A Veritable Master Class on Hiring and Retention in the Veterinary Field

 

Veterinarians and veterinary practice owners have to be extremely detail-oriented, adaptable, resilient, and empathetic decision-makers. One thing that many veterinary professionals, themselves, will admit is generally lacking in the field is skilled hiring and training procedures that are needed for long-term retention.

It's not the dedication to this process that they're missing but, unfortunately, it’s often the lack of time and resources. In talking with many prominent veterinarians and veterinary professionals during our Webinar Wednesdays With GeniusVets, various themes regarding the need for reform in this area seemed to emerge. We share these general hiring, training, and retention tips below in the hopes that, with a coordinated effort in this area, you can bring bright and dedicated employees on board who are not just content but happy to go to work each day.

 

Evaluate Your Ability to Delegate and Your Utilization of Staff

There’s certainly a high rate of perfectionism in the veterinary field, as—let’s face it—a mistake can be deadly. So it’s no surprise that many veterinarians have a hard time letting go of responsibilities to give them to someone else. Not delegating, however, can be a true detriment to your staff. You have to trust in your hiring abilities and let go of tasks that are perfectly acceptable for other people or you run the risk of not getting things done and/or getting them done below your standards.

In the same vein, you also need to utilize the staff that you have to maximize your efficiency. As Executive Director of the SCVMA Dr. Peter Weinstein noted during his webinar: 

“My messaging is we need to learn how to leverage our team. We need to learn how to delegate. Doctors only have to do three things, according to the practice act. Technicians have a limited number of things that they are licensed to do. Everybody else can be chipping in, but we never taught people how to get a history really well, or how to answer a phone appropriately."

He went on to note that it might take some analysis of your staff to really make things run at the height of efficiency:

“So it was actually shown, and I don't have the statistics in front of me, that it would actually be better for many practices to hire one or two technicians - licensed and unlicensed - than it would be to hire a doctor, but that's by learning how to leverage your team. So do we have a shortage of doctors? No, we just have a shortage of the utilization of the doctor and the team to deliver veterinary medicine.”

Terry O’Neil, the partner in charge of the Veterinary Services Group of Katz, Sapper & Miller, also weighed in on the need to leverage the staff you have on hand during his webinar: 

“If one doctor is seeing two, and the other doctor is seeing three patients an hour, that's 50% more with the same labor. So it's just little things like that and trying to balance the schedule out and really leverage the staff. So one of the most important keys is that they've got really, really smart, intelligent support staff and trained technicians that work for them. Let them be the technicians they're trained to be, and truly let the doctors be what the doctor should be, and trust your staff, and have the checks and balances in place.”

 

Provide Thorough Training and Strong Leadership at the Top

A veterinary practice owner who considers and implements input from staff is crucial, but strong leadership at that level is also an absolute necessity when it comes to bringing on good hires. As Dr. Weinstein noted:

 

“I joke that a new hire fills out their paperwork and they get 15 seconds of training and then we say, ‘Go answer the phone. Go put in a catheter, go help the doctor.’ And I think hopefully what we can learn from the forced change is how to prepare for change down the road. The way to do that and the necessity of leadership is a huge shortfall in the veterinary profession as well. I think we have a lack of leadership, and that's why many practices are suffering, and those practices that are most successful have very strong leaders at the top.”

 

Go For Outside-(And-Sometimes-Inside)-the-Box Solutions

If there is any field that has to roll with the punches, it’s the veterinary industry. Whether it’s new research, a new illness, or things like the current veterinarian shortage, veterinarians always seem to have to do more with less. And that’s why it’s necessary to take stock of the mental status of your employees and consider that when hiring. As Dr. Weinstein noted:

“They [veterinarians] are getting burned out; they're getting fried. What can we do? Well, we need to sometimes hire and promote from within. We need to give our staff more education so that the animal assistant becomes a certified veterinary assistant, who can become an RVT, who maybe even goes back to vet school, goes to vet school, comes back, and becomes your associate and/or a partner down the road.”

Conversely, you don’t always need to look for someone in the veterinary field when it comes to other professions in the industry. In fact, doing so can cause great harm and, really, a job within the veterinary industry just takes dedication and professionalism.

A good example is going the extra mile to make your hires, as dvm360’s Chief Veterinary Officer Adam Christman noted of their big recruiting and networking events during his webinar: 

“It just gets you more exposure to the attendees … being able to send resumes and associate names with faces. We also have conversations about how to interview, and what your resume should look like. What are some questions you should be asking your employer? Because you want this to be a marriage on both ends.”

Of course, these conferences went virtual as soon as the pandemic hit and have still been hugely successful.

Dr. Weinstein talked further about going outside the industry to find veterinary professionals:

“If you have potential employees who enjoy people first and pets second, they can fit in any role that doesn't require a license or certification—if somebody takes time to train them. Hire for personality, train to a level of trust and experience. Some of the best employees that I've had never worked in the veterinary field. So it doesn't require past experience; it requires a fit within the culture of the practice.”

