Veterinary Voices

I like to think that the state of my(Julie South) mental health is generally pretty good.   I know how to recognise when I get too close to the edge.  When I get to close to that endless downward negativity spiral where the vortex just sucks me in and it’s hard to move away into a more positive space.

This week just gone, I noticed I was starting to edge towards “that” edge.   

In times of uncertainty and chaos, it's common to feel overwhelmed and out of control.  But the good news is that there are simple and effective ways to manage stress and regain a sense of control in your life.

Today we look at five easy tools and strategies for coping with stress and finding stability in the midst of turmoil.

Whether your stress is caused by personal issues, national or global events, these strategies will help you feel like you're back in control again.

Routines are important.  For healthy adults, for kids  and for those we're caring for.  Make sure you have routine in your days during crisis times.

#1 - Create a daily schedule
#2 - Stick to your normal sleep schedule 
#3 –Take breaks 
#4 - Practice self-care

• control what goes into your brain
• mindfulness and meditation
• maintain healthy diet + exercise routine
• seek support from family and friends 
• prioritise your own pets' health and wellbeing

#5 - Be / Get / Stay "Mindful"

• start day with breathing 
• mindful walking
• take mindful breaks
• daily tasks
• attitude of gratitude

Links mentioned in today's show:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/15/health/circadian-rhythm-mood-disorder-study/index.html

https://www.vetthrive.org/

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

Gaslighting, microaggressions, and passive aggressive behaviour create toxic relationships – at work and at home. 

If you – or someone you know – wonders whether you’re going a bit crazy or feel like you have to walk on eggshells around certain people, then this is for you. 

Today we look at some gaslighting, microaggression and passive aggressive warning signs and what to do about them, so you can protect yourself and others by recognising these toxic tactics for what they are.

"Microaggressions" are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities.  They’re intentional and/or unintentional.  They communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group.

"Passive aggression" or “passive aggressive” refers to behaviour that’s indirectly aggressive rather than directly or openly confrontational. It's a way of expressing anger or frustration in an indirect manner.  For example, through procrastination, forgetfulness, or intentional inefficiency.

"Gaslighting" is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in someone else, or in members of a targeted group.

Gaslighting makes them question their own memory, perception, or sanity. 

The goal of gaslighting is to gain power and control over the individual or group and make them dependent on the gaslighter for their understanding of reality.

When used repeatedly and systematically, gaslighting can be considered a form of bullying.

It's important to note that while these concepts are related, they’re distinct and refer to different types of behaviour. 

Microaggressions, passive aggression and gaslighting are all forms of bullying.  

Individually and collectively, they can contribute to hostile and unhealthy social and clinic environments.   

Here are five ways you can start dealing with any of these behaviours:

#1 - Speak up and assertively address the behaviour

#2 - Keep a record of the incidents

#3 - Seek support from colleagues, friends or a support group

#4 - Seek help from your Practice or HR Manager 

#5 - Take care of yourself!

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

Equality vs Equity for Cost-Effective Veterinary Recruitment

Here are 10 distinct ways "equity" is different to "equality" in the veterinary clinic workplace.

We look at how you can address those differences to make you a more attractive PEOPLE.FIRST employer.   Being a PEOPLE.FIRST employer will make retention and recruitment of high calibre veterinary professionals much (much!) easier… and more cost effective!

To make it easier for you to remember all the different components I've invented the anagram DUB OFF PAPA :-)

DUB

Distinction / Definition: Equality is about treating everyone the same, whereas equity is about treating everyone fairly based on their individual needs. 

Understanding Needs: Equality assumes that everyone has the same needs, while equity recognises that different people have different needs. 

Bias: Equality assumes that everyone starts from the same place and has the same opportunities, but this is not always the case. Equity takes into account systemic biases and strives to address them. 

OFF

Outcome: Equality aims to provide the same outcomes for everyone, while equity seeks to provide fair and just outcomes based on individual circumstances.  

Fairness: Equality may lead to unfair outcomes, while equity seeks to address and correct these outcomes. 

Focus: Equality focuses on treating everyone the same, while equity focuses on creating fair and just outcomes.

PAPA

Personalisation: Equality provides a one-size-fits-all approach, while equity allows for customisation and personalisation. 

Allocation of Resources: Equality gives everyone the same resources, while equity gives everyone what they need to be successful. 

Power Dynamics: Equality does not take into account power dynamics, while equity works to redistribute power and create a level playing field. 

Access: Equality provides access to the same opportunities for everyone, while equity provides access to opportunities based on individual needs and circumstances.

OTHER PODCASTS MENTIONED TODAY

Dr Jade Hackney - ep 109

Cognitive Biases - pt 2 - ep 115

No Interruptions - ep 118

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

There’s been a bit of a jargon bandied around the recruitment and HR worlds over the last few years of DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Let's look at some DEI language - and how that plays out in your clinic - to either encourage inclusion or create cultural divides.

Here are seven different things you can look at inside your clinic to encourage diversity and growth – personal, professional and financial, as well as ways to get a better response from your job advertisements.

