23 Oct 2015
Helen Wiseman
Job Title
We see plenty of evidence for the feminisation of the veterinary profession in our business.
CVS currently employs around 598 female vets out of a total of 856 with a strong growth in the number of female vets joining us over the past five years.
We welcome vets of either sex, of course, but it is cause for concern that research continues to show female vets are increasingly disillusioned with the pressures of juggling their role with family life and are more likely to leave the profession.
Moreover, far fewer women rise to the level of partner/director in their practice or seek additional qualification.
Prof Colette Henry, head of department of business studies at Dundalk Institute of Technology, argued recently that women were “simply less prepared to come forward to take on business leadership roles”. If this is true, then the profession will be the loser.
Prof Henry said: “Private practice has a big role to play because women themselves have an opportunity to shape the profession the way they want it and the way it works best.
“The corporate sector is important too because, with initiatives like joint venture partnerships, they take the risk out of new venture creation.
“So this sector could really help prepare people for leadership roles and give them the support to do that. But we need everyone to think how they can contribute to that debate. Just assuming we can all trundle along and there will be no problem won’t work.”
At CVS, we have been focusing on career paths for all of our female staff – including vets – for several years and regularly canvass their views though our annual engagement survey and through our staff consultation forum, MiVoice. Our experience shows some simple, practical steps can really help to foster their aspirations and ambition and encourage them to step up to senior roles – indeed, 60% of our clinical directors (the clinical lead and managers of our veterinary practices) are now female.
While some of the strategies we use may be more relevant to larger groups, we believe practices of any size could employ some to their benefit – and to the benefit of their female vets.
Concerns about continuity have restricted the growth of job sharing, but, as our two job-sharing co-clinical directors of the Mildmay Veterinary Centre in Winchester, Nikki Hoad and Melanie Norris, demonstrate, it can work very well as long as planning and communication is in place to ensure handovers are managed well and both employees and clients know what is happening.
In fact, more than half our workforce is now employed on a part-time basis and, when a vacancy arises, we always consider whether a part-time or job-share opportunity exists. We believe job sharing is a great way to enable mothers (or fathers) to manage family commitments alongside work and have found job-sharing employees to be more committed and motivated.
It also gives practices greater flexibility when covering holiday or absence as part-timers can “flex” up their hours to cover their colleagues. We urge more practices to explore job sharing because it offers a win/win solution to both employee and employer.
The ACAS website (www.acas.org.uk) has some useful articles and information on job sharing.
In June 2014 employees were given the legal right to apply to work flexibly, yet we have been experimenting with flexible working for several years, including offering career breaks, annualised hours (where an employee works a certain number of hours over the whole year, but with a degree of flexibility about when those hours are worked) and mobile working for some employees. “Compressed hours” – a system when employees work longer days in return for a full day off during the week – is particularly popular with many of our female vets. It does, however, require careful planning to ensure practices have sufficient cover within the compressed working period.
We encourage female vets wanting to continue in clinical work to seek further qualification and potentially even to consider a specialist career. With two referral hospitals already open – and a third set to open later this year – building a strong cohort of specialists in all disciplines is a priority for us and offers a potential new direction for our clinical staff.
Vets interested in developing their skills are encouraged to undertake their Cert AVP and 86% of those studying for the qualification with us currently are female. We offer a blended learning approach, including face to face and e-learning, which gives them the opportunity to undertake development at a time that suits them.
Even without going as far as specialist status, an additional qualification builds confidence, gives a sense of achievement and enables our vets, both female and male, to consider cases with fresh eyes. In some cases, their additional knowledge can boost practice profitability as they can treat patients in-house that they would previously have referred.
While not all practices may wish to employ specialists, encouraging and taking steps to make it easier for female vets to seek additional qualification is something we strongly recommend for the motivational benefit to them and because it is likely to boost the practice’s finances and increase client satisfaction.
Many female vets want to follow a traditional clinical career path, but some find the rigours of day-to-day life in practice become too demanding over time, particularly if they are raising a young family. One of the advantages of working for a large group is the varied range of career paths on offer. Those wanting to follow a traditional career can do this – and on a flexible or part-time basis if they wish. Indeed, we have recently developed our own out-of-hours service, called MiNightVet, and have found some of our female vets have welcomed the opportunity to work a couple of nights during the week in return for having the flexibility to, for example, drop off and pick up their children from school.
Those wanting a more fundamental change can take their career in a new direction. For instance, of our 19 regional directors, 13 are women. Regional directors are responsible for leading and supporting a cluster of practices to drive and deliver clinical excellence – so the role is management-focused and requires strong leadership and team-working skills. It is a role that many of our female vets enjoy and excel at.
Other non-clinical career opportunities include area management roles, training , and departmental support function roles, such as purchasing and health and safety.
Female vets bring many positives to practice life – their communication skills and empathy are often more developed than those of their male counterparts, so helping them not only find a way to enjoy the profession they have worked so hard to enter, but, should they so desire, to rise up the career ladder.
The veterinary profession is not alone in facing this challenge (although life as a vet does have some uniquely difficult aspects), but it is a challenge we must work together to meet – for the sake of the profession and everyone working in the veterinary team.
