VetsOne Dr Sharon Marshall Small Animal Veterinarian Director Part 2 of 2 - ep 1015

Julie South [00:00:07]: Welcome to Veterinary Voices: Employer brand conversations that help veterinary clinics hire great people. I'm Julie South and this is episode 1015. Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs.

Build your employer brand. Do your own recruitment. Better.

Continuing our VetsOne Employer of Choice series, last week you heard the first part of Dr Sharon Marshall's story—one of VetsOne's three directors who's transitioning from clinical work into strategic management. You heard why she became a vet at age five, how she reconciles business ownership with animal advocacy, what their longevity programme actually offers, and why she believes the biggest impact isn't always through your own hands—it's through building a team that can carry the work forward.

If you're a small animal vet with around eight to 10 years under your belt and you've been wondering what stepping into leadership might look like without the corporate machinery, pay attention to today's conversation. VetsOne is looking for their next team leader and what you're about to hear is exactly what the role involves. You can check out for more information at vetclinicjobs.com/vetsone.

Today in part two, Dr Sharon gets into the practical details of what this team leader role actually involves. You're going to hear how she'll support someone stepping into leadership for the first time, what success looks like in this position, and how the team structure works across vets, nurses and customer care.

You'll also discover what clinical capabilities VetsOne has invested in—from TPLO surgeries to radiation treatment for cats—why their ethos around referrals is different from many first-opinion clinics, how their values were developed with the entire team, and why the name VetsOne emerged from their rebranding process.

This is the final chat, the final conversation in the VetsOne Employer of Choice series, and Dr Sharon brings it all together—the philosophy, the practical support and the vision for where this 80-year-old practice is heading.

Let's join that chat.

Julie South [00:02:32]: Let's say, hypothetically speaking, there's a vet listening to this, thinking about making their next move. They've got eight to 10 years experience, but they haven't been a formal leader. They have maybe led innately, but it's never been part of their job description. How are you going to support somebody? Because leaders aren't born. I don't believe—you have to coach and support and mentor leaders. How will this new vet work being a new leader?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:03:24]: I actually think the job's going to be fairly easy for them because we've got a really easy team. We've worked really, really hard on our culture. We've worked really hard on leadership. We've invested through the Lincoln Institute in leadership. We're going through a thing called Emerging Leaders which we're training the whole team in, which talks about coping with change and difficult conversations and social styles.

So we're investing in the whole team working like a team. So the leader who comes in won't need to be managing the team as such. The team will manage themselves together. We expect it to be collaborative, but there will be certain individual roles for them, like deciding if somebody needs to move from one area to another, perhaps talking to management on behalf of the small animal team.

If the small animal team wants to see a change or wants to do something different, they'll be the voice for that team. So the way we'll help that person is firstly by having a very clear job description so they'll know what aspects of the role we'll be doing.

They'll certainly get some direct support from me because I've been in that role before, so I'm available every moment of the day that we're here at work with my door open. So they'll certainly have that support.

We have a leadership team meeting once a month, so they'll be a part of that. And that's where we all get together as leaders and talk about what's going on in the team, any support they need, any help they need. So that's their opportunity to hear from the other leaders and how they're managing their teams. And so it's a very tight-knit community where they will be not just put in that job and see you later.

We have a three-month induction plan for any team member that comes in. And the very first day, before they even pick up a scalpel or pick up a thermometer, they'll actually just be learning about the business, what it means to be a team member, what our culture is, what our values are, what our history is, where the car parks are, where the toilets are—anything they need to know as a team member. We'll actually be just spending a day going through that with them so they can just get to know us before they even start.

And then once they're in that role, we'll be working with them closely, doing check-ins for that first three months. For us, it's not about somebody who's got the experience being a team leader, but it's more somebody who has the behaviours of developing respect with people, communicating well with people—just that people will look up to—and we can do the rest.

We'll work with you to give you the skills you need to be a leader if you've got the drive to be that leader and you've got the experience and you've got the ability to talk to people and you've got the ability to listen to people and you don't mind having a difficult conversation occasionally. And I will train you in those skills as well. But if you feel that you can do those things, then this is certainly a job that you can apply for.

Julie South [00:06:18]: What might success look like for the person in that role?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:06:23]: For me, success is just being respected by the other members of your team, making that team work really well with the other teams. So for us, culture is all about—when I talk about teams, we've got the small animal vet team, we've got the nursing team, and we've got the administration team, which includes our customer care.

