Living and Working at Energy Vets Taranaki with Veterinarian & Managing Director - Dr Greg Hall - pt 1/2 - ep.1024

Julie South [00:00:04]: Welcome to Veterinary Voices, culture storytelling conversations that help veterinary clinics hire great people. I'm Julie South, and this episode is part of the Culture Stories in Action series. Episode 1024.

Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs, helping clinics tell their culture stories, not just post job ads.

This episode also begins a new real story series featuring Energy Vets in Taranaki. Over the next two episodes, you'll hear from managing director Greg Hall, a vet who's spent decades working inside this region, this practise, and this profession.

In this first chat, we focus on what day-to-day veterinary life at Energy Vets actually looks like. The clinics, the people, the pace of work, and the kind of person who tends to fit best in their small animal team.

This isn't a recruitment script. It's a real conversation about place, practise, and belonging too.

Julie South [00:01:20]: Let's get into it.

Dr Greg Hall [00:01:26]: Hi there. My name's Greg Hall. I'm a veterinarian. Work in a practise called Energy Vets Taranaki Limited, and we're based in North Taranaki in New Zealand.

Julie South [00:01:36]: Greg, what's so great about North Taranaki?

Dr Greg Hall [00:01:40]: Geographically, Taranaki is quite a separate province in New Zealand. It's stuck out on the west coast pointing into the Tasman Sea.

We've got a very distinctive mountain in our region which attracts weather, and the North Taranaki environment is quite different from the South Taranaki environment.

North Taranaki is definitely, in my mind, the best part of Taranaki. We've got a lovely area to practise in. Geographically, it's picturesque, it's warm, and it's wet.

In terms of being close to the beach, nice beaches, and kind of a city, I think North Taranaki is quite separate to South Taranaki. I've had various roles over 40 years.

Dr Greg Hall [00:02:24]: I've been in straight dairy practise. I've been in small animal practise. And I've done a lot of equine work as well. And deer work in the day.

I've kind of been part of Energy Vets for coming up 30 years and have had all those roles. And I actually like all those parts of practise and have continued to be part of all those different departments.

Julie South [00:02:49]: Right now, in this point in time, you're recruiting for an experienced veterinarian. What might a typical day look like for that person?

Dr Greg Hall [00:03:02]: Well, we're a first opinion practise. We're not a referral practise. So you're going to see all range of cases come through the door.

You're going to have vaccinations and kittens and puppies and really building relationships with clients from the ground up with their new pet, through to aged pets with all the interesting things that come with age with pets. The whole gambit of every system that you can think of.

We have working dogs in our area because we're in a farming district, so we do see some working dog injuries. Cruciates, commonly injuries.

And we also in an area where pig hunting is still carried out by some of our clients, so we do see pig hunting injuries in dogs.

We have the ability to do orthopaedics up to a certain level. If anything becomes too complicated... I mean, the bottom line is that we're a general practise.

Dr Greg Hall [00:04:06]: We see the whole range of care from chronic ongoing cases to critical care, emergency cases, and everything in between. A typical day can change from one day to the next.

Julie South [00:04:20]: Does a typical day vary depending on whether somebody starts their day in Waitara or Inglewood?

Dr Greg Hall [00:04:27]: We tend not to change clinics during the day unless there's suddenly an emergency.

Waitara is a bigger town. It has... I guess it's an old meatworks town, even though it's a service town for the North Taranaki farming area. It's got a different vibe in Waitara.

Our clients in Waitara tend to be more likely to pay cash or have limited funding available.

Our clients in Inglewood, same range of people, but we're kind of a smaller town and it's more rural based than maybe Waitara, which is more kind of a town town, as opposed to a rural service town.

Julie South [00:05:16]: The new vet coming into your clinic, will they be moving between clinics? Maybe day about or week about? Or will they be based in just one clinic?

Dr Greg Hall [00:05:30]: We've only got one vet at the moment who only works in Waitara, and she's a part-timer. The other vets will work in either clinic.

Waitara is our busier clinic. 60% of our small animals goes through the Waitara clinic.

We can get away with two people working in the Inglewood clinic vet-wise, but we probably generally need three down at Waitara if we're putting our resources...

Waitara is often busier, but vets need to be able to work out of both clinics for the after hours Saturdays that they do and be familiar with the gear and the setup and where everything is.

You don't want to be floundering around looking for stuff if you're not familiar with the clinic.

Julie South [00:06:18]: Talking about after hours, there is an after hours service that you use. So the after hours is from 5 o'clock to 7 o'clock until the after hours emergency clinic opens. Is that correct?

Dr Greg Hall [00:06:39]: That's correct.

