What Your Clinic Lets Slide: Why Vets See Your Job Ad and Still Don’t Apply

Hello and welcome. I’m Julie South, and you’re listening to Veterinary Voices—culture storytelling conversations for vet clinics that want to be found by Their Kind of People: the vets and nurses who genuinely, absolutely can’t wait to start working at your clinic.

Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetClinicJobs, helping clinics give vets and nurses the answers they need to their job application questions before they apply.

This is Episode 290, and it’s the seventh in the series about the REAL•CULTURE•STORY framework. That’s the framework we use when we’re working with clinics to create, tell and share their Culture Stories.

Stay to the end for this week’s implementation takeaway: how to Spot it, Source it and Share it as a Culture Story from your own clinic.

What are Lived Values in veterinary workplace culture?

Today, we’re working through CULTURE—the part of the framework that helps vets and nurses understand how your clinic works.

Last week, we looked at U for UNDERSTANDING.

This week, we come back to L for LIVED VALUES.

We first looked at LIVED VALUES in Episode 287, from the REAL—or seen—part of the framework.

That episode was all about:

Can vets and nurses see your values in what people do?

This time, we’re looking from the CULTURE—or understood—side of the framework.

What do those behaviours help vets and nurses understand about the standards inside your clinic?

For example:

Who gets encouraged?

What gets protected?

What gets challenged?

What gets tolerated?

And what gets celebrated?

Because whatever behaviour your clinic repeatedly ignores or tolerates becomes part of the culture—even when that behaviour contradicts everything you claim to stand for.

How does workplace culture affect new grad vets?

Imagine, for example, that your clinic says it values learning.

A new grad asks a senior vet for help with a case.

The senior vet sighs and does an eye roll—or both—and then says:

“Didn’t they teach you that at vet school?”

Other people hear it, but nobody steps in.

Later, someone tells the new grad:

“That’s just how she is. Try not to take it personally.”

From that, what’s the new grad learned?

What’s the subtext underneath that sigh, eye roll and comment?

The new grad has learned that asking for help comes with a risk.

They’ve learned that a senior person can embarrass them without anyone challenging it.

And they’ve learned that keeping the peace with the senior vet is more important than protecting the person who asked for help.

The clinic can have LEARNING written on every single wall at their clinic.

But the behaviour everyone’s just accepted tells the new grad what that clinic’s real standard is.

The lesson is clear:

You’re welcome to learn here—as long as your question doesn’t annoy the wrong person.

That’s a lived value as well.

It’s just a very different value from the one the clinic says it stands for.

Why does tolerating bad behaviour damage a veterinary team?

Most teams have probably heard some version of:

“That’s just how she is.”

“She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“He’s under a lot of pressure.”

“She’s brilliant with clients.”

“He’s been here forever.”

Or variations of those.

These explanations can sound harmless, but what does the rest of the team understand from them?

They understand that some people are allowed to behave differently.

They understand that experience, seniority, clinical skill or financial value can earn someone a special set of rules.

They understand who’ll be protected when two people’s needs clash.

And they understand which behaviours management is prepared to let slide.

Nobody has to write those rules down.

People learn them by watching what happens.

How should veterinary leaders respond when someone belittles a colleague?

Now let’s change the new-grad example.

The senior vet makes the same comment:

“Didn’t they teach you that at vet school?”

This time, another vet steps in:

“They’re asking because they want to get it right, so let’s help them.”

Later, the clinical lead speaks privately with the senior vet and makes it clear that questions are welcome and belittling someone for asking one isn’t acceptable behaviour.

The clinical lead also checks in with the new grad later.

The message from that is clear:

Questions are welcome here.

Eye rolls, sighs and put-downs when someone asks for help aren’t acceptable behaviour in this clinic.

The next time the new grad asks for help, they get it without the eye roll, the sigh or the put-down.

What does the new grad understand now?

They understand that learning is protected.

They understand that seniority doesn’t give someone permission to humiliate a colleague.

They understand that another team member will step in.