We also look at different ways language creates division in the  LGBTQIA+ community through ignorance of what the different terminology means + pronoun importance.

#1 – ditch the diversity & inclusion labelling – make it part of your DNA

#2 – create interruption-free SOPs

#3 -  pronoun identity – give it priority

#4 – have neutral restroom labels

#5 – “be” don’t “do” – ditch the cliches

#6 – eliminate biased language in your job advertisements

#7 – Aim for Equity

Being inclusive is an ongoing process – it’s not a quick fix, one size fits all.  You need to ensure your team doesn’t suffer from diversity fatigue where eyerolling starts to become the norm.  

Clinics that genuinely care and who put their people first will always be on the lookout to make sure their team is being inclusive of everyone.

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

10 ways to help make your price rises more palatable for your clients so you can give your team a pay rise in these inflationary times

Are staff motivation and clinic price increases connected – in this “life according to Julie episode”, I’m going to show you how they are.    

But first – some of the backstory so you can see how the dots are all connected 😊

We – VetStaff – have had a bit of a run of calls lately – starting just before Christmas and still going strong – from vets and nurses who’ve had their annual performance reviews – it’s that time of the year for some clinics and – the vets and nurses who’ve called us – have been told, when they’ve brought up the matter of a salary review – that “surely they can think of something other than the $ to come to work for” …

Today, we’re going to go through10 ways you can make it easier to increase your fees so that you can give your team a pay rise.

#1 – showcase your team’s professional credentials

#2 – Tech and Equipment

#3 – what other services do you offer your clients might not know about?

#4 – upcoming training and development

#5 – showcase your reviews and testimonials

#6 – your clinic’s presentation 

#7 – be clear and transparent with your invoicing and fees

#8 – be welcoming

#9 – your specialist & referral network

#10 – clear communication

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

The last two episodes have covered unconscious bias when interviewing with the goal of not only shedding the light on unconscious bias at your clinic, but also to help you get a more diverse team… because, as we all know, the more diverse the opinions and experience you have in a team, the stronger that team is.

If you’re a vet or nurse looking to make your next move, YOUR unconscious bias still exists and applies in exactly the same way as it does from the clinic’s hiring perspective.   Just in reverse!  All the biases I’ve talked about from the interviewer side apply equally to the interviewee as well.

The same is true with today’s info.   If you want to be hired into a diverse team, then look out for these cues at the clinic you’re being interviewed at.  You obviously won’t be able to see every one of them, but a few you will.

So keep your eyes and mind wide open.

Published Research - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a research study called Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality by Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen, and Aaron C. Kay.

12 ways to avoid unconscious interview bias

#1 – from Confession to Redemption or Acknowledge to Actualisation

#2 – use a rubric

#3 – evidence based

#4 – consistency

#5 – Teamwork

#6 – neutralise your advertisement language

#7 – go blind and go anonymous 

#8 – set diversity goals

#9 – have working interviews

#10 – do the opposite of your natural tendencies 

#11 – sleep on your decisions

#12 – make all offers subject to satisfactory reference and background checks

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

Continuing on from last week's 1-5 of Unconscious Biases:

6. Overconfidence bias

Plays out when the recruiter is soooo confident in their own abilities to either pick a good candidate, or to eliminate the supposed bad ones, that they allow confirmation bias to creep in. 

7. Similarity attraction bias

Sometimes, the similarity attraction bias plays out and replicas of people are hired – because of likeness / similarity – but they incompetent!

8. Illusory correlation

The illusory correlation is when a person believes a relationship exists between two variables when there is, in fact, no relationship there.

9. Affinity bias

Overweighted emphasis is placed on something intangible and/or irrelevant to the hiring decision.

10. Beauty bias

Beware of hiring someone simply because they have a similar appearance to others in your clinic and/or the departing employee you’re looking to replace.

11. Conformity bias

Conformity bias is a group thinking bias.  

12. Intuition

You owe it to every applicant, your colleagues, your clinic and yourself, to always check all the facts.

13. Contrast effect / judgement bias

When you’ve got a stack of CVs to go through, rather than allowing each resume to stand out on its own merit, it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparing the latest resume – or the one you’re currently reading - to the one you’ve just read.  

#14 – bandwagon effect

This is when one person’s opinion dominates, and no one challenges their opinion.

#15 – stereotyping

This is like affect heuristics because it’s when a decision is made on a superficial, non-relevant factor.

For example, the applicant might be judged wanting because of their accent, body art or piercings, gender or name.

#16 – proximity bias

This is when an applicant is judged positively or negatively in relation to how far or near, they live from a clinic.

7 ways to counter unconscious bias

1.     Do be aware of unconscious hiring biases that you and your team might have and look out for them.

2.     Do ensure your hiring managers have received suitable interview training that covers common hiring biases – we’re happy to facilitate this for you, if you’d like.

3.     Do make hiring decisions based on evidence rather than on subjective assumptions.

4.     Do be consistent and transparent in your hiring process.

5.     Do create a standardised interview guide and ensure you ask every candidate the same questions.

6.     Do create a standardised reference checking guide and ensure you ask all referees the same questions.

7.     Do involve other team members in the interview process and provide a safe psychological space for everyone’s opinions to be considered and, if necessary, challenged.