Julie South [00:06:40]: And then the Saturday mornings...

Dr Greg Hall [00:06:45]: Yeah, we have clinic hours on Saturday at both clinics. In Inglewood, we're open from 9 till 12 every Saturday. And in Waitara, we're open from 8:30 till 3. Longer.

And our vets are rostered on to do those Saturdays. The Saturday in Waitara can be a busy day, and in fact, the vets get the previous Monday off in lieu to counter that Saturday. So they still only work five days that week.

But the way our roster works, if they're on duty for a weekend, they will start off at Inglewood doing the 9 to 12 shift. Then the phones are then switched over.

Dr Greg Hall [00:07:29]: At the end of 12, they switched over to the Waitara clinic, which keeps taking phone calls until 3.

At that point, the phones are switched over to the after hours clinic in New Plymouth called AVA. And anything after three and any Sunday is taken by them.

So the vets, basically that vet, is then on duty only looking after inpatients, if any inpatients, the following weekend.

The duty vet gets Friday off, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off. So they get a four-day weekend.

And then the following Saturday, they are working. This Saturday at Waitara, they get Sunday off and then Monday back at work.

So you get a four-day weekend, but the following weekend you're working a Saturday and you only get the Sunday off.

Dr Greg Hall [00:08:18]: And our vets seem to think that's okay.

Julie South [00:08:21]: It sounds to me very reasonable. And having a four-day weekend, I don't know how many vets in big cities would be able to say that having a four-day weekend is part of their regular cycle.

Dr Greg Hall [00:08:37]: Well, our large animal vets don't get a four-day weekend.

Julie South [00:08:39]: Let's talk about the large animal, because it may be that you could be looking for a large animal vet tomorrow or next month or whenever. How does that look for them? And with that, because of the span of geography, is there a more ideal location to live?

Dr Greg Hall [00:09:03]: Right, so we split Taranaki in two. The boundary between the two is loosely the mountain.

Our farming area in North Taranaki goes from the coast inland to the west of the mountain and north of the mountain.

Geographically, we extend about 50 kilometres north to south and probably 30 kilometres east to west.

To live in the middle of that area, you're probably looking at somewhere between Waitara and Inglewood would be the best place to live.

So for me, I live in Egmont Village, but a lot of our vets live in New Plymouth. New Plymouth is big enough and interesting enough as a city that it gives quite a lot of people everything they need.

Julie South [00:10:03]: How far north do you go? Do you go beyond Mount Messenger? Do you go as far as Mokau?

Dr Greg Hall [00:10:33]: Yes, we do. We go to Awakino.

Julie South [00:10:36]: That's quite a haul. Big geographical range. What's your vet to nurse or nurse to vet ratio?

Dr Greg Hall [00:10:45]: We've got 10 full or part-time nurses, and we have, on an average day, three vets in each of the clinics.

And there's usually three nurses in each clinic at any one time, and on busy days there's four. So four nurses to three vets.

Julie South [00:11:06]: Greg, you are Taranaki born and bred, still there. But you said that you've worked at Energy Vets for 30 years. Have you worked outside of Taranaki?

Dr Greg Hall [00:11:22]: I started practise in Matamata. First three years, Matamata Vet Services. Then I travelled overseas. I was overseas for eight years. Worked in various mixed and small animal clinics in the UK, and I worked on... I did a stint on an export ship to South America.

Julie South [00:11:38]: What brought you back to Taranaki? What's so great about Taranaki?

Dr Greg Hall [00:11:42]: My parents were both still alive when I came back to New Zealand. I wanted to be near them.

Julie South [00:11:47]: So Taranaki to me, clearly I'm biassed.

Dr Greg Hall [00:11:50]: I have a lot of family history in Taranaki, goes back to the 1860s, and we come... I come from a farming family, so I'm kind of rooted in Taranaki that way as much as I can be.

This is my place in the world. I have a real affinity with a mountain. I've been a climber over the years, and the farming area, and my extended family live around here.

So there's lots of lovely places in New Zealand to live, and they each have their charms, but they're only a plane flight away or a drive away. It's not like you've got to go halfway around the world to get to them.

What we have here is a lovely coastline. There's fishing galore, and I'm an outdoors person, so I'm a little bit biassed. But mountain, rivers, and New Plymouth is quite an interesting city.

Dr Greg Hall [00:12:41]: It has a lot of cultural draw cards. Up until this year, we've had WOMAD every year. Every March, we had the Bowl of Brooklands, which attracts a few music events regularly.

And I think being a coastal city, it tends to have a real cafe society kind of... or cafe... It's one of those places where a lot of people tend to retire to.

