What is your practice culture?
"Your culture is your personality" and it is always better to be around happy people, both for staff and for giving clients the best experience.
As recruitment becomes harder, it becomes increasingly important for practices to stand out from the crowd, said Kristie Faulkner, operations manager at White Cross Vets, as she gave a lecture on how to engage your team at the London Vet Show.
She talked about the importance of the 'practice culture' in forming good teams. "Your culture is your personality" and it is always better to be around happy people, both for staff and for giving clients the best experience.
A practice's values and principles are an important part of this culture. Understanding, respect and good treatment, integrity and responsibility to staff and clients all go towards the values of a practice.
It is important to have the 'right' team and everyone who is part of it must fit into the practice values.
Ms Faulkner's practice spends a great deal of time on team building. Just some of their tools are the biannual group practice magazine, the weekly team newsletter, the t-shirts that team members take on holiday so they can send a photo back to the practice. There are also the team member badge and photoshoots of team members and their pets which help to make employees feel special and part of the team.
Motivated team members make good team members. Once the 'hygiene' factors have been dealt with and a good financial package has been arrived at, it is all about relationships and the psychological contract between employer and employee. The practice gives its employees a very good working environment as well as providing a large number of perks and extras including a high volume and standard of CPD.
All this has financial implications for the practice, but it is seen as a good investment in the people they employ and it also means, as Ms Faulkner pointed out, that the practice can make a 'withdrawal' from the individual's 'bank account' and the team member does not mind.
Team engagement is all about the way that a practice treats its employees and investing in your team members can reap considerable rewards.
Veterinary practices are being urged to help owners safely dispose of any unused and expired pet medicines - not just antibiotics - during November's Animal Medicines Amnesty. 
