Enhancing Employee Engagement: Improve Your Veterinary Clinic's Culture and Success - ep 191

Julie South [00:00:06]:
Welcome to the Vet Staff Podcast, where veterinary professionals can top up their resilience tanks, get their heads screwed on straight and get excited about going to work on Monday mornings again. This episode is number 191 and I'm your show host, Julie South, Certified DISC Trainer and Resilience Coach.

Today we're exploring the very crucial topic of employee engagement and how identifying and meeting your team's needs can transform your clinic's culture, productivity and success.

We're going to include some practical strategies and action steps you can take to create a more motivated, satisfied and high performing workforce. The Vet Staff podcast is powered by VetStaff Limited, the recruitment agency dedicated to helping vet clinics recognise, retain and recruit their dream teams. We show clinics, vets and nurses how to crack the communication code unique to them so resilience skyrockets and people want to join and stay at your clinic.

You can find previous episodes of the Vet staff podcast at vetstaffpodcast.com

In last week's episode, we covered the importance of trust, psychological safety, collaboration and connection in building strong, cohesive teams about how creating an environment where team members feel safe to share ideas, take risks and support one another leads to innovation, productivity and job satisfaction. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, then I suggest you check it out because it helps lay the foundation for today.

Julie South [00:02:06]:
Now, building on from last week, today we're shifting our focus just a little bit to employee engagement and how understanding your team's specific needs helps unlock their full potential and how it plays pivotal role in your clinic's success. So whether you're a practice owner, a manager, a team leader, or an employee, this episode has some strategies for you to help you recognize engagement or lack of it in your team, and or how to up the ante on your own engagement. If you're feeling just a tad jaded right now, employee engagement goes beyond just job satisfaction. It's actually about creating a deep emotional connection between your team members and your work, your colleagues and your clinic as a whole. According to Gallup's just released state of the global Workforce report for 2024, employee engagement levels worldwide remain at 23%, matching the record high from last year. 23%. That's not much. This means that fewer than a quarter of employees are excited about going to work on Monday mornings.

Julie South [00:03:39]:
The majority, 62%, aren't engaged. They're the ones who are simply showing up and doing the bare minimum, while 15% are actively disengaged. They are miserable in what they're doing and they are actively looking to make their next move. Think about what I just said. Fewer than one in four are excited about going to work on Monday mornings, engaged and getting a kick of what they're doing. Look around your clinic. Who might that be at your clinic? Maybe you're one of them. 23% is not many.

Julie South [00:04:25]:
So where do you sit? Are you one of the few who love what you're doing? Or are you at the other end of that spectrum? Your cv was dusted off and updated ages ago. It's ready to attach to a job application. If you could find an advertisement that wasn't the same old same old, you'd be out the door right now. I've been saying this for quite a few weeks now. People leave people. They don't leave organizations or businesses. People leave people. The 2024 Gallup report highlights that employee engagement is driven more by having great managers at the business unit level.

Julie South [00:05:11]:
So we're talking here the head vet, the head vet nurse, the practice manager, then by macroeconomic factors like employment policies and job market conditions. This means that if you're a business owner or a team leader with responsibility for productivity, then you may be interested to know that Gallup's meta analysis across multiple industries and countries found that teams in the top quartile of employee engagement achieve a whopping 23% higher profitability than those in the bottom quartile. This is because engaged employees are better themselves at retaining top performers, so keeping top performers on their team. They're better at serving customers and they are better at achieving higher quality outputs. Interestingly, the report also found that countries with better job markets have a lower proportion of miserable workers, but there's not much significant difference in the proportion of those people who are highly inspired and love Monday mornings. What this suggests is that improving economic conditions may shift employees from being actively disengaged to not engaged, but not necessarily from indifference to inspiration. Another key insight from the report is that during challenging times like the vet sector is in right now, with skill shortages, employee engagement is an even greater predictor of business unit performance. I'm sure you know that already.

Julie South [00:07:10]:
And this is because engaged employees double down on their efforts during tough times. While uninspired workers feel like victims of circumstances, clinics with more engaged employees are more resilient in turbulent and uncertain environments. Lastly, the report emphasises that government workplace policies and employee engagement are not an either or thing. While employment policies have a stronger relationship to current life satisfaction, employee engagement more strongly explains optimism for the future. Employees who work in countries with strong labour laws and are also engaged in their jobs have the highest overall wellbeing. These findings underscore the critical role of employee engagement in driving business success and employee wellbeing, regardless of external factors. If you're a vet clinic leader, it's absolutely essential that you focus on creating a culture of engagement at your team and at clinic level, while also being cognizant of the broader context in which your clinic operates. Okay, so that's all fine and well and good.