Episode 114 - the first six cognitive interviewing biases

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

One of the “happening things” in the recruitment world in 2022 was the spotlight being shone on diversity.

I've identified 16 different unconscious biases we all have when it comes to interviewing – and how these can play out during the recruitment process and what you can do to mitigate these.

The end result of all of them is the same:  you may end up discounting and/or overlooking the best person for your clinic’s vacancy.

Diversity training
Diversity training is one way to help overcome personal biases.  Another way is when you’re recruiting.  

The more people who can be involved in the recruitment process, the more likely it is – hopefully – that personal biases will be reduced and/or at least challenged.

Blind Hiring

Blind hiring is better done through a neutral third party – like VetStaff.   It’s where any and all information that could identify a job applicant is completely stripped from their CV.  

UNCONSCIOUS BIASES

1. Confirmation bias

You’ll know your guilty of confirmation bias when you find yourself asking irrelevant questions.  This is confirmation bias playing out because you’re trying to elicit answers that support your initial assumption about the vet or nurse you’re interviewing. 

You’re doing this because you want to prove to yourself – and then someone else who might be involved in the hiring process at your clinic – that your initial assessment is correct.   

It could be that they’re a great fit or they won’t fit.

#2. Affect heuristics

Affect heuristics come into play with personal biases around appearance.  An interviewer might see something physical about a candidate and they’ve immediately judged them – consciously or unconsciously – that they’re suitable or unsuitable for the job. 

It’s a virtually instantaneous judgement that then clouds and affects every other aspect of the interview process.   

3. Expectation anchor or anchoring

Expectation anchor or anchoring bias is when we allow ourselves to anchor – to focus – on one certain piece of information about a job applicant and then use that factor to help us make decisions.

In a vet clinic this could manifest as wanting to replace a departing veterinarian or veterinary nurse with an exact carbon copy of them.  

There a couple of hiring biases that support this – not just anchoring – so beware.

4. Halo effect
The halo effect could apply to any number of insignificant factors – for example, similar sporting interests, growing up in the same neighbourhood or going to the same school or university.

When the halo effect results in other – perhaps lack of competencies - being overlooked, the interviewer may attempt to short circuit the interview process because they believe they’ve found the ideal person for the job.

5. Horn effect

Just like it sounds, the horn bias or horn effect is the absolute opposite of the halo effect.

This plays out when you get stuck on something negative, or bad, about the applicant which you can’t (or won’t) move beyond it.  

It casts a shadow over everything else.

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

These 8 predictions are in no order of priority as they’re all important.

#1 - vet clinic employer branding

#2 - job sharing and genuine part time roles

#3 – how remuneration is “packaged”

#4 - veterinary nurse job satisfaction

#5 – the really good employers will get better and the vet clinic employer brand divide will widen

#6 – personalisation in recruitment will be crucial - AI – artificial intelligence and computerised recruitment bots will be used more and more, which will, ironically, make recruitment in this sector harder

#7 – recruitment will have a seat at the management table in its own right

#8 – investment in retention

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hit that follow button (it’s free) and give it a 5-star review wherever you’re listening to it right now.  Why? Because it makes a huge difference to helping the search algorithms serve it up for others to listen to.  Thanks heaps!

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics

How professional or collegial is the veterinary profession in New Zealand ?

We pick up today where Dr Paul Unsworth gets on his self-professed soapbox about the requirement for veterinarians to work after hours.  He parallels the after hours requirements and expectations of veterinary medicine versus human medicine.     

I’m interested to hear your thoughts and ideas on this – please feel free to comment wherever you’re listening to this episode.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to see the frequency of after hours roster requirements for vets changed.

And I think – this is life according to Julie – that a significant change can be made provided competitor clinics learn to play nicely and respectfully with each other after hours.

I think some clinics are virtue signalling with their intention to improve things when it comes to their teams working after hours.  Why - because they don't play nice.    They're not professional or collegial and I even challenge their levels of integrity.  

When what happens, happens, the status quo prevails and vets continue to get burnt out.

Just to clarify – to remove any cause for doubt or confusion – according to the Cambridge Dictionary – the adjective collegial means:  relating to a friendly relationship between colleagues (= people who work together)

It is also used to describe a method of working in which responsibility is shared between several people.

Again – I’m interested to hear YOUR thoughts, ideas, suggestions – so please – comment and/or email me – cos I really am interested.

Dr Paul also comes up with another possible idea to help relieve the veterinary shortage … but I’m not sure we’ve got the population to support it in Godzone Aotearoa New Zealand.  

We join the conversation here with Paul hopping onto his first soap box!

Could Your Kind of People recognise Their Kind of Clinic?

A job ad may catch a vet’s or nurse’s eye. But it’s their own due diligence that determines whether they apply—or keep in touch.

Culture Story Centres turn real experiences from inside your team into credible, discoverable recruitment evidence, giving vets and nurses meaningful reasons to choose your clinic.

Explore Culture Story Centres for veterinary clinics