There are a lot of things we put a big value on these days. Money, education, beauty, multi-tasking, speed at work, people skills, phone skills, math skills, computer skills, collection skills, organizational skills, creativity and ideas, artistry, coding, billing, and paperwork skills. These skills are GREAT! But all of these skills are worthless without INTEGRITY.

In our office, we must work, grow, perfect, and insist on a higher level of integrity than other businesses. We don’t usually talk about it. We always talk like we all have it. We never identify what it is or what it means. We never focus on it like it is something we must achieve and could improve in and yet it is the most important element of every team member in the office. A lack of integrity can eliminate the good hard work of the whole team. It is worth our time to focus on what it means to have integrity in the office.

Integrity means doing more as an employee than what is expected. We have been hired for a specific purpose and all of it is an investment designed to grow the practice. If we buy a plant for the office, we want it to grow and blossom! If we bought a plant and all it did was die, we would want our money back! The reason we have been brought together in this office is to grow the practice! The pay is the reward. Working with integrity means giving that practice far more than the doctor ever imagined. We want to be the team where the doctors say, “WOW, I hired this team expecting them to do a good job but they have been so much more to the practice than I ever dreamed! Patients love them. They bring in a lot of new patients and make sure those patients stay!”

As staff with integrity, we want to be a practice investment that every doctor dreams of. We are like stock that grows beyond their hopes and not an investment that loses money. If we made an investment in a stock that was going down every day and getting worse, what would we do with it? We would get rid of it of course! Our jobs are not merely an agreement to provide money or health insurance. As a person of integrity, I realize that I have the responsibility first to EARN a living and I want to prove my worth to this practice! The goal is to make our doctor grateful for hiring us!

Integrity CA’s produce more than was ever expected or anticipated by the employer. There should be no question in the doctor’s mind that we have given more than was even expected. We show our integrity when we work harder, provide more services, help more people, go the extra mile, volunteer for more, and learn more about the practice than just what we were hired to do. We want to be worth far more to the practice than someone that the doctor regrets hiring.

Our work is not an entitlement. It is a privilege that our doctor is giving us. In return, our doctor deserves a staff of integrity. Integrity means we do the right thing whether it’s in private or in public. We do the right thing if anybody is watching or they are not. Does it matter if we are monitored? Do we work 100% regardless? True integrity in our office means we work to our full potential whether anybody is looking or not.

The Bible says that all of us should work as if we were working for God as he’s the real boss! The boss is always watching. You are never alone even if nobody else is in the building. Even if Elvis has left the building…the boss is ALWAYS there! And this particular boss will expect you to work with integrity above anything else. This boss has a way of raising the bar.

Integrity is… a personal thing. Integrity means doing the right thing because that is what we expect of each other. We set the standard high whether anybody else does or not and that standard is integrity. Whatever we don’t do with our whole heart and with integrity, we are actually cheating ourselves. We would be lowering our standards. We will not lower the bar to blend in.

Integrity staff work by the heart and not by the hour. Some people spend their time trying to see how little they can do and still keep their job. They try to get a feel for how often they can be late or how late they can be late before getting in trouble. Their overall thought of a good job is to see if they can make their job a long recess. The less work and the less expectation the better the job. But when we have integrity, we go into our position wanting the challenge of work that will help people and make a difference. We have to be made to STOP working instead of having to be made to START working.

What if we do something wrong or make a mistake at work? We ALL make mistakes. Making mistakes is part of the cost of doing business. We can’t find anybody who doesn’t make mistakes. The question is not: are you going to make mistakes, the question is are you going to hide it and make things worse or are you going to tell somebody so we can do something about it? Covering up ALWAYS makes it worse. Always makes it more expensive. What is the only position of integrity? We’ve got to TELL the right person. We’ve got to apologize. Come clean! Don’t play the blame game. Don’t make excuses. Don’t make everybody else stupid or “worse” than we are. We can’t lift ourselves higher by putting everybody else down.

One of the easiest ways of compromising integrity is using the excuse that everybody does it! If you know a staff member calls in sick even though they weren’t sick and wanted to take a personal day, should they be able to do that? Or should you do something comparable to that because you know they got away with something so you should get away with it too? Just tell the doctor what you want to do. Be honest and you might be surprised how often honesty works. And if honesty doesn’t work then it probably wasn’t the right thing to do.

That is how integrity works.

