Turnover is an issue at every veterinary practice. However, turnover can be categorized in two ways:

1. Employees whose loss you regret
2. Employees who didn’t benefit the practice

Most veterinarians don’t mind the loss of the latter, even with the additional cost of hiring and training a new employee. However, it’s the first type of employee you’d like to keep.

Why Is Employee Turnover Bad for Your Practice?

Employee turnover, even if you’re happy the employee left, is always bad for your practice. First, there’s the financial and productivity costs of seeking, finding, hiring, and training a new employee.

However, even when you’re happy to see the last of an employee, the very fact that you or the practice manager hired an employee that was either incompetent or didn’t fit the company culture means you haven’t developed procedures to weed that type of applicant out.

Can an Exit Interview Reduce Turnover?

No matter which type of employee has left, it’s always a good idea to do an exit interview. It may be as brief as handing an employee a question-and-answer form or taking up to an hour for a personal interview. You can even provide a postage-paid envelope for an employee to mail in the form after they leave.

The purpose is to discover how your practice can improve to attract and retain quality employees. That doesn’t mean you should not bother to hand out an exit questionnaire to low-performing former team members, because it will still prove useful in identifying issues that may concern all your employees.

Below are a few ideas based on DVM360’s sample questionnaire for departing employees

Rank the following on a scale from 1-5 (with 1 being “Bad/Definitely Not” and 5 being “Extraordinarily Well/Definitely Yes”):

1. This practice is a great place to work.

2. The policies and procedures are appropriate, logical and implemented fairly.

3. I was paid fairly for the work I did.

4. I received adequate initial training to do my job.

5. Employee teamwork and cooperation were good.

Please answer the following:

6. Would you recommend the practice to potential employees? ❍ Yes ❍ No

7. What did you find most rewarding about your work?

8. What did you find least rewarding about your work?

9. Under what conditions would you have stayed?

10. What would you do differently if you owned this practice?

Taking the Temperature of Current Employees

Just as valuable is surveying current employees to get their ideas. You can use many of the same items as the questionnaire. The challenge, of course, is how to make the survey anonymous.

You can, of course, hand out a paper survey with fill-in answers. An alternative is to use SurveyMonkey. A free account permits only 10 questions. However, if you plan to survey your clients, you can get a plan for as low as $34 per month.

How to Reduce Employee Turnover

Here are some tips to reduce employee turnover:

• Select the right people using
  • Behavior-based testing
  • Competency screening
  • Personal interview
• Offer a competitive benefits package
• Provide adequate training
• Communicate roles, responsibilities and expectations
• Offer opportunities for additional in-house and outside education
• Demonstrate respect for employees and their ideas
• Offer performance feedback on a regular basis
• Involve employees in decisions that affect their jobs and job responsibilities
• Recognize excellence in a variety of ways, including bonuses, parking spots, extra vacation day, and more
• Make work fun
• Optimize work/family life balance
• Offer cross-training opportunities
• Offer career progression opportunities
• Help employees become a team with team-building activities and encouragement to work together.

Peculiar to veterinary practices is the strain of working with ill animals and their stressed-out owners. Some who enter the veterinary field may become subject to the same problem of burnout as doctors and nurses. Learn to prevent and provide information on how to reduce stress before it becomes a factor in employee turnover. The American Veterinary Medicine Association offers these methods to prevent and alleviate stress.

Not on the list of tips above is an important recommendation to give employees a break. If an otherwise excellent employee begins underperforming, find out the reason. It may likely be a personal situation you can do nothing about, but your compassion and understanding will go a long way to returning such an employee to productivity.

Your Covetrus North America representative can provide other tips and suggestions of value to you and your clients! Contact us  at: 855.-724-3461.

Sources:

http://veterinarybusiness.dvm360.com/exit-questionnaires-improve-staff-retention

http://files.dvm360.com/alfresco_images/DVM360//2013/11/18/5faae4bd-6433-47c3-948f-5ea4d728b551/article-182935.pdf

https://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/details/?ut_source=help_center_plans

https://www.thebalance.com/tips-to-reduce-employee-turnover-1919039

https://www.avma.org/ProfessionalDevelopment/Personal/PeerAndWellness/Pages/stress-management.aspx