“We Work as a Team” Tells Vets and Nurses Almost Diddly Squat — ep 289

What do “collaborative”, “supportive” and “we work as a team” actually tell vets and nurses about working inside your veterinary clinic?

How can vets and nurses understand your clinic culture before they apply for a job?

[00:00]

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 there.

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 289, and it’s the sixth in the series about the REAL•CULTURE•STORY framework. It’s the framework we use when we’re working with clinics to create, tell and share their culture stories.

REAL is all about what’s seen.

CULTURE is about what’s understood.

STORY is about what’s felt.

Last week, we talked about C for CLARITY. If you haven’t listened to that, please go back and listen. I’ll put all the links in the show notes for you.

This week, we’re looking at U for UNDERSTANDING.

Understanding helps vets and nurses get a sense of the people inside your clinic—from the outside.

How do the people in your clinic talk to each other?

How do they work together?

How do they make decisions?

What happens when someone asks for help or when someone disagrees?

In other words, could a vet or nurse looking for a job recognise the people in your clinic as Their Kind of People?

Why does “we work as a team” tell vets and nurses so little?

[01:48]

Almost every clinic says:

“We work as a team.”

The problem is that this tells vets and nurses almost diddly squat about how your team works.

Two clinics can say exactly the same thing:

“We’re a collaborative team.”

In one clinic, a vet might call across the treatment room:

“Can I borrow your brains for a minute, please?”

Someone stops, has a look and offers another possibility.

Maybe you can relate. Perhaps you’ve been the person walking across the room to support someone, or you’ve been the person asking.

Maybe a nurse adds something the client mentioned.

Nobody gets precious about whose idea it was. They agree on the next step and carry on.

Whereas in another clinic, vets usually manage their own cases. They’ll ask for help when they need it—if they need it—but the unspoken, accepted behaviour is to stay inside their own caseloads.

Both clinics could honestly describe themselves as collaborative.

But what a vet or nurse wants to know is:

What does collaboration mean here?

What will happen when I ask for help?

What will happen if I disagree?

Will their way of working feel natural to me?

That’s the job of UNDERSTANDING.

What do vets and nurses need to know about how a clinic team works?

[03:13]

Inside your clinic, your team already understands how things work.

Who gets straight to the point?

Who needs time to think before answering?

Can a nurse challenge a vet directly? In other words, is it psychologically safe?

Can a new graduate interrupt a senior vet?

When a shift turns to custard, does someone reset priorities? If so, who—and what does that look like?

Does somebody check that the last person still working is okay before everyone else heads out the door for home?

Those behaviours feel normal to the people inside the clinic.

Yet someone outside has no way of knowing about them unless your culture stories show or tell them.

How do unwritten workplace rules affect new vets and nurses?

[04:30]

Maybe you’ve experienced this. Maybe you’ve been here.

Imagine a vet or nurse who has recently joined a clinic.

After a while, they start to notice that some of the long-time vets seem to leave before the end of their rostered shifts. The new vet keeps finding themselves left holding the fort.

No one explained this arrangement when they joined or during their interview.

No one seems to talk about it because, among the established team, it’s just the way it is:

“That’s how we do things around here.”

Except the new vet didn’t understand that from the outside.

They couldn’t.

The clinic told them their working hours. It gave them no way of understanding the team’s unwritten rules around those hours.

Now that vet or nurse has questions.

Can they raise it?

Who can they raise it with?

How will management respond?

And if management changes what’s been happening, how will the long-time vets treat the new person they’ll assume spoke up?

What happens when a vet or nurse raises an unfair workplace practice?

[05:23]

At this point, there isn’t a positive culture story for the clinic to tell.

There’s an unresolved cultural problem.

The story depends on what happens next.

Let’s suppose the vet raises it and management discovers the arrangement that’s been going on for years. They were totally oblivious to it before this new vet or nurse arrived.

Management agrees it’s unfair and puts steps in place to change it.

Obviously, it doesn’t happen overnight. Difficult conversations need to be had and there may be some tension.

Some of the long-time vets are unhappy because they’ve lost their early finish. The new vet or nurse may feel about as popular as a flea infestation.

But the clinic works through it.

End-of-shift responsibilities become clear. Everyone understands who stays, who leaves and who is responsible for anything still happening in the clinic.

Now there is a culture story worth telling.

It shows that someone can raise an unfair situation.

It shows that management listened and did something about it.

And it helps an outsider understand how that clinic deals with difficult cultural problems.

How can a veterinary clinic correct an outdated workplace reputation?

[06:58]

But what happens if the clinic fixes the situation and never tells anyone?

The old story keeps travelling and perpetuating:

“That’s the clinic where the long-time vets leave early and the newest vet gets stuck holding the fort.”

That’s the elephant in the room we talked about in Episode 276—the reputation that travels everywhere except the job ad.

The clinic has changed, but its reputation hasn’t caught up.

Unless the clinic shares what’s changed and lets the people who went through that change talk about it, vets and nurses on the outside have absolutely no way of understanding how the clinic works now.

That’s why culture storytelling needs to happen all the time.

Clinics change.

Problems are raised.

Systems improve.

Teams learn better ways of working.

And your culture stories need to keep up.

How can you test whether “supportive” or “collaborative” is true in your clinic?

[08:33]

If this is your first time listening to the show, you probably don’t know that I give homework at the end of each episode.

Here it is.

I’d like you to choose one phrase your clinic uses. Maybe it’s in a job ad, on your careers page, in a LinkedIn post or in some other story online.

That phrase might be:

“We’re collaborative.”“We support each other.”“Our vets have autonomy.”“We value learning.”

I’m sure you get the drift.

Then ask two or three people in your clinic separately:

“What does that mean here?”

As part of that question, ask:

“Tell me about the last time you saw it happen.”

If everyone gives you a similar answer and can describe a real experience, you’ve probably found a culture story.

Perhaps they all talk about the afternoon a difficult case came in and three people stayed behind to help.

Perhaps they describe a nurse questioning something during a procedure and being thanked for speaking up.

Perhaps they talk about a vet trying a different approach, sharing what they learned and changing how the clinic does things.

Those stories help someone outside your clinic understand what support, autonomy, learning or teamwork—whatever your phrase was—means at your clinic.

If the answers are completely different, or no one can think of an example, you’ve learned something as well.

The phrase may sound good. It may look good on paper and online. But it doesn’t yet have a shared meaning inside your clinic.

Start there.

Work out what the phrase means to your people.

Find where it shows up during a regular shift.

Then let the person—or people—who lived that experience tell the story in their own words.

How do you turn a generic clinic culture claim into credible evidence?

[10:41]

Here’s what I want you to do:

Spot it.

Spot the phrase.

Source it.

Source the response and the story from the person who experienced it.

Share it.

Share that story—or those stories—in their own words.

What do workplace behaviours reveal about a veterinary clinic’s standards?

[11:33]

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

We’ve covered this before, but now we’re going to look at it inside the CULTURE part of the framework.

Last time, we looked at whether your values can be seen in what people do.

Next week, we’ll look at what those behaviours help an outsider understand about your clinic.

Who gets encouraged?

Who gets protected?

What gets challenged?

What gets tolerated?

And what do those things tell a vet or nurse about the standards they would be expected to work by?

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

Culture storytelling needs to be an always-happening thing, not just something you do when you’re advertising.

Email me at julie@vetclinicjobs.com.

Thank you for getting to the end.

If you like the show, can I ask you to please leave a comment, give it a five-star rating—hopefully—and tell your friends about it?

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.