Depressed, disengaged, risk averse, intolerant…what have you heard said about veterinary workers as of late? Are you part of a leadership team that believes that today’s vet med professionals are not what they once were?

 

Is today’s workforce performance an extension of turbulent times or is it in response to something that we as leaders have done through low pay, uneven governance, and the loss of employee trust that sometimes comes with the sale of a practice? Let’s sort through this complicated topic regarding our hospital teams’ wellbeing and productivity.

 

Is It True That Vet Med Teams Are Not What They Once Were?

 

The answer changes depending upon who you ask. A successful practice owner in Germantown, Md. argues that her workforce is reasonably productive and engaged because she and her management team have no tolerance for performers who aren’t. Her management style reminds one of the advice of the late, great Mark Opperman who repeatedly told leaders to hire slow and fire fast. Another skilled veterinary practice leader in Ottawa believes that today’s workers are suffering from disjointed communities, distant relationships, and an overall sense of alienation. Yet another practice owner in Los Angeles thinks that we’re seeing pushback from staff after a long legacy of mistreatment and low pay.

 

What becomes clear after questioning so many experienced leaders is that there are two groups of pressures affecting employee performance: inside issues like toxic cultures, staff shortages, and demanding clients; and external issues like depression, stress, and financial insecurity that compromise workers before they punch in. Here is what is known:

 

EXTERNAL Factors Eroding Employee Performance

 

Here are some of the external factors depleting some of our employees’ work performances.

 

Depression

 

The number of Americans receiving treatment for depression has nearly doubled in the past 10 years. Depression rates are most high for women, people of color, and young adults. According to Gallup:

 

“Over one-third of women (36.7%) now report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime, compared with 20.4% of men, and their rate has risen at nearly twice the rate of men since 2017. Those aged 18 to 29 (34.3%) and 30 to 44 (34.9%) have significantly greater depression diagnosis rates in their lifetime than those older than 44.

Women (23.8%) and adults aged 18 to 29 (24.6%) also have the highest rates of current depression or treatment for depression. These two groups (up 6.2 and 11.6 percentage points, respectively), as well as adults aged 30 to 44, have the fastest-rising rates compared with 2017 estimates.”

 

Increased Sense of Isolation and Loneliness

 

Americans are not connected as they once were, not to their communities, families, nor friends. Young people are more likely to experience a sense of isolation than their older counterparts due to economic insecurity and the overuse of social media. On the topic of social media, there are numerous studies citing its ability to exacerbate anxiety, distort thinking, and expose people to cyberbullying. It can also instill a false sense of connectedness, a phenomenon known as McVulnerability. McVulnerability is the fast food version of emotional sustenance; in the short term it fills you up, but long term doesn’t provide any real nutrition. It lures viewers into a sense that they are socially connected, but leaves them bereft of the most important qualities of person-to-person connectivity: trust and safety. Loneliness has a negative impact on employee’s well being and their work performance.

 

Entitled?

 

Many older managers and leaders complain about young worker’s sense of entitlement, arguing, “In my day, you didn’t complain, you showed up to work and you did your job, but these young people… They have no incentive. They are living with their mommies and daddies who do everything for them.”

 

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t that tidy or fully supported by facts.There’s no evidence that today’s adults are more inclined to live with their parents than previous generations. More likely, young adults remain at home due to the increasing scarcity of affordable housing—a conclusion backed by reliable data.

 

Moreover, it’s not just young people that are demanding more from their employers. Though today’s young workers expect greater work-life balance, higher pay, and more career growth opportunities, these are trends that show up in all age groups. Young people don’t hold a monopoly on wanting to make the most money and rise to the top as fast as they can. Everybody is trying to do that! What employers may be witnessing isn’t a generational change, but a cultural one affecting all age groups and made more pronounced by our current labor shortages. This is to say that as organizations face understaffing, more work is forced upon existing employees resulting in decreased performance, higher error rates, and a drop in morale.

 

Challenges of Motherhood

 

Motherhood challenges workers on a multitude of levels. Child Illnesses, childcare availability and costs, a persistent tradition that women should pick up the lion’s share of child rearing responsibilities (especially when children are sick), and the guilt that women experience when they commit to a career and parenthood, but believe they are underperforming in both, is wearing.

 

A Seeming Lack of Resilience

 

Many older adults, annoyed with what appears to be the incapacity of young people to manage stress, jokingly call Gen Zs snowflakes, but in reality, young people are experiencing three challenges that would shake any young person’s ability to stand strong in the face of adversity.

 

Comparison, FOMO, and a Growing Sense of Inequity

 

Previous to the internet, individuals were only concerned with keeping up with the Jones’ living next door, but in the internet age, we have a world of Jones’ with whom to compare. Social media’s steady stream of posts can make one feel inadequate and below grade, especially in contrast to influencers who appear to have it all: youth, beauty, money, leisure time, love, and a puppy. This comparison leads to FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, a sense that while one is plodding along in a role like a client care rep, the rest of the world is racing ahead. It’s not an especially motivational context in which to live.

