Vet Clinic Employer of Choice + Vet Clinic Employer Branding + Vet Clinic Employer Value Propositions
How to become a Vet Clinic Employer of Choice so that you create your own clinic’s wait list of highly engaged and motivated top performers.
Vet Clinic Employers of Choice – three essential components
- Having a clinic culture of employee appreciation and empowerment,
- Having a strong and respected employer brand, and
- Being regarded and known as an Employer of Choice.
Vet Clinic Culture
When it comes to clinic culture, whether you realise it or not, whether you like it or not, your clinic already has a clinic culture. Whether it serves you positively or makes it hard for you to attract top performing nurses or vets, is an entirely different matter.
Your clinic’s culture is the shared values, belief systems, attitudes and the set of assumptions that everyone at your clinic shares.
The leadership and strategic organisational directions and management influence workplace culture. Mostly, people don’t resign because of the business, they resign because of the people.
When you’ve got a positive workplace culture teamwork is improved, staff morale is high, productivity and efficiency are increased and employees stay longer.
Employees stay longer because job satisfaction, collaboration, and work performance are all enhanced. And, most importantly, a positive workplace environment reduces stress in employees.
Establish clear ethos and values
It’s important that what your clinic states it stands for, it actually demonstrates through its actions. For example, if sustainability is a core value, then steps are implemented for your clinic to become more sustainable.
If your clinic’s values are all fluff and no stuff, if actions don’t speak louder than words then the culture will tend towards the negative than the positive.
Make values count for something
It’s also important that the values of the clinic are treated with respect and stand for something. If someone contravenes one of your agreed values, they need to have it brought to their attention, so it isn’t allowed to repeat.
Employees need to feel proud of where they work because if there’s no pride then you’ve got apathy and disengagement. Positive attitudes and positive actions make for a positive workplace culture.
Foster collaboration and communication
Clinics that walk-the-talk with “open and honest communication” know this because they conduct regular clinic health check-ups … audits… to evaluate how everyone is interacting with each other.
Of course, I’m you won’t be surprised to hear that you need to have strict no tolerance open door policies and complaints procedure for workplace bullying if you want to have a positive collaborative clinic environment.
Strive for Vet Clinic Diversity
How do you know you’re inclusive? It’s when everyone on your team is valued, supported and nurtured irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, race or creed.
An inclusive vet clinic is one that values and celebrates individual team member’s differences – where each feels welcome and accepted. If it’s something your team wants to keep everyone aligned and accountable, then put up signage that supports inclusivity, is clear and is positive.
Empower + Inspire + Reward appropriately
There’s plenty of research to support that paying your employees well – and by well, I mean for nurses above the living wage, and for vets one that shows respect and appreciation for not only the skills they have, but the economic value they add to your clinic.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that without either of these two highly skilled and educated professions – nurses and vets – there is no vet clinic business.
Benefits of well-paid employees
Some benefits of well-paid employees include:
- They’ll work harder
- They’ll be more productive because you’ll attract more capable and engaged employees
- Your churn – staff turnover – will be lower, which means you won’t need to call companies like VetStaff when your recruitment activities have failed to produce a result for you.
- Your clients will receive a higher level of customer service.
- Your staff disciplinary and performance management problems will be reduced and/or maybe even eliminated.
- You’ll have lower absenteeism – fewer cases of Monday-itis.
- Higher wages are associated with better health – less illness, more stamina which leads to higher productivity.
- Greater job satisfaction which results in less interpersonal conflict and aggro
- Enhanced reputation with your clients which will in turn lead to the attraction of a better type of client. What do I mean by this? If you don’t show respect for your team by paying them well, you’ll attract clients who won’t respect them or you either – they’ll be abusive, won’t follow treatment recommendations and or will gripe and moan about your bill and then be slow in paying it.
Employer Brand
What is that exactly? Why does it matter and what can you do about it?
At its most basic, an employer brand is your clinic’s reputation among the vetmed workforce as well as your existing employees’ perception of your clinic as an employer
Vet Clinic Employer Value Proposition
Put simply your EVP – your employer value proposition – is the promise your clinic makes to its employees.
This has to be real – and you’ll discover it written in the employer brand audit I just mentioned.
Your EVP will be a statement and then a pathway of how you live up to this promise.
Do the right thing – especially when no one is watching.
Treat everyone like family – with kindness, dignity and respect.
Teamwork – Together Everyone Achieves More
Accountability – do what you say and say what you do
Continuous Improvement – Yard by yard it’s hard. But inch by inch it’s a cinch. We will fight for inches.
Service – because every interaction counts
LINKS MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Higher wages for low income earners results in higher productivity
2017 Gallup survey, 88% of employees think their employer did a poor job with the onboarding process
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First published at Paws Claws & Wet Noses – reproduced here with permission
