For years I’ve played a simple game with veterinary teams across North America called “A Great Day at Work.” The answers come back with striking consistency. They fall into four clear themes—no matter the hospital size, location, or mix of roles in the room.
What Makes a Great Day at Work for Veterinary Team Members
These four themes appear again and again: the ability to finish the work, camaraderie under pressure, personal or professional growth, and recognition. They cut across age, experience level, and socioeconomic background. Understanding them is the starting point for anyone trying to improve engagement and retention in a veterinary hospital.
“I got through the day!”
The first response I often hear sounds almost modest: “I just got through the day. Nobody cried. Nothing died. I did my work and got out on time.”
It can sound like a low bar. Yet for people who work in veterinary hospitals, completing the work they set out to do is psychologically powerful. Systems that allow team members to finish their tasks without constant chaos matter more than many leaders realize.
“It was crazy busy, but we all pulled together. It was actually really fun!”
The second theme surfaces just as often and is usually the first thing people remember. Someone will say, “It was crazy busy, but we all just pulled together, laughed, had a great time, and got through the caseload.”
No one has ever described a great day at work as a quiet day with their feet up. A great day is almost always framed against the possibility of mayhem—and the relief and pride that come when the team prevents that mayhem from winning.
“Yesterday, I learned how to restrain a calf!”
The third theme is growth. I was facilitating the game at a team meeting in a Mexican restaurant in New Mexico when one attendee shot his hand up. In a big Southwestern drawl he said, “Yesterday I learned how to restrain a calf.” He was beaming.
That is what a great day looks like for many people: learning to place a jugular catheter, checking in their first surgery patient, or performing their first spay. These milestones still matter deeply. Providing a clear ladder of skills and responsibility remains one of the most reliable ways to create more of those days.
“I am so glad that I hired you!”
The fourth theme is recognition. Team members describe moments when a client broke down in tears of gratitude after the team found a way to help a pet despite limited finances. Or the quiet shoulder tap from a manager who said, “I’ve hired a lot of people in twenty years, and you are a standout.”
Recognition validates the effort people pour into difficult, unpredictable work. Without it, even strong performers begin to disengage.
How to Create More Great Days at Work in Veterinary Clinics
Look at those four ingredients—systems that let people finish the work, camaraderie, growth opportunities, and genuine recognition—and ask an honest question: How many of them do we actively protect and grow in our hospitals?
Camaraderie, recognition, and functional systems tend to get broad agreement. Growth is the one that makes managers hesitate. When I push them on whether every employee is truly motivated by the chance to develop new skills, many equivocate. They sense that something else is getting in the way.
Why Growth Opportunities Feel Out of Reach for Some Veterinary Workers
I still believe growth is a universal human motivator. But some employees arrive at work already carrying stressors that block access to it. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy remains a useful frame. People struggle to engage fully—or to self-actualize—when foundational needs are shaky. These layers are as follows:
Basic security: housing, health, and enough money to function.
Without these, employee attention is fractured. Consider high schools that start after 9:30 so students can eat breakfast first or kids that fall asleep at their desks, but go undisturbed by their teachers. Schools know that without the basic needs of living in place- food, sleep, health- no child can focus on higher aims like learning.
Social connectedness and a reliable safety net outside of work.
People need restorative time in a safe setting and in the company of people they trust. Many in vet med like to boast that they started working with animals because they dislike people. That’s usually an empty boast. In truth, we are social creatures and need the approbation and company of others. When people have gaps in their social safety net, gaps in their work life also emerge, and while it’s possible for misanthropes and loners to be great employees, they aren’t always able to be consistently great.
Outside Stressors Affecting Today’s Veterinary Team Members
Today’s employees also arrive with heavier external loads than previous generations. They face a constant stream of hyperbolic headlines and rapid change delivered through a 24/7 news cycle. Information overload, long hours online, and fear of missing out are common. Additionally, research points to long hours of device use as a source of rising depression levels. Audiences often see that stat as overstated, but I ask you to reflect on the last time you scrolled through your phone for any length of time. Did you finish feeling energized—or more depleted? Financial pressure, novel family structures, and housing instability add further weight.