 

Debt

 

The high cost of student and housing debt, especially in inflationary times, adds to workers’  anxieties. Generations before could usually foresee some debt-free or financially independent future. Today’s workers, not so much; they toil inside the worry that they may never get ahead. Twenty-five percent of Americans with debt believe they will never be able to pay off all the money that they owe.

 

Raised to Be Cautious

 

If we have a society of snowflakes, they didn’t deep freeze themselves. Society, in large part, is responsible for putting them in the icebox. There have been several contributing trends.

• Increased Parental Supervision: Compared to previous generations, parents today tend to be more protective, limiting unsupervised play and emphasizing safety.
• Heightened Awareness of Dangers:  Greater media coverage of crimes, accidents, and other risks has led parents and educators to prioritize caution.
• Stranger Danger & Online Safety:  With concerns about both real-world and digital threats, children are taught to be wary of strangers and cautious online.
• School Safety Drills: Regular lockdown and active shooter drills reinforce a culture of preparedness but can also heighten caution.

Excessive caution limits risk, but also stymies creativity, discovery and growth. Managers find it harder to convince cautious employees that the risk of change outweighs its benefits.

Commuting Stress

Lower paid workers in urban areas, not able to pay high city rents, are increasingly pushed to outer boroughs. This can add as much as two hours of travel time to these employees’ days, increasing stress and further exasperating employees’ ability to stay on top of their daily tasks.

 

Emotionality, Prescription Medicine, Alcohol and Drugs

 

As depression and anxiety levels increase, so does the use of mood altering prescription medications, recreational drugs, and alcohol. These substances have the potential to exacerbate employees’ emotional lability.

 

• In the United States, antidepressant prescriptions use in young adults and teens has increased by nearly 64% from 2020 onward.
• From 2003 to 2018, the prevalence of prescriptions for anxiolytic drugs increased by almost a factor of two, with a marked increase from 2008 to 2018.
• More people are turning to cannabis as a stress-coping strategy. Since 1992, there has been a 15-fold increase in the use of marijuana. Long term marijuana use has been associated with emotional lability, cognitive and emotional processing, and a decrease in emotional intelligence.
• Binge drinking and drinking in general has increased in Americans aged 35-50. Long term drinking lowers worker productivity, increases call outs, and increases workplace accidents.

 

To be clear, this is not an argument against the value of mental help therapy or the use of psychotropic medications to treat mood disorders; however, prescription medications, if not taken responsibility or mixed with other medications can lead to secondary mental health issues, a growing risk as young adults increasingly add OTC supplements to a regiment of self care. What’s more, the growing use of alcohol in adults over 40, and cannabis in young people increases the risk of emotional instability.

 

A Loss of Trust

 

Recent studies indicate that employees are less likely to trust their employers than before. There are several reasons for this.

• Job Insecurity & Layoffs: Frequent restructuring and unexpected layoffs have made employees more cautious.
• Corporate takeovers: Employees that have given years of trust and loyalty to a practice owner can feel betrayed if they suddenly find that their place of employment has been sold to a stranger.
• Remote Work & Isolation: Less face-to-face interaction can reduce trust in leadership and coworkers.
• Lack of Transparency: Employees expect open communication. When companies fail to provide it, trust erodes.
• Workplace Surveillance: Increased monitoring of employee productivity can create distrust.
• Ethical Concerns:  Today’s employees are more socially conscious and may distrust organizations they believe don’t align with their beliefs.
•  

 

INTERNAL Forces Eroding Worker Productivity

 

There are six internal factors that regularly erode worker performance and morale.

 

Retaining Coworkers That Aren’t Serious About the Work

 

Workers have to be eager to pursue the hosital’s mission. When you hire individuals that are not intrinsically driven by the mission, you drag the entire company and team down. Their very presence within the ranks diminishes the pride that you can attain as a group and passively signals that some veterinary jobs (CSR, Veterinary assistant, etc.) aren’t valuable, for why else would you hire and retain such remedial individuals to do such work?

 

No Peer-to-peer Trust and Fraternity

 

When team members work with people they sense don’t like them, they call out more, stay wary of taking risks, hang back from challenges, and disengage. Trusting that your coworkers like you and enjoy working with you is essential to optimal team performance.

 

Growth Is Curtailed or Discouraged

 

Overwhelming, workers enjoy growing as individuals and professionals. There are several ways leaders stifle growth.

