16 Aug 2022
With vets and nurses increasingly hard to come by, it has never been more important for practices to ensure they retain talent. But this can only be done through good leadership and a positive culture where everyone’s voice can be heard, as Rich Casey explains…
Rich Casey
Job Title
Image © tomertu / Adobe Stock
You don’t need me to tell you about staff retention issues in the veterinary sector. The facts speak for themselves:
It’s tempting to feel that the veterinary sector has, like many others, been caught up in the general re-evaluation of our lives that many of us undertook during the pandemic, but deep down we know that, while this may be part of it, it’s not that simple.
Staff retention has been an intractable problem in the veterinary world for years, with the additional pressures on staffing caused by Brexit, the effects of COVID-19 and now the cost of living crisis simply fanning the flames of a well-established fire.
Ours will never be an “easy” profession. The nature of the work we do and our interaction with clients – often at times of great stress – will always be challenging, but our work can also be intensely rewarding.
Ironically, helped partly by the rise of corporatisation and independent practice groups, opportunities for career advancement have also never been greater.
So, what can be done to bring about the changes needed to ensure that our highly skilled veterinary teams can enjoy rewarding and highly satisfying careers, working within profitable businesses?
Reviewing the list of the most common reasons given by those stating they intend to leave the profession in the 2019 Survey of the Veterinary Profession is salutary.
Aside from overseas vets choosing to return home, they were:
What stands out for me (and you’d expect me to say this) is that each of these issues is interlinked.
The good news is that each can also be substantially mitigated by good leadership – leadership that is inclusive and gives all team members an opportunity to be heard and input into plans for their practice.
So, let’s explore some of the leadership strategies you can use to address them.
At a fundamental level, as a team leader, set guidelines for the practice team that support work-life balance. Times will occur when things get out of kilter, of course, but encouraging your team to maintain a balance overall will improve their well-being and satisfaction. Start out by having realistic expectations of your team and respecting their space and personal time. Set your own boundaries, too – lead by example.
Talk to everyone on your team individually. Invite their ideas, concerns and suggestions. Make sure they feel able to talk to you freely and without judgement. Seek to build an open, informal and supportive team environment in which everyone feels they have a stake in the development of the practice.
Create a strong team culture. Regular team meetings are a great way to do this. Use them to highlight successes and new initiatives, as well as discussing challenges or issues that you can work through and try to solve as a team. Learn how to spot signs of stress in a colleague so that you can intervene if necessary, and either provide support or signpost them to other sources of help.
Make sure team members take the breaks they are entitled to, and create a pleasant and inviting space in the practice in which they can relax if they don’t have time to leave the building. It can be as simple as an underused storeroom, which can be brightened up with a rug, some comfortable furniture and a coffee machine.
Understand the career aspirations of everyone in your team and the support they need to develop in their role. If they are keen to move up or change direction, explore how the practice could accommodate this and what additional continuing professional development they might need. Investing in their development is a great confirmation of your commitment to them.
Benchmark your salaries regularly to ensure they are competitive – particularly in these difficult economic times – but remember to look at the whole package. Money is, of course, an important driver for most of us, but a good working environment, a supportive team, and clear opportunities to progress are also very important.
Celebrating successes and milestones is always appreciated. A bunch of flowers for a birthday; a team gathering with cake to mark a long-service milestone, highlighting a team member who has gone above and beyond to help a patient or colleague, or carried out a difficult, but successful intervention.
Organise occasional social events to give an opportunity for the team to bond outside the practice and get to know each other as people, rather than just colleagues. Don’t pressure staff to attend, but if the events are enjoyable, I’ll bet the majority will be keen to come.
Legitimate reasons will always exist for staff to move on, but while the market remains so tight, retaining as many of our people as we can and getting the very best out of them is a constant priority for veterinary leaders. The practices that I see being most effective in this endeavour are those adopting some or all of the approaches above – and, in many cases, more besides. The benefit to them is matched by the benefit to their teams and their clients and patients. Could you learn from their success?
Keen to learn more about being the best leader that you can be? Recognising that, while highly trained clinically, many of our colleagues find ourselves in leadership roles without much training or experience in this area, the Veterinary Management Group (VMG) recently launched a suite of new qualifications in veterinary business, leadership and management.
The qualifications are the first veterinary-specific taught courses to incorporate all three Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) Level 5 qualifications: Award, Certificate and Diploma – meaning that learners will be dual-certified with an ILM, as well as VMG qualification. Delivered online, the courses are fully modular, enabling learners to build a qualification to suit their role and areas of specific interest. So, if you are interested in developing what we call “21st century leadership skills”, you can find out more about them at www.vetmg.com/cvlm