Our employees are like those cats that arrive to our hospital after they’ve been jostled in their carriers the entire way. When we open the carrier door, we’re met with growls, hisses or worse, but we’re not why those cats are angry. It was the trip to the hospital that worked them up, we just happened to be the first people they talked to about it.
Most Veterinary Team Members Still Want to Succeed
Despite these challenges, I remain convinced that the workers coming in today have most—if not all—of the ingredients needed to be strong employees. This conclusion is not based on optimism. It comes from years of working inside individual hospitals across North America.
I am regularly asked to visit practices that are struggling. The request is almost always the same: help us motivate our team members, stop them from complaining, get them to work as a team, and so forth. But study these teams closely and you’ll see that beneath the noise, all are fundamentally ready for work and desirous of success. Yes, bad actors exist and are disruptive, but for the most part are rare. Most worker appreciate the support of their teammates, the opportunity to learn and grow, like camaraderie, and respond positively to efficient work systems. Managers make a critical error in thinking that their teams are deficit. Distracted or different? Yes. But somehow lacking in essential skills or the ability to be stimulated by work? Absolutely not.
Still, it’s not lost on me that leaders may read the above and feel frustrated. I’m well aware how hard vet leaders are working these days to stimulate productivity and workplace fulfillment. More on this below, but if you feel that you need personalized help, please reach out.
Why Veterinary Staff Underperform (It’s Rarely Work Ethic)
The top reasons team members underperform today have little to do with work ethic. They are almost always a combination of the external preoccupations already discussed and work conditions inside the workplace itself. These are:
- Lack of recognition
- Environments that feel unfair
- Policy decisions that seem misaligned with the mission, and
- Leadership that fails to see the extent of damage the above three can cause
Lack of Recognition: A Top Reason Veterinary Employees Disengage
Lack of Recognition
Before you dismiss this reason by telling me that you already say “thank you” and “please,” consider what your team members navigate every single day.
They arrive and face patients and clients who rarely follow the smooth flow we hope for. Curveballs are constant. At the same time, they are navigating the system itself. We have worked hard to create functional processes, yet we still operate an assembly line of care. Success depends on every person teeing up the next person well. Communication gets dropped. Responsibilities get dropped. Equipment is hard to locate because it is used so infrequently—a tonometer, a tear-duct cannula, a suction unit that has sat unused for months. Protocols for uncommon cases fade from memory. Getting through the day at most hospitals is not a straight line, it’s an obstacle course.
Imagine what it feels like then when leaders pop onto the scene from time to time with ideas for a new initiative, feedback on poor performances, or frustrations about productivity. Frustrations? Your team understands ‘frustrations’ all right. They are experiencing frustrations minute by minute! To not see that, to not recognize that, to not thank team members for that is a major source of discontent in many veterinary teams.
Perceived Unfairness
Have you ever seen an employee insist that a client be charged an emergency exam fee? Never mind that they will never see a penny of that additional revenue, they want the fee charged for. Why? Is it because they see their efforts to accommodate the client’s walk in emergency as unrecognized and unfair? Are they thinking, “How come they get to walk in here whenever they want and we have to drop everything to take care of them?!”
Or do you have an employee that is regularly harping on the performance of others? Their refrain is, “How come the rest of the staff gets to call out every other week when I’m in here busting my hump on a daily basis?”
They may or may not be right, that’s not the point. They feel they are right and as long as they perceive that things are unfair, they will grouse. Fairness is hardwired into humans’ emotions and is a source of conflict in many species.
Policy Decisions Out of Step With Mission
Pressure to increase productivity adds another layer of friction, especially when it is framed inside the context of money. “Payroll is really high these days, people. If you want to keep your jobs, we need to sell more elective services.” Or, ” We missed our growth goal by ten thousand dollars this quarter. Please, everyone, talk to clients about compliance.”