 

Put Time and Resources Into Training

The veterinary field is known for its baptism-by-fire training methods and, while a broken clock is right twice a day, crossing your fingers for good hiring fortune is no way to go about your business. As Dr. Weinstein noted during his webinar:

“There's a quote, and I'm going to bollocks it up I'm sure, but it has something to do to the effect of, ‘What if I train them and they leave? And the response is, What if you don't train them and they stay?’ That's a problem that we tend to deal with, is we're not giving people an opportunity to grow. We're not giving them the tools to become successful.”

He went on to point out the consequences of poor training:

“We shoot ourselves in the foot or higher by not taking the time to do a correct onboarding orientation and training. As I joked earlier, way too often if somebody's got a pulse and can fog a mirror, at least one of the two, they can get a job at a veterinary hospital right now, but then we don't give them the tools to become successful. In the case of Ritz-Carlton, it’s six months from the time of hire to the time that they actually connect with a client. With veterinary medicine, it’s six minutes from the time that they're hired to the time they connect with the client.”

Of course, there are situations like the pandemic hitting that throw any sense of convention out the window. But you can still be strategic even if your time is limited. As DVM, practice owner of The Drake Center For Veterinary Care, and GeniusVets co-founder Michele Drake noted during her webinar on defeating the current phone frenzy: 

“Training is very intensive for people who are already working and are super busy. So, the way I try to work with my staff is I always say, ‘Teach them the top 10 things that are going to be helpful for you guys right away. Get those top 10 things covered.’”

 

Pay Your Employees What They Are Worth

While many people who work in the veterinary field don’t go into this line of work for the money, it’s still necessary for them to make a living wage to be able to do things like pay for daycare and still make some sort of profit after the bills are paid. If not, when something like COVID-19 hits, the motivation to go to work and risk their lives is frankly just not there. Formerly AAHA’s Senior Veterinary Officer Dr. Heather Loenser addressed this very topic during her webinar:

“I think we're like a lot of small businesses with lower-wage workers, it can sometimes be hard to entice people out of their homes right now. So I'm confident that there will be a rebound, but it's never been easy to find staff for veterinary hospitals because the difference between what people think it is, and what it actually is, and what they think it might pay, and what it actually pays is significant.”

Dr. Weinstein also addressed the fact that the veterinary profession is losing employees to the service industry because the pay and benefits are often better:

“Many of our client service people would be great if you can hire them from a Target or a restaurant, but guess what? They're making a lot more money at a restaurant and a Target than they are working in the veterinary field. We need to figure out how to increase our profitabilities so there's enough cash to drop through and pay our staff a fair, living, and competitive wage in a world where McDonald's is your best and toughest competitor. They pay well, they've got great benefits. We need to learn how to do things differently.”

Certified business valuator, consultant, and Vice President of the VCA Dr. John Tait talked fairly extensively during his webinar about the need to entice veterinarians who are just starting out by meeting them where they are currently:

“The idea of equity in a practice and so on isn't as important right out of the gate as it becomes a few years later, as they kind of start seeking salary and security and so on, but as they move on a little bit further, the idea of having risk-free equity, certainly as well as some autonomy and control over the culture and expansion of their responsibilities and so on becomes very important…”

Dr. Tait went on to discuss following up on your promises to associates instead of just dangling carrots without any actual payoff:

“If I had a practice and I wanted to retain an associate, I could say to them, ‘Look, every year I'm going to gift you 5% of the growth above my $100 value and after three, four, five years, you're going to be able to cash that out or roll that over.’ Well, that aligns itself perfectly with what early-career people are dealing with—student debt and mortgages and growing families and lack of ability to take on a lot more debt are thinking that's attractive to them, and it certainly differentiates the practice from the norm, where they may dangle out those words that I hate hearing: ‘Partnership is a possibility.’”

 

Do Your Part to Make the Field More Diverse

Much has come out in the media recently about the need for greater diversity in the veterinary field, not just because diversity is always a good thing but also because expanding in this way will also help with the veterinarian shortage. Dr. Weinsten noted that it’s every veterinarian’s duty to see that the field broadens its horizons in this regard:

“Change comes one person at a time. Individuals within associations locally, within associations statewide, within associations nationally can institute change. The AVMA needs to have a greater focus on diversity. The schools I know have a greater focus on diversity. I think that veterinarians when hiring need to look at that and they need to have diversity, equity, and inclusion policies within their practices.”

 

Strongly Consider Culture When Hiring

Dr. Drake is a huge proponent of the fact that good things come from a strong culture and knowing who you are as a practice. If not, it’s far too easy to fall apart when things like a totally unforeseen pandemic hit. Knowing your culture in and out is also imperative when hiring. As Dr. Drake has said of the manager at The Drake Center:

“My manager is a great interviewer because she knows our culture so well. So when she interviews, she asks a few questions but mostly just sits back and listens. She does this because she quickly knows from these answers whether this person will be a good fit with the culture here.”

Dr. Drake also discusses the need for taking swift action when it comes to light that an employee is not a good fit. Not doing so runs the risk of ruining the foundation you’ve established. As she said:

“My manager is amazing at hiring good people that fit our culture and are capable, but every now and then we find out within a couple of weeks that someone doesn't fit our culture, and my staff will let me know by saying, ‘This person is not working out.’ It doesn't happen very often because my manager is so good at this, but it does happen sometimes. So, then we decided that pretty quick and move on.”

To get more expert opinions on things like hiring, retention, and improving profitability, sign up for our GeniusVets demo!