And they're all individual teams, but we don't expect any of them to work as individual teams. They have to work together. So the team leader for small animals will be managing that team so that it is part of the bigger team, so that it's coordinated with the vet nurses, it's coordinating with the customer care team.

And so success will mean that that team looks like it is integrated with the rest of the team, that it's listening to what the other teams need, and it's able also to give feedback to the other teams. If the team is running smoothly and just advocating for animals and working well with the other teams, then that will be success for me.

Julie South [00:07:25]: How big is the professional clinical team right now? How many vets and how many nurses do you have?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:07:32]: We have seven nurses and we have five small animal veterinarians and three production animal veterinarians.

Julie South [00:07:38]: The vet nurses are all small animal vet nurses?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:07:43]: Yes, yes. They all work in the small animal team. So they have a roster system where a couple of them will be in surgery and ICU managing those cases. We have a dental nurse, because we're very big on dentistry, as I talked about earlier. We have a nurse who will be managing the hospital area, and then we have a couple of nurses who will be managing the consult area.

Each of the veterinarians will be in one of those areas themselves, and they'll be working closely with those vets that day. And we have a rotating roster. So one day you might be in consults and another day you might be in hospital, and another day you might be in dentistry, and another day you might be in surgery and you work with the members of that area to look after the animals in that area.

Julie South [00:08:24]: What about the after-hours roster? How many weekends will they be working?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:08:31]: It's just shared evenly between all the vets, so that includes myself. So it would be one in five.

Julie South [00:08:37]: And you're including this role in the five?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:08:41]: Yes.

Julie South [00:08:42]: What if they have an interest, a special interest that they want to pursue?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:08:48]: Certainly. Well, we love having special interests and we love having a very diverse team. So that is very encouraged. We have one veterinarian who's got a strong interest in exotics, so we've supported that with CPD and he sees a large number of exotics now. So that's an area that he's been able to grow the business in.

We strongly encourage anybody who has an interest in a particular area in growing and developing and getting more knowledge in that area so that we can utilise that skill. And it gives them some interest too, to go and develop.

Julie South [00:09:23]: Talking about equipment and skills. What's your favourite piece of kit?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:09:27]: Oh, my brain. That gets used more than anything else. Yeah, I think the veterinarian—I mean, I know that's not the question you're asking, but I think the individual veterinarian, there's a lot to be said from what you can gain from using your eyes and your nose and your ears, from listening to the client and watching the animal and examining the animal. I think there's just so much that can be gained from that.

Having said that, since we moved to our new clinic five years ago, we invested very, very heavily in technology. And probably our first serious investment was in the in-house chemistry system. And I remember the day it arrived, it actually was set up just before—it was Christmas Eve when we had it really for our first day. And we ran a blood about four o'clock in the afternoon on Christmas Eve on this dog and unfortunately it had lymphoma, which was a really sad finding, obviously, especially at that time.

But you know what, it was kind of like, "Wow, we can actually give the client this information immediately." They don't have to wait. At Christmas it would have been five days. We couldn't have even got the blood safely to the lab in any time during that period, yet we were able to give an immediate answer to that client. And it wasn't the answer they wanted, but at least they had knowledge. And the ability to get that immediate information was just a game changer for me.

So we've invested in—we have a full suite of biotechnology now. We've got biochemistry, haematology, urinalysis. We have IDEXX ImageVet, which is AI interpretation of slides so we can do fine needle aspirates. We've got a video microscope.

The day we bought the Bionet monitor for anaesthesia was also eye-opening because we used to say, "Oh, I guess it's breathing. So that's great, it's alive." But it's amazing how much we didn't know until we actually started using that on animals and monitoring it. And once we got one, one wasn't enough. There had to be one for the dentistry and one for the animals in prep.

And so that's also a piece of equipment that I love because it's keeping those animals safe. And the nurses are really being able to control the anaesthesia really well by monitoring those animals. And it's brought down the amount of anaesthetic they need so they don't have to be inhaling as much anaesthesia. And so they're also safer for that reason. So those two bits of equipment, I think, are probably the ones I enjoy the most.

Julie South [00:11:58]: What I'm hearing is all the benefits of living in regional New Zealand with the tech and the sophistication of big-city equipment.

