Training as a Culture Bolster

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Before we can walk down the path of training, we must first make the right hire. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I was once the worst hiring personnel in all of the land. I had little instinct for choosing the right candidate for the job and I often let my emotions take over instead of using a system for hiring. Once I began using an outside company to help personality test employees, things really began looking up and I incorporated it into every single hire we made. It was truly eye opening to see how the personality test would play out in the employee. Sure enough the tests were surprisingly accurate and it made placing employees in jobs they would succeed in, much easier. 

When evaluating a new candidate, the employer must differentiate between the soft and the hard skills. The hard skills are the technical skills such as drawing blood, setting catheters, and if hiring a new vet, diagnostic skills. These are more readily accessible. The soft skills are far more difficult to pick up on in just one interview. Soft skills are those traits that come naturally and uniquely to each individual. They are things like communication competence, ability to work with a team, motivation, ability to adapt, and leadership capability. This is where personality testing greatly benefits an employer. Check out testing websites like Neuroworx, TestGorilla, HighMatch, or Hire Success. In addition, never skip out on reference calls. With testing and reference information, you can get a great handle on the soft skills present in the individual. 

Once you have invested the time and effort to find the right hire, it is up to your hospital to make sure that employee is given the best possible environment to succeed in. I have heard and seen in many hospitals that the new hire goes through a type of hazing in which the staff is unsure of the new hire, side eyeing and sizing them up. If this is going on in your practice, stop it immediately. It has been condoned by the manager’s ignorance of it or ineffectual ability to stop it. This behavior is the first introduction this staff member has to your team and if this is how it unfolds, the employee sees there are culture issues. Now the employee is set up to perpetuate this unfriendly culture and the cycle will continue. In exceptional cultures, this type of behavior is never accepted. 

Each employee should be warmly welcomed by every staff member and each staff member should be trained to let them know if they need anything they can ask. If you are making good hires, then your team will trust that the new kid on the block is worth an investment. If you are routinely making poor hires and there is a revolving door of employees, your culture will be challenged. Once again, the culture comes directly from the top down. 

The new employee must be assigned and introduced to their training supervisor on day one. Provide clear instructions on how the supervisor is to train for hard skills and also provide a checklist of tasks to complete. This checklist provides direction for the employee as well as your trainer. Perhaps you even set time limits on when the skills should be acquired. Give the employee a fair amount of training time and have them wear a name tag that states “in training.” 

What about training time in a staff shortage, which unfortunately, seems to be most hospitals these days? If this is the case and your hospital is significantly understaffed, you must hire an employee with adequate hard skills and test for the soft skills you need such as motivation, adaptability, and those skills needed for learning quickly and efficiently. But even if you have found the most skilled and amazing employee, you may not skip over the training period or acclimation time. In doing this, you are not honoring that employee with clear direction and expectations. 

With each new hire, on day one, the office manager should sit down with the new staff member and schedule all the check-in times during the training period. At each check-in, questions like, “How are you doing? What have you learned so far? What has been easy? What has been a challenge? Is there anything I can do to help you?” This employee will now feel like a valued member of the team. The office manager can use this time to continue to talk about expectations and direction keeping the employee on the path to success. In addition, this can also be a tool to measure the ability of the trainer assigned to the trainee. 

Now that you have your amazing team, you need to keep them. You keep them with a great culture, good pay and continuing to provide them with a purpose. As we know that purpose comes from the direction given to them, the staff meetings, and the employee evaluations. The employee’s purpose is continuously monitored and adjusted, however the purpose of the hospital stays fixed on the mission statement. Maybe you even go so far as to post the mission statement around the hospital as gentle reminders. 

Training is never complete. It never gets checked off the to-do list because it is a constant part of running a hospital with a great culture. Training within the hospital should be routine and team meetings are the perfect place for this to occur. During this time, close the doors and shut down the phones. This is your staff’s time and they have earned it. Always start the meeting on a high note. Perhaps there was a goal that was met during the previous week or a wonderful patient/client story that can be shared. Allow the staff to relax into the meeting. This is absolutely never a time to reprimand the team. I have seen so many managers use this time with the staff to tell them all they are doing wrong. Discontinue this culture killer right now if you are doing it. Team meetings are a time to bring the group together, build morale, strengthen culture and encourage collaboration and creativity. Allow the staff to feel like they are a part of the hospital by allotting time for their contributions. 

You may choose to alternate learning about veterinary medicine with soft skill topics. One meeting perhaps you discuss the importance of heartworm prevention and the next meeting you discuss the importance of self-compassion. You can incorporate compassion fatigue training into your hospital during a team meeting without even having to send them off site to learn. Also I encourage you to take turns having different team members run the meetings. It gets very tiring hearing the owner or office manager as the only one speaking. Let others run the meeting to help change up styles and keep the team engaged. 

Technology has come such a long way since I was a practice owner. There are now countless apps that your team can download which helps with communication and obtaining the meeting notes if they missed. 

Off site training is another way to boost morale, maintain a focused purpose and show the employee that they are worth the investment. But once again this is a time to balance veterinary medicine or practice management with self-care training. This investment will prove so much more important that you can imagine. One of the greatest expenses in a veterinary hospital is employee turnover. So keep them. Keep them in your practice, healthy, happy and functioning at the highest level. This does not happen by turning away from the outstanding and productive employees but continuing to actively engage with them. This means constantly checking in with your team and why in my next blog, delegation as a culture bolster, is so critical. 

In closing, you have worked meticulously hard at collecting your team so now work harder to hold on to them. There is always a hospital down the road offering more money and if the grass isn’t green on your side, you may be in trouble. But ultimately we don’t do all these things just to retain employees, we do this because this is what owning and operating a heart-centered hospital means. 

Find me on The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project Spotify Podcast, my website, Facebook and YouTube @TVCFP. Let’s keep talking about what we face in the veterinary and animal care world and ways that we can help each other. Reach out if you have a particular topic you would love to hear about. Subscribe to hear updates on our annual restoration retreat to be launched in Spring of 2025. As always, I hope you find what you are looking for and share it with anyone who needs it.

With love and hope,

Dr. Erin Holder