Sometimes we need a big ol' slap in the face to come to our senses. Vet med, you're overdue for your annual wellness check.
This industry is beautiful, and it's full of so many awesome, smart, kind humans. But it's time we unify as an industry and take responsibility for our people's collective experience, well-being, and success.
Friends: burnout, employee turnover, compassion fatigue, anxiety, and depression plague our profession.
We hear you. We see you. We love you.
Let's come together, put together a treatment plan, and cure our cancered culture.
What Is Culture?
Culture can feel like an elusive, mystical word. But it is so, so much more than a buzzword.
Culture comes from the latin word cultus, which means "care." It's defined as the values, language, and behavior of a group. Not so mystical after all.
Culture is a tangible, palpable thing that people create together. And there are plenty of leaders in our industry working hard on getting it right.
In this guide, we'll explore what the best do right, and how to build cultures which allow people, and our businesses, to reach their full potential.
The 4 Pillars of Awesome Culture
There is no master checklist. No two cultures will be identical. And they shouldn't be. Your culture is made up of the vibrant, diverse group of people who commit their time, energy, creativity, and emotions to the company and each other.
But there are 4 reliable, guiding principles for building and maintaining healthy culture:
- Purpose
- Safety
- Vulnerability
- Growth
1. Purpose
People want to believe in the work they do. They want to feel that their work serves a greater good.
Companies with highly-engaged people outperform their peers by a whopping 147%. If you want a healthy culture that promotes this behavior, you must start by aligning your practice and people to a shared purpose.
How Do You Build Purpose?
Building your purpose should not be done by management alone. When something this impactful is developed, the entire team should be involved. To get started, place your cornerstones:
- Mission: why we do what we do
- Vision: what we hope to achieve
- Values: what we care deeply about
- Culture Code: the rules we all play by
Mission answers: "Why do we do what we do?" Your mission should be meaningful, impactful, and clear.
- At Hound, our mission is: to inspire, empower, and support the people of pet care.
Vision answers: "What do we hope to achieve?" Your vision should be future-oriented and big picture.
- At Hound, our vision is: a pet care collective of happy, hardworking humans.
Values answer: "What do we care deeply about?" Focus on people before patients.
- At Hound, we use an acronym: hound C.A.R.E.S. Community, Agility, Results, Excellence, Sympathy.
Culture Code reflects philosophies you expect your people, and maybe even clients, to live by. Hound's culture code includes:
- Make it better: continuous improvement and growth mindset
- Embrace the wind: take risks, welcome challenge and failure, rebound and grow
- Bake more cookies: collaboration over competition; build win/win/win scenarios
- Punt the skunks: protect each other and your culture at all costs
2. Safety
People want to be safe and belong. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, safety is one of the basic needs of all human beings. For people to thrive, they must first feel safe.
A. Arrival
Moments of arrival should be magical. Our brains are hardwired to quickly determine if we are safe when we enter a new group. A new job is a significant life moment, and you have an opportunity to create a lasting positive impact.
Ideas to make new hires' first day memorable:
- A signed welcome card from the entire team
- A welcome lunch party
- A stethoscope and engraved ID tag
- A branded tote full of goodies for them and their pets
- A gift card for the new team member and a significant other to enjoy a celebratory meal
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
To be a leading employer in today's world, you must prioritize DEI.
- Diversity is variety in any given group: race, age, nationality, gender identity, and more
- Equity ensures all people can reach their full potential
- Inclusion is a sense of belonging and worth felt by all team members
Stats supporting DEI:
- 57% of employees think companies should be more diverse
- 67% of job seekers value a diverse workforce
- Gender-diverse leadership is 25% more likely to outperform peers on profitability (McKinsey, 2020)
- Ethnically-diverse leadership is 36% more likely to outperform profitability benchmarks (McKinsey, 2020)
B. Engagement
Successfully creating a culture centered on employee engagement can lead to up to 18% higher revenue per employee. But 67% of U.S. employees are not engaged at work (Gallup).
Using Herzberg's two-factor principle: hygiene factors drive dissatisfaction (bare minimum) while motivator factors drive satisfaction (opportunity for greatness).
Adequate pay and benefits is top of mind for your employees. Cutting corners is a huge mistake.