• They allow senior members of the team to hold onto power and to keep the more interesting responsibilities of the business for themselves.
• They micromanage.
• They paralyze team members with a fear of failure.
• They don’t provide the employees functioning tools or an integrated way for the whole group to work together for success.
• They force great workers to labor next to others that don’t care about the mission or the job.
• They don’t push or even encourage employees to operate to the fullest extent of their abilities because they worry it will cause them to quit. Consequently, they deprive workers of the thrill of success and reinforce their belief that they ‘can’t hack it’.

 

The Work Environment is Unfair

 

Fairness is universally important to humans.  While accommodation for individual employee needs should always be a consideration, an undue amount of concessions for some over others can create big divides in teams and lead to smoldering resentments. Several studies, including the Ultimatum Game, demonstrate the critical importance of fairness to group animals like humans.

No Recognition

 

Workers thrive on being recognized for their efforts whether it’s from their employers, coworkers or clients. Hospitals that continually harp on the negative without ever acknowledging merit, effort, or success foster worker disengagement and absenteeism.

 

How To Optimize the Productivity of Veterinary Workers

 

Employers should take a two-pronged approach when dealing with the morale and performance of today’s employees. Firstly, they should ensure that the internal work environment is optimal for productivity and employee satisfaction. Secondly, they should accept that today’s employees come to the office with never-before-seen stressors, distractions and financial issues that weigh on their resilience and focus.

 

Use Your Mission as a Hiring Tool

 

A career in veterinary medicine is rewarding on many levels. Understanding that will help you to write a better ad, ask better questions during the interview process, and more quickly identify who is right for the position, an essential part of cultivating an engaged, productive workforce. In the meantime, it will also help you clear away the obstacles getting in the way of your job’s most rewarding tasks: helping clients, building relationships, streamlining work processes, and so forth. Please take a moment and review additional information on optimized workflow in veterinary hospitals.

 

Include Values in the Hiring Process

 

Today’s workers want to do something meaningful in the world. During every part of the hiring process (ad, interview, facility tour, etc.) show the candidate your mission in action.

 

Punctuate the hiring process with respect and positivism. Send a regret letter to any candidate that doesn’t pass muster.  Remember that these individuals may turn out to be clients or will later be vocal about their interview experience, so there’s a payoff for being your best self even for those that you will never hire.

 

Many hospitals have taken the time to create mission statements, but haven’t figured out a way to leverage their full power. Learn tips on creating a veterinary hospital mission statement and using it day-to-day in your hospital.

 

Screen for Emotional Intelligence

 

Many veterinary leaders say they are looking for candidates that can multitask. More specifically, whether they know it or not, they are looking for candidates with high emotional intelligence or E.Q. Workers with a high E.Q usually have all the things we are looking for in an employee: self-awareness, the ability to dial up or down their emotions as the situation warrants, empathy, a strong sense of how to talk to people, curiosity, and optimism. Here is more on emotional intelligence and how to screen for it.

 

Select for Resiliency

 

Let’s first acknowledge that veterinary employers have had a very hard time hiring great employees or any employees for that matter. Here are some of the real challenges that leaders have had to face when hiring.

 

• Labor shortages of veterinarians and credentialed technicians
• Higher wage demands
• A young workforce used to job hopping
• A workforce with a shorter attention span
• A workforce with more ways of making money (blogging, gig work like Uber driving, freelancing, online trading, crypto investing, etc.) that makes holding traditional jobs less important and reduces the number of applicants.
• Higher consumption rates of alcohol and recreational drugs
• More depressed workers
• More financially challenged workers
• Workers who haven’t had experience in face-to-face customer service and traditional brick and mortar jobs.
• Less resilient workers

 

That said, there are still many workers that can engage with their jobs and stand up to the pressures of veterinary daily work. When hiring, explore a candidates resilience with a combination of pointed questions or online tests.

 

Consider that It’s Difference, Not Deficits

 

When we interact with job applicants, we see behaviors that we haven’t witnessed before and jump to the conclusion that they are demonstrative of a ‘snowflake’ or someone lacking a ‘work ethic’. That may not be the correct interpretation.

Today’s workers have grown up the midst of seismic changes. In just twenty-five years, schools have locked down, terrorist attacks have unfolded, a pandemic swept the planet, our economy has nearly twice collapsed, numerous waves of technology have blanketed our society, and on and on. What if what we’re seeing is, depending on your outlook, frantic or heroic adaptation? What if the behaviors we are witnessing aren’t a reflection of weakness or inferiority, but adroit survival in the face of rapid, unceasing, unprecedented change? Wouldn’t we become better leaders by viewing these individuals as survivors instead of victims? Doing so would require us to be imaginative managers rather than accusatory ones.

 

Understand that New Employees May Be Mistrustful

 

Younger workers have had a much more turbulent experience with work than their older counterparts and are less likely to trust their employers. During the hiring and onboarding process, be aware that employees may be holding back because they are cautious, not lazy or disengaged.