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:12:08]: Yeah, I'd like to think that we have really gone further than—well, that's probably not fair because a lot of clinics now, I know, are investing in equipment. But I think that we've got the ethos that if there's something there that's going to make it better and safer for animals or we can do our job better, we're quite prepared to invest in it.

So yeah, I think that we don't have a CT scanner, but we've got pretty much everything that you would want to have in a regional small animal clinic. Absolutely. Probably the incubator's next on our list. That's something that we want to get. That's being pushed by the veterinarian who is interested in exotics. He'd love to have an incubator for the smaller birds and things. And also, of course, we could use it for paediatrics. So that's next on my wish list and probably something that we'll purchase before the end of the year.

Julie South [00:12:59]: What would be, as a practising veterinarian, your most satisfying case, do you think?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:13:07]: There's been so many over the years. I think any time you make a difference in an animal's life, I think that's just a moment where you just go, "This is why I'm doing it."

And I guess the most stunning one was we had a dog here who was hit by a car very, very badly. And we would have normally amputated the leg because the bottom third was completely crushed. There was nothing left to it. In normal circumstances, amputation would have been the appropriate thing, but we chose to salvage the remainder of the leg and created a little stump with the pads on it.

The owner actually had a friend who did prosthetics. So this dog—it was a big, heavy Labrador and was a hunting dog, really. It would have had a very different lifestyle on three legs. But the fact that we were able to get it onto four legs and have a prosthetic, and I saw videos of that dog running around and just being an absolute lunatic on the four legs—it was really rewarding to know that I made a difference in that dog's life.

Julie South [00:14:09]: Talking about cases like that, you're probably aware in big cities the trend is coming—it's already here—that first-opinion clinics are referring so much work that many veterinarians feel like they're doing vaccinations and nail clips and anal glands. And it's just a repeat cycle of that because anything that is not any of those gets referred up or along. What sort of caseload, what cases will your vet experience?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:14:47]: Well, our ethos is very different to that. I guess you have to still have the background that it has to always be the right thing for the animal. So I preface that by—if it's the right thing to refer an animal, we absolutely will.

But the ethos here is actually to try and make this veterinary clinic something that can tend to all the needs of all of our animals almost 100% of the time. So obviously there are things that we can't do, but we're investing in the equipment, we're investing in the training, we're investing in the team. And we've got a really wide range of skills so that really there's not a lot that we can't do here at VetsOne.

I've been trained in the BOAS surgery, so we can provide BOAS surgeries for clients. We have two veterinarians who have been trained in fairly heavy-level orthopaedics, so we can do TPLOs here at VetsOne. We have a radiation unit here, so we can do I-131 treatment for cats here at VetsOne.

We try to share our skills. So we've got veterinarians who can do ultrasound testing. And so there's the ability there that once a veterinarian has an interest, we will train them. But then there's the expectation that they will share that among the team so that the team could do that work as well.

We've invested in dentistry, so there's almost no level of dentistry that we can't do here. I guess the bottom line of that means that you're going to be seeing a wide range of things coming through the door. You're going to be seeing a wide range of things that can be done here. Certainly specialist care, we will still absolutely refer, but our goal is that 99% of the work can and should be done here because we've got the skills and the equipment to do that.

Julie South [00:16:30]: What's your PMS?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:16:31]: We're ezyVet. Yeah, we find ezyVet quite good to use. Most of the team does enjoy using it. It's fairly easy to learn if you're not used to it. It's fairly intuitive. One of my strengths is it. So if people have things they need to get changed on ezyVet, that's something that we very easily do in-house.

Julie South [00:16:50]: Sharon, tell me, please—you're one of the very few clinics that are strong. You've formulated your values. You know what your values are. You know what your mission is, you know why you go to work in the morning. Can you talk me through, please, how development of that came and then how that plays out in the culture that you have?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:17:16]: Sure. I guess it started, I guess, as most businesses do—"We should have values." So that was—yeah, we woke up one day and said, "Oh, we don't have our values."

But what we did is we went to the team and we just brainstormed about what our team felt was important for us. We'd just throw out one word there and one word here. And we just put those all up on butcher's paper about what they wanted for us as values.

And then what we discovered is we had maybe 50 words or something like that. And then what we discovered is they actually started formulating into groups. A certain number of them were regarding the way we worked. Then a certain number of them were talking about advocacy, and a certain number of them were talking about how we communicate. And then a certain number of them were talking about how we work as a team. There are a couple of outliers, but the majority of them really fell into that. This is what the team felt was important for them.

