Currently it’s really hard to FIND and then to RETAIN Veterinarians.And offering them more money – doesn’t seem to work like it once used to.It’s a really common problem today – there seem to be so few around and their motivational drivers seem to have changed..It’s time to think laterally….
Here are some ‘out of the box’ ideas which are actually working for my inner circle clients – and working gang-busters.Enjoy
Click Here to listen to the podcastSee below to read the transcriptionWarmlyDiederik
Transcription: Hi, it’s Diederik.
Are you having challenges attracting and keeping veterinarians? It’s a really common problem today – there seem to be so few around.
Here are some ‘out of the box’ ideas which are actually working for my inner circle clients.
Today I wanted to talk about employees, and specifically veterinary employees.
You know, that it’s hard at the moment, no matter where you are in the world, to get vets. There don’t seem to be as many around, they’re also entering the workforce with more and more and more pay demands, but even when you offer the more money – it doesn’t seem to drive them like it once used to.
The key is – this generation is different!!. The thing is, you need to accept that with a lot of the modern generation of vets, it’s not about the money. It’s not whether you offer them forty thousand or sixty thousand or eighty thousand or a hundred thousand, or whatever. They’re not driven by money like the previous generations, especially the baby boomers like me or the Gen Xs.
What I’d like you to do is think laterally about; “What package can I offer a potential employee that’s going to really juice them up and make them excited about joining my practice and staying on”.
This is something I work on with my coaching clients in my inner circle all the time. I’ve got some ideas here that we’ve used and that that work, and my clients use these ideas / strategies consistently to engage, attract a potential employee, veterinary employee, and then keep them.
Let’s go through these ideas; they’re quick, they’re succinct.
Then pick out the ones that you think are going to work for you and use them. This is all about thinking laterally. As I said, these strategies are actually in place as we speak and come out of the mouths of my coaching clients, if you’d like to phrase it like that.
Here we go….
- Give the wives or the girlfriends a mobile phone, and a mobile phone allowance. Up to, say, a hundred and fifty dollars a month. And, even if they have young or even teenage kids, you can give them the same thing. So, a hundred and fifty dollars a month, 12 months, that’s what? 1800 bucks. It’s neither here nor there in their wages package. But so some, it could be a huge attraction device for a potential new employee. If they’ve got one adult teenage child the total cost to you is around $3,600. Again, that number is neither here nor there in the overall scheme of practice finances, but so many potential employees will love that strategy.
- Another one is unlimited home internet. And, you can do both, you could give them both you could give the wife or the partner or the boyfriend or whatever a $150 phone and also pay for their unlimited internet access at home. These are two great strategies and are really engaging for some of the newer generations.
- Then we have more holidays. So, rather than a standard number of holidays (in Australia, it’s four weeks holiday, and a lot of other countries it’s a lot less, but let’s work with the Australian numbers) — rather than giving them four weeks holiday, you could give them five weeks or six weeks.
You may be saying, “Oh, no! We can’t do that.” Well, yes, you can. Every country has its down season. In the States, it’s typically at the top half of the year from say October through to February, March. In Australia and South Africa, it’s typically the bottom half of the year from April through to August. During these times the practices are a lot quieter.
Typically during those times of the year, you could do with one vet less or a half a vet less – because there is less work to do, even if you’re only a two or three vet practice.
What you would do is you’d give them their normal four weeks holiday, at whatever time of the year they like to take them, and those extra two weeks holiday, they have to take during your quiet season.
You could do the same thing with sick days. If they’ve got kids that are at a school, typically kids get sick a lot and need their mothers to care for them, and so you could give them an increased number of sick days that they could spend at home, or personal days, whatever you want call them.
That again is very engaging, especially if you’ve got a married mum with kids that you’re trying to entice to work in your veterinary practice.
- Another one is the type of car they drive. This is typically if they work in a large animal practice, or a car as part of their wages package.
This one comes personally from me – and it also works for my inner circle clients.
I was employing vets only—well, ten years ago now, eight years ago now—and, there was a vet I really, really wanted to attract.
He was the perfect fit for my practice, and a car was part of the salary package that we had offered him. It was like a hundred-thousand-dollar package and included car and a few other bits and pieces.
The swinging vote for him was the type of car he wanted as it was, a souped up Mazda RX7.
He had another practice that was offering him more money, but the fact that he got the car he wanted from me brought him over to my side of the fence. So, very little extra cost to us but hugely beneficial for the practice.
- Then the last thing I want to share with you is CE, continuing education. Again, I have a number of clients that are doing this right at this moment.
One of my clients in Western Australia took his whole team, and that’s three vets, that’s him and three other vets… He put a locum in the practice, for one day for the week and took his whole team to a four-day conference on the Gold Coast—that’s in Queensland for people who aren’t in Australia—and paid all their expenses; air flights and conference expenses and accommodation, meals the whole deal. They’re still talking about it nine months later.
I’ve got other clients who will take their team from Australia to the US for conferences or to Singapore. I’ve got people from the US taking their team to the UK and to Europe for conferences.
If you don’t want to take the whole team, then just take that one person, send that one person and pay all their expenses.
The cost again is totally tax deductible, and it’s negligible in the overall scheme of things; and if someone can say to their Veterinary colleagues/friends, “Well, my boss sent me on a 10 hours plane flight away to go to a conference, and it was in a different country, and Wow I got a few extra days and he paid all my expenses,” well how good is that if it brings them onto your practice bus?
The other thing of course is rather than going to conferences give them some sort of opportunity to do pro bono work.
There are plenty of vets who would love to work with the wildlife in certain countries, or with underprivileged people and pets in their own country or even in other countries. There are all sorts of opportunities for you to take or send your vets to these various areas and pay for their accommodation, etc. etc. And, you can even give them a week extra to do something like that.
- Then, one other idea which ties in to the one above is — and we do this in our practice as well — is to give them one extra day off; once a month or every two months or every quarter, to work in another business or to do pro-bone work with some sort of organization somewhere.
Typically in our practice, everyone gets a day off every quarter to work with some volunteer organization; and most of them want to work with the underprivileged.
So, they could work in a women’s shelter or in a soup kitchen or something like that, or even go as far as India or Fiji to do rescue work or Borneo.
This idea is not for everyone, but there are people who will be attracted to your team if that’s the sort of extra non-financial incentive that they get.
I hope this has given you some really effective and lateral thinking ideas of how to engage potential employees and keep them on your bus.
Which one(s) are you going to use?