- A disengaged employee costs approximately $3,400 for every $10,000 in annual salary
- On average, it costs 6 to 9 months of an employee's salary to replace them
What leading employers pay:
Best-in-class benefits include: healthcare/vision/dental, 401K, 529 plans, pet insurance, sign-on bonuses, generous PTO, CE reimbursement, tuition reimbursement, profit sharing, and parental leave.
One of the core causes of burnout is overwork. Practical steps:
- Regularly assess and upgrade your practice facilities and technology
- Enforce lunches and closing hours
- Enforce and respect employee time off; encourage PTO use (performance can increase by 80% after vacation)
- Don't cater to abusive clients; protect your team
Recognition and reward is a seriously powerful thing. Ideas:
- Make it a habit to say thank you to each other publicly, all the time
- Write shoutouts on a public recognition board
- Employee of the month or MVP gifts
- Print and display positive client reviews
- Highlight moments of greatness at end-of-day huddles
Beware of emotional contagion: your culture is shaped by the emotional signals around it. A positive influencer elevates everyone; a negative influencer drags everyone down. Do not romanticize or humorize negativity in your practice.
And have fun: the average person spends 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime. Fun in the workplace strengthens interpersonal bonds, reduces stress, and enhances productivity.
C. Departure
Your employees won't be with you forever. The best cultures manage offboarding with grace:
- Hire fast, fire fast: when you find great people, hire quickly; when people turn toxic, act quickly
- Learn what they would change: conduct exit interviews; listen intently
- Never publicly humiliate people who leave
- Celebrate journeys: employees who know you'll support them beyond their time feel safe
3. Vulnerability
Healthy teams trust each other, learn together, and build up one another's confidence. Vulnerability is the building block for all of this. We define vulnerability as a skill: the ability to be humble, honest, imperfect, wrong, and the student.
Status Management
Status management is the enemy of vulnerability: the power struggle between practice managers and associate DVMs; the technicians posturing over receptionists; the old guard making new hires feel they have to earn their stripes.
It's all toxic behavior rooted in insecurity. The solution is vulnerability. Once we commit to being vulnerable, we can communicate and collaborate much more effectively.
Radical Candor
A poll of over one million US workers found poor management is the #1 reason workers quit. The best managers use radical candor: truly caring about people while giving clear, direct, helpful feedback.
Four feedback styles:
Feedback
Give feedback: holistically, prepared, timely, regularly, directly, focused, publicly (praise), privately (individual criticism).
Receive feedback via: staff surveys, team leads, all-staff meetings, one-on-ones, and exit interviews.
4. Growth
People instinctively want to evolve. To reach culture nirvana, you must be a catalyst in your people reaching their full potential.
Continuous Improvement
Having a growth mindset means believing one's knowledge and abilities can always be improved. The Veterinarian's Oath itself calls for "the continual improvement of my professional knowledge and competence."
Upskilling
Upskilling is an investment employers make to boost the knowledge and skills of their people.
- Cheaper than hiring and training new employees
- Creates a well-rounded, cross-trained workforce
- Improves retention, engagement, and client satisfaction
Options: leadership roles, in-house training programs (anesthesia, surgery, diagnostics, emergency), communication and leadership coaching, CE stipends, tuition reimbursement.
Can't afford to upskill? Ask your vendors. Zoetis, Elanco, IDEXX, and Royal Canin have all supported team upskilling for practices.
Mentorship and Sponsorship
Mentorship involves a mentor and mentee sharing knowledge and skill. The mentor simply needs to be more skilled on a particular topic. Mentorship upskills employees, encourages collaboration, practices vulnerability, and fosters deep interpersonal bonds.
Sponsorship takes mentorship further. The sponsor holds a position of authority and commits to the sponsee's growth: making introductions, championing promotions, and helping prepare them for greater responsibility. Sponsorship is especially powerful for DEI initiatives and developing the next generation of leaders.
Self-Actualization
This is the very top of Maslow's hierarchy. When you make it here, life is good. And you know what helps people get there? Awesome culture.
Self-actualization is the achievement of your full potential. You are safe. You belong. You have support. You are confident. You are proud. You are autonomous. You are awesome.
Business is entirely about people. At Hound, we believe employers have an obligation to people: a duty to leverage all resources, optimize all workflows, and maximize all outcomes to ensure people, above all else, are thriving.
So, create awesome culture. When we inspire, empower, and support people to reach their most amazing, greatest potential, in turn, they do the same for our businesses.