And when we look at our team values, they're not just the values of staff working with staff. All four of those apply to your approach to animals and animal care, and all four of those apply to our approach to our clients as well.

We should always be professional when we're talking to our clients—how we dress, the information we give them, how we talk. If you say you're going to do something, do it.

Advocacy, obviously, advocating for the animal, but also advocating for the client as well.

Communication goes without saying—you cannot be a good veterinarian if you cannot communicate for the animal and you can't communicate to the client as well.

And teamwork, as I said earlier, to me, what a client wants is—they no longer want to be just told by the vet this is what their animal needs. They want to know that they have real ownership in the choices they're making. And so you cannot be an effective veterinarian if you don't develop a sense of teamwork with the client and going, "This is what we can do together."

So those four values really did resonate with what we were already doing. It's just that we then put them into words and we verbalised them. Then we had another session where we said, "Okay, let's just define that a little bit more. What does it look like when we are professional? What does that look like for us? What does it look like when we're doing those things?" The same for advocacy and communication and teamwork.

And as recently as last month, we had a meeting with our team. We have a full staff meeting every month. And we said to the team, "Right, let's look at our values again. Are they still our appropriate values? Do they still have meaning for you? Do they still speak to the things that you want to be doing in VetsOne?"

And it was universally agreed that they were still the right values for us. But we redid the exercise of, "Okay, what does it look like? Does it look different when we are advocating or when we're communicating?" So we just, again, redefined those values.

I guess to me, values are things that then just become how you do things. If I'm making a decision and I'm not sure if it's the right decision, how does it stand up against those values?

And when we're having difficult conversations with our staff, which we need to do from time to time, the conversation will be, "How did that decision you make stack up against our values? Because I think it went against at least three of them."

So it's a guiding force for our staff to give them the freedom to make decisions without—we don't want to be prescriptive here. I don't need a team of robots. I want to have a team who are thinking for themselves and acting for themselves and making clinical decisions for themselves and making choices for the client for themselves, but using the ethos of VetsOne as their backbone to help and guide them so they're not just floundering around in the dark.

If the decision they make is a professional decision, if it's one that advocates for either the business or their team or the animal or the client, if it involves good communication or if it is encouraging teamwork, then it can't be a bad decision. It's going to be one that will be in line with what we want the team to do. So that's for us what the values are all about—just actually giving that guidance to the team of when I make a choice, is this a good choice?

Julie South [00:21:36]: When you bought the business, did you change the business name? Has it always been VetsOne?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:21:41]: No, the business has actually had several names. We've actually been around for—well, I've lost track. The last time I saw it written down was 60 years, but I think that's actually nearly about 20 years old, to be honest. So the business has been around for about 80 years.

And it started as a very, very small clinic, actually managing horses mostly, and then grew. And about the time I joined it 25 years ago, small animals was very small, but has grown and developed. And at that time it was called Vet Associates.

The two people who owned it got sick of changing the name every time a director came and went. So they called it Vet Associates—a generic name. But the name was terrible for us. Every time we'd ring our clients, you got this like, "Who are you? Why are you ringing? Are you a law firm?" It was very impersonal, very standoffish, I think, and didn't fit with the direction the business was going.

So when Jason, myself and Mike became the directors, and soon after that we actually looked at moving the clinic to another building. The message we wanted to send to clients when we moved was the only change we've made is moving. We wanted them to know we're still the same business that cared about them. We're still the same business that looked after their animals and valued loyalty and those sorts of things.

So we made a decision that any changes we were going to make, we made before we moved into the building. So we spent some time doing branding and looking at a new name. And VetsOne embodied how we feel about what we do. We are one team looking after those animals. We are one with the owner making decisions. We want to be the one place you choose to come to. We want to be the one place providing all your services and care. And so the name just really resonated for us.

We did a big branding thing about a year before we moved. We changed our name, we changed our uniform. We knew we were going to need new staff, so we started employing new staff so the clients could get to know them before we moved. So our goal was when we moved, all we did was the physical move and all those other changes were done prior to that.

We've had the name VetsOne for about six years now because we moved about five years ago. I'm hoping it is a name that will stick with us because it does speak to who we are.

Julie South [00:24:00]: I wondered whether it came about from One Health?