Oakura, which is a coastal village sort of just outside, there's a lot of... that's got its own surfy vibe to it as well.

So I mean, there's North Taranaki. Urenui and Onaero are both great fishing and bach-type places, and Mokau especially. So for me, it's home.

Dr Greg Hall [00:13:30]: For someone coming here, it's not the big city. It's getting away from the big city. It's getting to real people who mostly know each other.

You're only two or three steps from someone you know. That's not a bad thing, really. Place to belong to.

Julie South [00:13:45]: Talk to me about your commute. Because let's say, hypothetically speaking, a small animal vet is listening to this. They may be a surfer, they may be into the great outdoors, and they are over a one-hour commute sitting in traffic every day. What's the commute for you like?

Dr Greg Hall [00:14:09]: The commute for me is really easy. It takes me 10 minutes to get to work, and I live halfway to New Plymouth in Egmont Village.

The traffic coming to Inglewood in the morning is usually pretty light because it's people going to New Plymouth where you get the hold-ups.

If you were living in Waiwhakaiho or Bell Block and going to New Plymouth to work, there's a bit of a slog. And it's not an hour, but you're waiting in on lights to get through to New Plymouth.

But if you're coming out of New Plymouth, coming to Inglewood, or coming out of New Plymouth and going to Waitara, it's actually pretty good. 15 minutes from New Plymouth to Inglewood, probably 20 from New Plymouth to Waitara to get to work at 8 o'clock.

That's usually... most people are commuting after that to get kids to school.

Dr Greg Hall [00:15:00]: There's a lot of traffic on the road getting kids to school.

Julie South [00:15:03]: That's the way it is for anywhere, though. Talk to me about your clients. Over 30 years, you would have seen a few generations of... or a generation of... I meant that. I didn't... I will rephrase that. It doesn't take long to see a couple of generations.

Dr Greg Hall [00:15:28]: It's funny. I grew up here and knew the fathers of the farmers when I first came back here 30 years ago. Now their sons are farming some of those same farms. So I've seen three generations on a lot of these farms.

So yeah, you do. I bore people sometimes because I know the background of it, and people's eyes glaze over if I start talking about who's related to who. And people that come new to our area obviously don't have that knowledge of family connections.

Julie South [00:16:12]: That's important in small towns, really important. And it will apply for not just the mixed slash large equine and deer vets, but it will also start to play out in your small animal practise as well.

Dr Greg Hall [00:16:30]: Well, we see small animals not just from our farming families that also have a dog or a cat. We see small animals from people in the towns, and a lot of them have connections to people on the land as well, being a rural community.

So knowing those connections is important in terms of trust. If you're a new face from out of town, it takes a little while in any industry to gain trust.

There's some big things happen with clients and their pets, and for them, it can be easier with someone they know than with a stranger.

Julie South [00:17:07]: Do your out-of-town vets struggle to be accepted by the locals?

Dr Greg Hall [00:17:17]: I don't think so. I think our clients are very open to people they don't know, and I think anybody who shows care, shows good communication, and shows honesty, people will trust them.

So I don't believe that you have to be local to get on here. I think you just have to be a genuine, open, and honest person. And that's the way to build relationships.

Julie South [00:17:55]: And some people will struggle, regardless of how easy or not it is to fit in, because that's just their mindset.

That was Greg Hall, managing director at Energy Vets in Taranaki on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island.

A quick note about what you've been hearing in this Real Story series. This depth of culture storytelling, real conversations, real people, and specifics that go well beyond a job description, is what actually helps clinics attract their kind of people.

When clinics struggle to get suitable applicants despite advertising for months and months and months, it's rarely because there aren't vets or nurses out there. It's because the job advert tells people what the role is, but not what the clinic is really like.

Vets and nurses can't choose you if they can't see whether you're their kind of people in their kind of clinic. That's what culture storytelling is.

Julie South [00:19:01]: And if you're responsible for recruitment at your clinic and listening to this thinking, yes, Julie, we've got stories like this, but we just don't know how to use them, you're welcome to email me directly. julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

And if you're an experienced small animal veterinarian considering your next move, especially if you like the sound of what you've heard here, Energy Vets in Taranaki is currently looking for their next small animal veterinarian. You can find out more at vetclinicjobs.com/energyvets.

This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self.

Because when you're led by someone who's as deeply rooted in their community and genuinely cares about the place they practise in, like Greg does at Energy Vets, you don't just join a clinic. You work with your kind of people in a place that already matters.

And when vets and nurses can see that culture story before you advertise, when they already know you're their kind of people at their kind of clinic, you're not recruiting anymore. You're welcoming people who've already decided they belong.