Some people have also adopted the philosophy that the only difference between the honest and the dishonest is getting caught. Everybody is dishonest. Everybody cheats. Just not everybody gets caught. The question really isn’t can you do it or get away with it, the question is what is working with true integrity?

Nobody does anything wrong with the idea of getting caught and some people appear to be able to live their life without getting caught. That is why it takes such strong resolve to commit to a life of integrity.

Integrity is not something for the faint of heart. The weak can’t do it. Only the strong make it. It takes courage and strong resolve. It never happens by accident. It must be the goal and the plan. Left to our own feelings and natural inclination, we will never come out with integrity. It is MUCH easier to cheat or compromise. Lie or deceive. It is just too easy and natural. If we are going to live and work with integrity, we will have to focus on integrity. We will have to make it our number one goal. The philosophy must be “even if I fail at everything else” I can’t sacrifice integrity. It is a constant decision. If we already have cheated or compromised our integrity, the good news is that it’s never too late to do it right.

We can start today and never look back! Our new standard will make a difference in the office and make a difference even at home. We can set a new bar for everyone else. We will make everyone around us better! Others will eventually appreciate your new bar and probably thank you for it. Make integrity a new standard and the new peer pressure. We will feel better about ourselves this way.

Another thing to remember is that EVERYBODY has cheated at one time or another. If we have to have a perfect past to choose the path of integrity, we will never choose it because no one would be qualified. And just because we chose to work right yesterday doesn’t mean we will work right today. Integrity is always a choice, so we must make this the priority goal always!

One of the easiest things to do is spot the gaps of integrity in others rather than ourselves! We are not interested in the ability to recognize faults in everybody else. We expect every staff member to work on improving their own integrity! It is so easy to say, Sally is on the phone selling Avon to her friends when she is supposed to be working, Sue is always taking toilet paper from the office home, the doctor is reading Sports Illustrated in the office instead of doing paperwork. The truth is if we wait until everybody else works with integrity before we do, we will never work with integrity either. It’s good to make a list of areas to improve of integrity but we must make sure it is a personal list and not a list of what everybody else needs to do.

The reward of integrity is that it leads to the most rewarding life possible! There are great rewards for living and working the life of integrity. The rewards of a CA with integrity are:

You have security and this is no small thing! In an unpredictable world, it feels good to know that our world is secure! There is no way the doctor is ever going to terminate an integrity CA! When we work harder and give more toward growing the practice than was ever expected, the doctor will want to do things to KEEP us there! We become invaluable rather than a stock that needs to be replaced with one that WILL produce. Another aspect of security that the CA of integrity enjoys is a personal one. There is a lot to be said for being able to sleep like a baby at night. Knowing that everything said is true…everything done was honest and with 100% heart. It is important to know that we can stand before God and give an account for every move at work. It’s too hard and stressful to work with a “just enough to get by” work ethic and stay just this side of termination. When we know we have given it our all, there is a peace and contentment that comes with going home at night.

Having integrity always pays! There is always a reward for people of integrity. People who give more than is expected or produce more than was ever thought possible, get more. When we give big, it comes back. This is a spiritual principle that we can count on. It can come back in different forms including money. It comes back in earned pay and earned raises that are so much more rewarding than ones that are mandated by time worked in the office. It feels good to get these kinds of raises!

A job done with integrity rewards a person with a feeling of pride. It feels great to be the best! Knowing that the majority of the world tries to take what they can get and we try to give all we can give. Entitlement robs so many individuals of pride. It hurts our nation and it will hurt us! There is a pride that comes from learning everything in the office. We want to start at zero and build ourselves up to being number one in service and knowledge!

Another great reward for the people of integrity is trust. This happens when the doctor knows that he or she can count on us. We don’t have to be watched over or baby sat. We are a true part of the team and family. We stand for the right in every situation even if it isn’t popular. If the situation isn’t right, we will not go with the flow as we will be on the right side of the question. We will enjoy working with people who trust us and serving patients that trust us. Trust is worth earning.

We must also ALL respect integrity. If we work with and live it, then we respect it any time we see it in others. We know having trusts means breaking out from the ordinary and that it takes hard work and dedication to maintain it. When we work with integrity, it demands respect. We don’t have integrity because we show up for work. We have integrity because of the high standard of work we choose to produce. We know as a team we will always choose integrity and we will LOVE the results! Let’s resolve to grow this area of our work. Let’s make it our focus and goal to be number one when it comes to WORKING with integrity!