Not only is this messaging de-motivational, it borders on unethical. No veterinary mission statement ever began, “We here at Happy Paws Veterinary aim to make more money than any other hospital in Bradford County”. When initiatives are framed inside the bigger goal of making money rather than the goals of better patient care, better client experiences, or support for the people doing the work, resentment grows quickly.
Solutions
As I have mentioned, it’s a mistake to view today’s employees as deficit. Rather, managers are more likely to be successful if they see today’s workers as able and eager, but with sensitivities and stressors that are unique to this fast paced and fraught age we are living in. Here are three things leaders can do that will likely make an appreciable impact on morale, work fulfillment, and productivity.
Hire For High EQ and Self Awareness
Today’s employee arrives to work more likely to be suffering from stress or depression and it’s important that they don’t misattribute that to the work they are doing, otherwise, we end up with employees pointing to issues to fix that won’t fix what they’re feeling.
To guard against this, you should be looking for candidates that possess enough self awareness and resilience to unburden themselves as best they can of outside troubles before starting to work on what’s inside our doors.
These kind of assessments, however, are hard. I have tested many, interview questions, and tools over the years. Most delivered only marginal results, but two approaches have proven consistently useful.
First, revisit the questions you ask candidates—not because the answers will magically reveal the perfect hire, but because the exercise forces you to become clearer about the kind of person you really need. You can explore improved interview questions here.
Second, give more of your existing team members a chance to evaluate the candidate. Traditional working interviews often turn the candidate into an extra burden for an already short-staffed crew. Instead, help employees arrange coverage for one another, so an assortment of team members can take turns interviewing, giving a tour, and answering the candidate’s questions. In my experience, the higher the percentage of the team that likes the candidate, the more likely that person will succeed in the hospital.
Review Your Training Program
Most veterinary training programs remain shaky. It is rare to find a hospital where team members report completing a full, structured training course. The default is still an apprenticeship model: sit next to someone and watch until you figure it out. That method can work, but it is uneven and rarely provides the short wins and clear structure today’s employees need given the distractions they already carry.
A better path looks like this:
- Challenge the status quo of how you deliver care. Design-thinking tools can help.
- Use AI to draft a completely new training manual outline from a clean slate, then compare it to the one you have and note any changes that are needed.
- When creating the new outline, focus on the “big rocks”—what success looks like from a purpose standpoint, not just process. For example, checking a client in is not primarily about software clicks; it is about making the client feel comfortable, confident about trusting your hospital, building rapport, and setting the next team member up for success. The same principle applies to history-taking, the exam room, and every other station. Make sure that the training program doesn’t just talk about the trees, but regularly zooms out to show her the forest.
- Build short, structured modules that match today’s attention spans and need for clear support. Tools such as Midi.com can help create these efficiently.
Move from Reactive Management to Proactive Support for Veterinary Staff
Most of us still manage reactively. People are called into the office mainly when something has gone wrong. Far fewer hospitals have built systems where leaders and employees work together on initiatives so that the point of failure is never reached. To say it in a different way, leaders work more closely with employees as they develop, not checking in at some point to see if they have grown. Proactive feedback and scaffolding—regular, constructive check-ins that keep people developing—change the dynamic. More on this here.
Final Thoughts: Supporting Today’s Veterinary Workers Without Treating Them as a Deficit
Our team members arrive to work weighed down by real stressors, yet they remain strongly encouraged by age-old motivators: growth, recognition, camaraderie, and accomplishment. Many also bring resilience, the ability to pivot quickly with new technology, and strong digital skills.
Do not approach approach today’s employee as deficit and needing to be ‘fixed’. Approach them as people who will respond well to clear training, a structured work environment in which they can succeed, and leadership that sees them as assets, not liabilities.