And they understand that management will deal with behaviour that goes against the clinic’s values and standards.

That’s what a value looks like when people can understand it.

The clinic hasn’t shown that everyone behaves perfectly.

It’s shown what happens when someone crosses a boundary.

And that’s far more believable.

How can veterinary clinics create psychological safety for their teams?

A clinic’s values become clear when something tests them.

A client starts shouting at a receptionist.

A nurse questions a clinical decision.

A new grad makes a mistake.

A high-performing vet treats a colleague badly.

The first behaviour is only part of the story.

What people want to understand is what happens next.

Who steps in?

Who stays quiet?

Who doesn’t say anything?

Who gets protected?

Is the behaviour challenged?

Is it excused?

Does anything change afterwards?

Your response tells the team which standards are real.

If the clinic claims to value wellbeing while praising people for working through every lunch break, the praise teaches the real standard.

If it claims to value teamwork while allowing the same people to carry the difficult jobs, the workload teaches the real standard.

If it claims to value honesty while punishing people who raise a problem, the response teaches the real standard.

And if it claims to value respect while excusing poor behaviour from a high-performing vet or nurse, the excuse teaches the real standard.

Your team is always learning what the clinic stands for.

They learn it from what happens next.

Can an imperfect workplace experience become a credible Culture Story?

A clinic where nothing ever goes wrong isn’t believable.

People lose patience.

Decisions get questioned.

Someone handles a situation badly.

An old habit outlives its usefulness.

A system creates an unfair result.

The useful Culture Story is often about what happened after someone noticed the problem.

Perhaps a nurse raised a concern and the process changed.

Perhaps a new grad said they needed more support and regular case reviews were introduced.

Perhaps a team member challenged a long-standing habit that was leaving other people overloaded.

Perhaps someone crossed a behavioural boundary and management dealt with it.

These stories help vets and nurses understand that the clinic is capable of listening, learning and changing.

They also show which standards the clinic is prepared to protect when doing so becomes uncomfortable.

Spot it. Source it. Share it.

Here’s this week’s implementation takeaway.

Spot it

Choose one value your clinic claims to hold.

Then look for a recent moment when that value was tested.

What behaviour was encouraged?

What was protected?

What was challenged?

What was tolerated?

What was celebrated?

Source it

Ask the person who experienced that moment:

“What happened?”

“What happened next?”

“What did that tell you about how this clinic works?”

Their answers will show whether your clinic’s intended value and their lived experience line up.

Share it

Tell the story through the person who experienced it.

Include the decisions, actions or responses that helped them understand the clinic’s standard.

Here’s what a short Culture Story could look like using our new-grad example:

“I asked one of our senior vets for help with a case, and her first response made me feel pretty stupid for asking.“ Then another vet stepped in straight away and said, ‘They’re asking because they want to get it right, so let’s help them.’“ Our clinical lead checked in with me afterwards and dealt with what had happened.“  The next time I asked for help, I got it without the sigh or eye roll.“ What stayed with me was how quickly the clinic dealt with it. I knew then that asking questions really was okay here.”

That’s a real person explaining what the clinic’s value of learning means when it’s tested.

It’s specific.

It’s believable.

And it helps another vet or nurse understand what the clinic will protect when one of its standards is crossed.

Next week: T for TEAM VOICE

Next week, T is for TEAM VOICE.

Your clinic can have real people, clear examples and strong values—and still sound like every other vanilla clinic in every other vanilla clinic job ad.

So here’s the test we’ll look at next week:

If you removed your clinic’s name from your Culture Stories, would your team recognise themselves?

Would they say:

“Yes. That sounds like us.”

Or could the same words belong to almost any clinic?

If you’d like help telling your team’s Culture Stories in a way that turns vanilla into something meaningful, then please, let’s have a chat—even when you’re not trying to fill a vacancy at your clinic right now.

Because Culture Storytelling needs to be an “always happening” thing, not just something you do when you’re advertising.

Get in touch: julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Thank you for getting to the end.

This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self—because you work in Your Kind of Clinic with Your Kind of People.