How do we attract people to dental technology?

Tackling the technician shortage: Matt Everatt asks a panel of experts if attracting people to dental technology is achievable.

At this year’s North of England Dentistry Show, a panel discussion addressed the alarming decline in the number of dental technicians entering and remaining in the profession. Hosted by Matt Everatt, the discussion brought together lab experts Andrea Johnson, Ashley Byrne and Jennifer Dunnett to delve into what’s driving the shortage, the challenges facing the profession, and whether dental technology can be saved.

In this excerpt from their discussion, the panel shares insights – and potential solutions – for attracting, training and retaining the next generation of dental technicians. 

How do we attract people to dental technology? Is it doable?

Ashley Byrne

My lab’s success rate of taking young people on, putting them through college, funding them and retaining them is over 90% if you take, say, a four to five year period. I don’t mean to frame education in terms of returning investment, but if you’re going to invest in people, you’ve got to make sure they stay. 

If they leave, that’s not that person’s fault – that’s your fault because you have not looked after that person well enough for them to want to stay. If I put them in the model room, they are not going to stay. Nobody wants to do that. We have to make sure that, very rapidly, they progress. 

I love hearing my friends say that all their kids do is game – ‘they’ve got no future, they just want to game.’ That pricks my ears up, because that’s what I’m looking for – gamers. Good gamers are often actually quite artistic, so you want to put them into an environment of playing with CAD and 3D printers. 

When I show them the laboratory, I don’t show them the model room – you don’t want to do that. You want to show modern, forward-thinking digital techniques. When they come in for a day, we get them to play around with CAD. They’ll take a design, they’ll 3D print it, and they’ll take it home with them. That is so powerful, so engaging, and they’re like: ‘And I’ll get paid for this?’

We also never do minimum wage. We will start everyone at living wage, and we escalate that as fast as we can. So, they’re on a three-month cycle initially, then they’re on six month cycles. We want to make sure that we look after our team well, and that they do well, but you do have to really look after them. Generation Z has a very different way of thinking, and money doesn’t always motivate them. It’s about work-life balance, it’s about holidays, it’s about time off. 

You’ve got to change your mindset about employing the younger generation – it is a challenge, but it can be done.

Andrea Johnson

We have work experience people coming into our hospital every now and then, and they are pretty much always the ones who want to be a dentist. They spend at least an afternoon with me in the lab and they get drilled on the dental team and how dental technicians are part of it, however small the cog in this massive dental business. They are not the be all and end all of it, but they get lectured on the need to utilise and respect the technician and how they need to interact with us. 

But, most importantly, they get to engage with the digital technology. We’ve got nowhere near what Ash has got, but one of the first things we do now is get them doing things – they don’t just sit and watch, hands-off in the lab. I’ve always had them making stuff, so they go away with this special prize and they are just pleased as punch once they’ve done it.

If you’re going to invest in people, you’ve got to make sure they stay

So I’ll get a scan of them, I’ll sit them on the computer and show them how to base it, print it out, and then they go away with a set of their own teeth. They think it’s amazing and it gives them an insight into the lab. 

But, also, we need to make sure that we retain that once we have them. We’re never going to be able to pay the world’s best wages, but we should be able to pay them a good standard of a living wage, so they can comfortably pay their bills, afford a holiday and have a good standard of life.

If you think about jobs in the council, traditionally, or certainly big businesses like Rolls Royce, getting a job there is like winning the lottery. You only get a job there if somebody dies or you’re in the know and you’ve got a connection to the company, because they are such good employers – they give you a decent pension, they give you a good working environment, they value you, they look after you. So, it’s a whole package – it’s not just about wages. 

I also think more and more people want to work remotely now, so having that work-life balance, allowing them to work digitally, sometimes remotely, is something our industry could offer.

Jenny Dunnett

It’s about accessing courses within colleges. In Scotland, we only have Aberdeen University, and the training and qualifications you need to get into it as a minimum are three Highers at grade C or higher. 

Obviously the educational system in Scotland is different from England, we have National 5 (N5) qualifications, which is equivalent to GCSEs, and then we have Scottish Highers, which are equivalent to A-levels. 

So, in Scotland, you need to have a minimum of three Highers at grade C level or above, including one in science or maths, and then you need to have at least two N5s, including English, to actually access the course within Scotland. So, I think we need to come back in on the foundation degree course, something that interacts with our school leavers who aren’t as academic, but people who are hands-on, or who have computer or digital skills. 

If we can attract people coming out school, that’s what we need to do – open up a new career pathway.

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