making

When you have policies in place, you don’t have to waste time trying to decide what to do. You know exactly what to do because you have a policy for that. If it involves a client request, simply say, “our policy is…” 

Creating policies improves massage therapist productivity by eliminating stress when issues arise. One thing you can count - challenges will come up. Thinking through those challenges in advance will make dealing with them no big deal.

Clients will cancel appointments on occasion. If you have a clearly stated cancellation policy, clients know what to expect, and therapists know what to do.

People will ask for discounts. If you only offer discounts for purchasing a package of 5 sessions, then you know what to say when they ask.

4. Schedule Regular Breaks

Massage therapy requires a lot of mental, physical, and emotional stamina. Clients share their problems with therapists all day long. Meanwhile, massage therapists have to provide helpful advice and calm energy. That takes a lot out of you. 

You can improve massage therapist productivity by scheduling regular breaks to recharge. Self-care for massage therapists is SO important. If you give too much away without replenishing your reserves, you burn out.

Streamline massage therapists' schedules to include enough of a buffer between appointments to rest their hands. Make sure they have an actual break to sit down, have something to eat, and just not work for a bit. Support taking the occasional vacation to focus on themselves.

When massage therapists feel good, they can do more. When they’re over-taxed, treatment and attitude suffer.

5. Create a Marketing Calendar

There are two parts to a massage business. First, there’s the work you do with customers inside your business. Then, there’s the work you do to get more customers in the door.

You need to market your massage business in different ways. Decide what strategies to employ. Create a plan for implementing those strategies, and then map it out.

Create a calendar. Then, set aside a regular block of time to do marketing. This saves a lot of time and energy. You don’t have to work on marketing every week. You can spend a single day a month creating and scheduling all your marketing efforts. 

Ideas for simplifying your marketing:

1. Create massage therapy social media posts in bulk. Then, schedule them to publish throughout the month.

2. Automate email marketing campaigns to win back clients who haven’t scheduled recently.

3. Repurpose the content you create for your blog to use in social media posts and email marketing campaigns.

4. Use massage advertisement examples for ideas on how to create your own instead of starting from scratch.

5. Automatically send birthday emails to clients every month with a special discount on their special day.