 

Identify ‘Deal Breakers’

 

No screening tool is perfect. As a group, identify the attributes of some of your workforce’s greatest employees, commit to the value of these talents, and then part ways with new hires that have significant deficiencies in these areas.

 

• Communication: People who care can almost always articulate what they care about. This does not mean that the individual has to be extroverted, but if they are interested in what we do: people, pets, medicine, and caring, they should be able to express themselves well on these topics.
• Collaboration: Though we sometimes have lone wolves on our teams, we mostly succeed with individuals that like completing jobs with their coworkers.
• Ability to adapt: Though pushback is common in individuals that care about their performance and their jobs, they shouldn’t be so stuck in their ways that they can’t evolve with the business.
• Aptitude for problem-solving: Engaged workers enjoy making their work better by solving problems, but before you hand out any demerits, ensure that employees believe they have the authority to solve problems.
• High emotional intelligence: Our gold standard for an employee is one that can multitask. This almost always means that they have a high E.Q. Use the resource tools provided to screen applicants for high E.Q.
• Consistency and Positivity of Performance: The most beloved team members are consistently upbeat. Usually these are the ones that have stable social groups outside of work that can sustain the employee’s buoyant view on life and employment.
• Responsiveness to feedback: Nearly all of us pushback against criticism, but good employees usually can internalize constructive feedback from people who care.

 

Provide Life Skill Education

 

Employees need a foundation of financial security, health, safety, love, and family outside of the business if they are going to consistently perform well for us inside the business. But as previously stated, many employees are struggling in these areas.  Offer them help in the form of education so they can learn to navigate these challenges better.

 

• Personal finances and investing
• Physical health and wellness for the time crunched
• Best ways to leverage your time if you are a parent
• Good mental health practices
• The dangers of excessive online media exposure
• Facts about drug and alcohol misuse and addiction.

 

Be a Steward of Healthy Work Relationships

There are many factors contributing to first day job jitters, not the least of which is group dynamics. As a manager of a new hire, you only have to concern yourself with one person, but the new employee is navigating a dozen or more new relationships, cliques, and customs inside her new job. Watch this behavior. It will likely be the determining factor in their retention.

Similarly watch how more tenured employees interact. Complaints about toxic cultures are rife in our business. They have the power to destroy teams and even businesses! As a manager, take a strong stand against abusive or disrespectful behavior.

 

Push Employees to Succeed

Veterinary work is inherently rewarding. It offers opportunities to complete meaningful, even enviable work, in the company of individuals you like, to receive genuine praise, to learn complex skills, and to grow as an individual and a professional. To this end, support and push team members to reach beyond their comfort zones. Discovering one’s strengths and gaining the skills to be resilient is an enormous stress reliever. By stretching team members in their work, you teach them how to succeed in their lives.

 

It’s a hard sell to be sure, especially in a job market where good employees are in short supply, but don’t allow this current work-is-bad-life-is-good trend to shake what you have learned to be true: if feels great to successfully complete hard tasks using your brains and your brawn. You’ve seen it play out in your own life, the lives of your children, and even the lives of your dogs and horses. Be a supportive, caring, but insistent employer. With time you will be rewarded with a strong and grateful team.

 

Stand Up for Fairness

 

Humans are hardwired for fairness. It’s important in families, relationships and paramount at work. By standing up for fairness at your job you keep employees focused on work instead of individual partisan concerns and give diverse groups of people a unifying thread of common goals and principles by which to interact and get along.

 

Conclusion

 

We are living in rapidly changing times. A confluence of economic, technologic, and geopolitical trends are catapulting us  headlong into an unknown future. It is unsettling to our workers and ourselves. but we’re mostly being overwhelmed by our imaginations. All of this change doesn’t necessarily portend doom.

 

Avoid the mistake of tidily blaming worker productivity on ‘people not wanting to work anymore’ or ‘young people just not having the same work ethic’. Decreased morale and productivity is a complex issue requiring us to be specific about its causes before we can produce workable solutions. Feel-good jargon like diversity and work life balance, horoscope leadership, and stereotype-based communication solutions like DISC or age profiling will never completely solve your productivity and morale issues because they’re pop science cures for an all-to-real cultural upheaval systemic in our society.

 

After 25 years of working in vet med, I’m am convinced that employees, regardless of gender, age, educational background, or country of origin, enjoy the intrinsically motivating aspects of our of work: personally growing, feeling like you’re part of something great, receiving praise from genuinely appreciative peers and clients, and doing something meaningful in the company of people you like and who like you back. Solving the productivity issues afoot in any of our hospitals will not be solved by exasperation, frustration or the absurd conclusion that today’s workforce isn’t capable. Individuals are off balance, destabilized, but not defeated. Why? Because they have proven that they have the stuff to survive. Recognize and build on that strength. Review the external and internal forces challenging your employees, and then use the ideas presented in this paper to proceed with targeted solutions.