Julie South [00:08:44]:
You're probably thinking, Julie, how do you identify disengaged people and what can you do about it? Well, I'm sure you can identify disengaged people. Let's have a look at that. And also what you can do about it. And what if it's you who's turned out and you actually, deep down you want to tune back in again? Well, here are a couple of things that you can look for and then start doing to turn things around. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know that I bang on about communication, especially creating a culture of open communication. This means that people feel safe to express their concerns and aspirations without being shot down. To have this as a happening thing, one first step that you can take is start by creating a schedule of regularly checking in with your team through one on one meetings to understand what lights them up, to understand where they're sitting right now, what they need and what they're finding really hard. I'm not talking about big and heavy duty staff appraisal type check ins.

Julie South [00:09:59]:
What I'm talking about here is person to person catch ups. Five to ten minutes. Find out how your team is on a one to one level. If you discover that ten minutes isn't enough, because maybe, maybe, just maybe, somebody's got quite a bit going on then that you knew nothing about, then make a second catch up for later on down the track. So it's still on the horizon. Some people will only need five or ten minutes, others may need more. But if you don't ask, you won't know. Make sure that everything is okay with them at work and at home.

Julie South [00:10:40]:
As much as you probably don't want your team bringing their home lives to work, I'm afraid. Here's the news. We all actually do. Yep, you bring your home life to work, just like I bring my home life to work as well. You need to start creating a psychologically safe space for your team to share their dreams, their hopes, their aspirations. And talking of dreams and aspirations, you also need to provide growth opportunities for them. Apart from the legal responsibility that you have as employers, of veterinarians and veterinary nurses to ensure that they're upskilling through CPD. It's also good for your business.

Julie South [00:11:26]:
It's a way of helping your team stay, be and get engaged and motivated. Most veterinary professionals I know like stretching their brains. They like learning new things. So make sure that you encourage and support that. Along with that also comes creating clear career progression paths. We've been working with a few clinics this year to help them identify and put into place career development plans for their teams and they absolutely love it. It's making such a huge difference. It's going gangbusters.

Julie South [00:12:07]:
So if this is something that you would like to do at your clinic, get in touch with us, please. Teametstaff dot co dot NZ now what if you're the individual whose get up and go has gotten up and gone? You want to be more engaged than you are, but somehow you struggle to get there. Once upon a time you were that engaged person, but you're not anymore. Okay, here are a couple of things that you can do to help rediscover your professional mojo. Firstly, identify and know what drives you. What do you find most exciting about work? Most enlightening? Most fulfilling? Then set some teeny, tiny, incy wincy, little dinky small goals around those areas. If you've been switched off for a while, you mightn't have any clue how to even know what these are anymore. If that's you, then start spending some time at the end of your day reflecting over your day.

Julie South [00:13:22]:
Maybe this could be as you're driving home or you're on the bus or the train at the end of your day. One way to do this is to start creating end of day rituals to help you separate work from home. Check out episode 169 on ways to do that. I'll put the links in the show notes of where you're listening. Now back to that episode. The second thing that you can do is to set yourself small life or work outcomes. Call them goals. If you want something that you can tick off as being done.

Julie South [00:14:01]:
I'm not talking a marathon. I'm talking maybe just to walk around the block compared to a marathon, maybe you've been stalling about something. Who knows? Maybe you've got one last report or assignment to finish off and get signed off. Or you've been thinking about doing something for a while and you're still thinking about it. Or take one small step today, something small and simple that you can tick off by the end of today that helps make whatever it is for you a happening thing. A forward moving thing. I hope you found this helpful. Next week on the vet staff podcast, we're going to look a little bit deeper into the concept of silent quitting and how it differs from disengagement, which is kind of what we've been talking about.

Julie South [00:15:01]:
Today we'll explore the signs to look out for and look at some strategies that you can use to address this very subtle yet hugely impactful issue that could be going on at your clinic. So remember to hit that follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast right now, and it means that it will appear in your feed auto magically and you won't miss out. Thank you for listening to the vet staff podcast. I appreciate the last quarter of an hour or so of your time. If you found this helpful, can I ask you please to share it with three of your colleagues? Somebody you think maybe has lost their mojo, or maybe your clinic manager or your team leader? Because you can see that what we're talking about here could be beneficial at your clinic. This is Julie south signing off and inviting you to go out there and be the most fantabulous and engaged person that you can be. The Vet staff podcast is proudly powered by vetclinicjobs.com comma, the new and innovative global job board reimagining veterinary recruitment connecting veterinary professionals with clinics that shine online. Vetclinicjobs.com is your go to resource for finding the perfect career opportunities and helping vet clinics power up their employer branding game.

Julie South [00:16:45]:
Visit vetclinicjobs.com today to find vet clinics that shine online so veterinary professionals can find them. Vetclinicjobs.com.