In Part 2 of The DrBicuspid.com Podcast series on the dental practice employee life cycle (Listen to Part 1.), Editor-in-Chief Kevin Henry brings back Alan Twigg of Bent Ericksen and Associates for a conversation that covers something most dental teams would rather not think about -- human resources compliance -- and reframes it as something worth getting excited about.
Twigg's central argument is straightforward: Compliance isn't about avoiding fines. In a tight labor market where every practice is chasing the same pool of qualified candidates, a well-run, consistently compliant practice is a competitive differentiator. High-performing employees -- the ones every practice wants -- seek out workplaces with structure, fairness, and predictability.
The numbers Twigg cites make the urgency clear. From 2016 through 2020, his firm pushed out 111 significant policy updates to keep clients current with new or changed HR rules. From 2021 to 2025, that number jumped to 328 -- nearly three times as many updates. These aren't obscure regulatory footnotes. They include mandatory paid sick leave, paid family leave, and pregnancy disability accommodations -- the kinds of policies that surface in real conversations between real employees and employers.
One of the more striking sections of the conversation involves AI. Twigg warns against using ChatGPT or similar tools to draft compliance policies and walks through a real example in which employees at a practice cited an AI-generated answer about mandatory sick leave -- which turned out to be sourced from a state document intended for government workers, not private employers. The takeaway: Employees are increasingly using AI to research their own rights, which means employers can't afford to be detached about compliance than they might have been even five years ago.
The episode also covers a compliance reality many dentists miss: Rules apply based on employee count, vary by state and sometimes by city, and can take effect at any point in the year, not just January 1. If your employee handbook hasn't been updated in the past year or two, Twigg says, it's likely already out of date.
Twigg's Dental HR Podcast is available on Apple and Spotify. Learn more about Bent Ericksen and Associates and their HR director package here.
Listen to the full conversation in the player below.
