Survey highlights growing financial concerns

Concerns about job security and personal income are increasing among salaried veterinary staff, according to a new SPVS-VMG COVID-19 survey.

The survey also showed that almost a third of respondents were dissatisfied with social distancing for veterinary staff within their workplaces.

Two periods

The purpose of the second SPVS-VMG COVID-19 survey was to compare the level of challenges for practices between two time periods (late March and late April 2020), and focus on challenges to throughput, limits to capacity and potential intentions to any challenges posed.

One of the other key trends noted in the second survey was the increased amount of time it now takes to perform certain procedures, with physical and remote consultations taking up to 25 minutes longer than normal.

Key findings

Overall

• The major concerns for all owners and employees were human health, practice sustainability/profitability and personal welfare.
• Overall concerns for owners has reduced across the two surveys. However, survey two highlighted increasing concerns with employees over job security and personal income.

Small animal first opinion analysis

• Physical and remote consulting typically was taking 10 to 25 minutes longer due to changes in operation and social distancing.
• This generates a reduction in overall capacity, with current staffing in place of 40% to 60% of normal.
• Almost a third of respondents were dissatisfied with the social distancing arrangements for staff within the workplace.
• The majority were happy with the arrangements for clients.
• 31% of respondents identified that reluctance of colleagues to undertake additional work may limit capacity.
• Limits to capacity were due to not enough time, building or infrastructure constraints, insufficient labour to achieve efficiency and insufficient profits to recruit labour.

Future intentions

• Owners and employees both wished to focus on improving workflows and efficiencies within the practice – 84% and 73%, respectively.
• General support for increasing remote consulting – this was supported more by employees than owners (72% versus 51%).
• There was an acceptance that reducing labour to match the workload should be adopted – owners (60%) and employees (38%).
• Spreading the workload over longer hours was only supported by a quarter of owners and employees.

Summary

A summary of the report stated: “Further work is required to reassure all workers within small animal practice that, as volumes of work increase, social distancing risks can be managed.

“The most likely route adopted to maintain practice profitability will be through increasing efficiency of operation, increasing fees and reducing costs.”