Dr Sharon Marshall [00:24:02]: To be honest, we had some marketing people who gave us a range of names and this is the one that stuck with us. The tagline was one, though, that came from Jason. There were some other taglines and he developed the tagline "Together for Animal Health."

One of the big problems for us in our branding and our imaging is that we still are quite diverse in the range of clients and animals we look after. We have a very strong production side of the business, but we also have a very strong companion animal side of the business. And so whilst my hat was saying "let's have names that speak to love and care and those sorts of things," the production side of the business was not so much.

We needed to have a name that actually still was true to both sides of this business. And that's been a challenge for us for a lot of our marketing—actually finding one that will speak to both people who have animals out of love and others who have animals out of production. And we think hopefully that name did it. And the tagline "Together for Animal Health" certainly speaks to both sides of those. We're together with the pet owner, but we're also together with the farmer trying to improve animal health and productivity.

Julie South [00:25:19]: You've just heard Dr Sharon Marshall complete the picture of what VetsOne has built—not just equipment and systems, but a philosophy about what first-opinion veterinary care can be when you invest in the right people, the right technology and the right culture.

What strikes me most about this chat is Dr Sharon's clarity about leadership development. She's not looking for someone who already has all the answers. She's looking for someone with the right behaviours—the ability to communicate, to listen, to have difficult conversations—and she'll provide the rest. Three-month induction plans, monthly leadership team meetings, direct support from someone who's been in that role. That's what genuine leadership development looks like, not just a job title and good luck.

And her point about referrals is worth sitting with for a moment. While many first-opinion clinics are increasingly referring routine work, VetsOne has deliberately invested in becoming the place that can handle 99% of what walks through the door. TPLO surgeries, BOAS procedures, radiation treatment, advanced dentistry. Because their ethos is about being the veterinary home for their clients' animals, not a triage service.

This is the final episode in the VetsOne Employer of Choice series. Over these episodes you've heard from directors, from veterinarians, from operations, from nurses. You've heard about large animal and companion animal practice. You've heard from someone who's been there 34 years and someone who's been there two years. You've heard about mountain bike mishaps, palliative care passions, herbal medicine side hustles and relocating 1,300 kilometres for the right nursing role.

What's consistent across every single one of these conversations? People who feel genuinely seen, supported to pursue their interests and part of something bigger than themselves. Three owner-operators who work alongside their team daily and make decisions without corporate bureaucracy. A culture where attitude matters more than perfection, where diverse clinical interests are celebrated, and where the longevity programme isn't just a retention tactic—it's a genuine thank you for choosing to stay.

A quick note about what you've been hearing in this series. This depth of employer brand storytelling—multiple team members, genuine stories, cultural specifics beyond just job requirements—this is what makes recruitment actually work.

When clinics struggle to get suitable applicants despite advertising for months, it's because they're posting job ads without showing and telling and sharing who they really are. Veterinary professionals can't choose you if they can't see whether they'd actually fit.

VetsOne isn't just posting a job ad hoping the right person sees it. They're showing veterinary professionals what working there genuinely looks like through real veterinary voices sharing real veterinary stories. That's employer brand marketing in action. And that's why they attract people who actually want to be there—people who, as you've heard throughout this series, are genuinely proud to work at VetsOne.

If you're responsible for recruitment at your clinic and you're listening and thinking, "Yeah, we have stories like that, but you're not quite sure how to capture them," then please email me directly at julie@vetclinicjobs.com. I'd be super excited to chat about how we can help clinics like you build this kind of genuine employer brand story through our REAL+STORY programme.

And if you're a small animal veterinarian with leadership potential or experience and you're thinking about making your next career move, you do owe it to yourself to consider VetsOne. For the position details, including the salary range, the leadership development support that you'll receive, and the team structure, head on over to vetclinicjobs.com/vetsone. The information is all there.

Until next time, this is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self. Because as this entire VetsOne series has shown us, the right workplace isn't about finding somewhere perfect. It's about finding somewhere that sees you as a person, supports your growth, and gives you reason to stay—not just for years, but for decades.

This is Julie South signing off. Until next time.

Referenced URLs:

• https://vetclinicjobs.com/vetsone
• https://veterinaryvoices.com
• mailto:tania@vetclinicjobs.com
• mailto:lizzie@vetclinicjobs.com
• mailto:julie@vetclinicjobs.com