Communicating With Your Team

In 2008 I began working with a two site small animal practice. They had never had a Practice manager before and I don’t think they really knew what they wanted.

The realisation that fundamental changes needed to be made became evident within the first day; the business had problems at every level, but the one that really concerned me was that there was no real communication structure. One or two people seemed to have ideas about what should be happening and what was happening, but these were not always the same individuals or the same ideas. Consequently this disjointed approach had led to a staff turnover of 30 employees in four years with the remaining fifteen employees having low morale, low self esteem and no real feeling of being part of the business.

In order to change things a radical approach of complete transparency needed to be adopted. Every plan, every thought and every idea was going to have to be talked about openly even though it would lead to information overload, and take everyone out of their comfort zones.

This started by bringing the employees up to speed with what state the business was in. This meant telling them how much money the business had lost in the previous year, what the plan was to change this and what the new projected turnover would be for the next year.

The next step was to openly talk about new ideas no matter how radical, and gauge the staff’s reaction to them. This would help to move some ideas forward in a smoother less resistant way by giving the staff a chance to get used to them, and to identify those ideas that either needed more work or needed to be dropped.

All the staff we’re given a one to one so that that they had a chance to say what they thought of the business, each other and the role they were undertaking. This was especially important for the small branch as they were incredibly sceptical about having a practice manager.

A structured appraisal system was put into place and people were made accountable not only for their actions and performance but also for how that would translate into their pay increase at the end of the year. The percentage pay increases were clearly outlined, including a nil pay rise for poor performance.

We outlined what we wanted from the employees as a business and then followed this up with a CPD budget of £500 for each nurse even though all but one of them was unqualified. Then we outlined the fact that the practice would be going for tier 2 status under the Practice Standards Scheme followed by Training Practice status and that we would then start putting them through the Veterinary Nurse training within 12 months.

In order to ensure that we did not merely pay to train staff that then left, we rewrote the employment contracts including 3 year lock in clauses for those who undertook the VN training. We openly said that we wanted to receive the benefit of their training that we had paid for, rather than be a qualified nurse production line. Finally to ensure that everyone saw the benefit of the new contracts and becoming a qualified nurse we laid out the pay scale of £16,000 to £18,000 for a qualified nurse at the industry standard for our region.

All of this took less than seven months to instigate and as it stands at this moment we are awaiting the PSS inspection and we are ready to submit the paperwork to be a training practice. We have received back from the staff newly signed contracts with only a few questions asked and no refusals or complaints. Five of our nurses are currently undertaking the Animal Nursing Assistants course, with a further two nurses ready to enter VN training in September and we’ve just hired two qualified nurses, one to be our trainer assessor and the other to help run our clinics and support our existing staff.

At this point you’re probably wondering why I told you all of this and what relevance the communication structures had to nurses doing VN training. Well quite a lot really as without the open structured communication I would not have been able to change things as radically as I have.

There are two basic rules you need to follow, the first is never take a short cut. No really, never. This rule applies to everything you do no matter how small or inconsequential. The second rule is to always ask “how you would feel if they treated you like this”.

In order to bring change you have to remember that people as a whole hate change. It has nothing do with a person’s age, sex or demeanour; it is simply the fact that people as a whole like to know where they are from one day to the next. Those people, your staff, have lives that do not revolve around your business and if you fail to recognise that then you will lose valuable employees.

Having said that, you have a business to run and that means you need to strike the right balance. As with most things we all know that ideas don’t just spontaneously happen, they are thought about, discussed endlessly and then implemented. What you need to remember is that the bigger the idea or change the more shock and upset it is going to cause when it is implemented.

If you take a policy of open discussion about the business and all its aspects you will find a number of things can and do happen. Firstly, people relate where they are within a business by the amount of communication they are receiving. The more information they have the more involved they will feel within the business. Secondly, once your employees know where they stand their morale will increase and that will lead to an increase in confidence. This means that when a large fundamental change is talked about, the staff will be less inclined to worry because they can fit this newly communicated knowledge into what they have already been told about the business. What you will have in effect are members of staff that can see a road map of where the business is going based on what they have been told and what they know may change or happen in the future. They themselves will then adapt their own thinking and may start to bring modified or new ideas to you based around what they now perceive to be the future plans. This kind of open approach to communication gives all within the business an opportunity to get involved and can lead to real change both structurally and financially.

One more thing to point out in relation to communication and how it can greatly improve the involvement of staff within the business is the fact that when I talk about your business, I am not talking to the practice owner or partner; I am talking to you the practice manager. Yes it may well be someone else's business, and yes they may have a fair idea of what they want from the business but it is you that has to implement it and it is you that has to decide how that is done. Communication is two way and it also goes up the chain of command as well as down. If you want to achieve something within the business you may well find that the biggest hurdle you will need to jump is at the practice partner’s level. They are just like everyone else when it comes to change and additionally they also tend to see their business as some sort of precious baby that should be coddled at all costs. When you know there is a difficult change that needs to be made have a general, casual discussion about it, and then leave it for a while. Then go back to them and flesh it out a little with words like “I thought about what you said” and “your additional ideas on that subject got me thinking about”. You know the drill, let them think that they are the ones who are driving the idea, show them that they are involved even if in reality all you need is for them to give the go ahead. It will be difficult at first and I would start with small things that you are not afraid to have rejected. They will spot what you are trying to do, but do it anyway for the simple reason that they didn’t hire you for your coffee making skills. As you start to show them that through structured communication you are taking what they want and what the business needs and blending them together in a positive way the partners will start to relax and let you run the business for them. By doing this you yourself will start to create your own road map in your head just like the other employees. Knowing where you stand will help you to steer the business in the right direction and give structure to everything that everyone does. The partners can concentrate on being vets, the staff can concentrate on being vets, nurses or receptionists and you can concentrate on being the practice manager.

Communication is a powerful thing and just to prove how powerful it is let me leave you with a few words to think about and occasionally remember.

No one ever tells you this, but you are doing a great job, well done.

Just because no one says anything, doesn’t mean they don’t think it. Remember, every improvement in the business no matter how small has had some input from you at some point.