{"id":13541,"date":"2019-06-13T01:17:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T15:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/?p=13541"},"modified":"2019-07-19T17:08:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T07:08:31","slug":"practice-positive-promoting-a-positive-culture-in-your-veterinary-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/practice-positive-promoting-a-positive-culture-in-your-veterinary-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Practice positive: Promoting a positive culture in your veterinary practice"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Is your practice mascot a two-headed monster or a friendly clinic cat? Fetch dvm360 conference speaker Ori Scislowicz offers tools and advice to transform your team.<\/div>\n
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Aug 18, 2018<\/div>\n
By\u00a0Portia Stewart, Editor, Team Channel Director<\/a><\/div>\n
FIRSTLINE<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Photo source dvm360<\/p><\/div>\n

shutterstock.com <\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

If your practice culture had a spirit animal, what would it be? At a recent Fetch dvm360 conference, Fetch speaker and Firstline Editorial Advisory Board member Ori Scislowicz, BS, LVT, aPHR, asked attendees to play the mascot game. (Want to play?\u00a0Here\u2019s a free tool<\/a>\u00a0to try this at your own practice. Go ahead. We\u2019ll wait right here.) Using drawing space in their attendee notebooks, veterinary professionals drew the animals that best represented their practice\u2019s current culture. The results?<\/p>\n

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Photo source dvm360<\/p><\/div>\n

One attendee shared her drawing of her clinic cat Milo\u201419 pounds of love and affection, and loved by everyone at their practice. Another attendee drew sunshine for her practice\u2019s mascot, because she says her team finds a way to stay excited about the work they do, even on sad days.<\/p>\n

But it was the third drawing that expresses the workplace challenge many vet professionals face: a two-headed monster. The attendee said she drew the monster because she felt like her workplace was divided, with a group who managed to stay positive and another group that didn\u2019t manage to keep out of the muck.<\/p>\n

Why does your practice need to care about its culture? It\u2019s the difference between a practice that thrives, versus one that barely survives. Scislowicz says practices with poor cultures are pretty easy to identify from the outside. It\u2019s like a dark cloud that hangs over the practice, and outsiders who enter can sense the negative energy immediately.<\/p>\n

But what does it look like from the inside? Here are the warning signs: People don\u2019t smile. They don\u2019t joke around with each other. There\u2019s a dark energy. There\u2019s no positive enforcement. Instead, Scislowicz says, people focus on infractions. You have controlling leaders. There\u2019s too much concern over hierarchy and power. Managers and team members rarely interact, and there\u2019s a lack of structure and discipline\u2014or too much, signaling a lack of trust. And, most important, people don\u2019t communicate.<\/p>\n

\u201cA disparaging culture equals a dying practice,\u201d Scislowicz says.<\/p>\n

So what do you do if you discover you\u2019ve got a practice culture on life support? You\u2019ve got to rebuild, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalented vet professionals will be attracted to a strong and positive culture,\u201d she says. \u201c[It] strengthens employee engagement and retention and performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what that looks like.<\/p>\n

First, you\u2019ve got to identify the problem areas. An easy way to do that is to survey your staff using free survey software, like SurveyMonkey. Scislowicz says you may consider asking questions like these:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Are you happy to come to work?
\n\u2022 What contributes to your stress?
\n\u2022 What\u2019s one thing you like about your job?
\n\u2022 What\u2019s one thing you\u2019d like to change about your job?
\n\u2022 Do you feel supported by your team leader?
\n\u2022 Do you feel supported by doctors?
\n\u2022 Do you feel like there\u2019s room for growth in your position?<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve gathered this feedback, you have to act on it, Scislowicz says. Gathering feedback and failing to act can actually be more demoralizing to team members than not being asked at all.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve identified your problem areas, it\u2019s time to work to solutions. First, team members need to learn how to communicate. Scislowicz suggests spending some time during\u00a0 team meetings to train team members to talk to each other\u2014instead of bringing their problems to the manager … Every. Dang. Time. It\u2019s also a good idea, she says, to encourage team members to have signals so they can communicate when they\u2019re triggering each other. This means team members have to be open to giving\u2014and receiving\u2014feedback.<\/p>\n

And some of your feedback needs to be positive. Yeah, I know, seems like a no-brainer, but Scislowicz says sometimes we\u2019re no good at it. For example, do you know how your team members like to be recognized? Not everyone likes public recognition. She suggests searcing the web for “reward and recognition assessments” to find templates for your team. Ask them to complete the assessments so you can personalize rewards to your team members.<\/p>\n

Finally, you need to honestly and critically evaluate all the components of culture: your practice\u2019s leadership and management; your workplace practices and policies; your employees, your mission, values and vision; and your physical work environment.<\/p>\n

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Cheat sheet: 3 tips to repair your damaged culture<\/p>\n

1. Get everyone\u2019s opinion before you make a major change. Use surveys, reviews and one-on-ones.<\/p>\n

2. Make your change a team project.<\/p>\n

3. Formulate expectations together, and hold each other accountable.<\/p>\n

What does that look like? It means increased communication and support with scheduled regular check-ins with your team. The key: don\u2019t just focus on problems. It also means company-wide meetings. Scislowicz says you must give employees different outlets for their opinions, whether it\u2019s in meetings, on message boards or through anonymous surveys. Finally, don\u2019t forget the EQ\u2014emotional intelligence. Start by learning to really listen.\u00a0Then follow these steps<\/a>\u00a0to build your emotional intelligence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Once you\u2019ve moved your practice to a healthier space, you\u2019ve got to maintain positive culture. This starts at the beginning of your relationship with team members. During onboarding, Scislowicz suggests check-ins with new employees at two weeks, 45 days and 90 days. This help you identify when team members are struggling with processes, interpersonal relationships and more. It also means using phased training.<\/p>\n

Next, consider the life balance you offer your team, Scislowicz. Do you offer PTO, does it increase over time, and do you have opportunities for growth and CE?<\/p>\n

Finally, it\u2019s wise to create a cultural contract: This consists of five key points your team members agree on about how you will treat each other. \u201cFor example, we don\u2019t wait more than 24 hours to address an issue, or we won\u2019t gossip, we will talk to each other,\u201d Scislowicz says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Is your practice mascot a two-headed monster or a friendly clinic cat? Fetch dvm360 conference speaker Ori Scislowicz offers tools and advice to transform your team. Aug 18, 2018 By\u00a0Portia Stewart, Editor, Team Channel Director FIRSTLINE shutterstock.com If your practice culture had a spirit animal, what would it be? At a recent Fetch dvm360 conference, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6794,"featured_media":13543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2000],"tags":[4788,4787],"class_list":["post-13541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-positiveworkculture","tag-promotingveterinarypractice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13541"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15370,"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13541\/revisions\/15370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veterinarycareers.com.au\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}