Pets and their People Celebrate Their EOC Accreditation
27 Jan 2023
The AVA’s Employer of Choice (EOC) Accreditation program is an intensive, rigorous auditing process that recognises employers with exceptional standards of staff recruitment, engagement and retention. On 8 November 2022, Pets and their People (PATP) achieved their goal of becoming EOC Accredited. All three PATP practices, Wayville Animal Hospital, Fulham Gardens Animal Hospital (above) and Unley Veterinary Surgery, achieved EOC Accreditation.
PATP are a group of Small Animal practices located in South Australia. They have been proactively focused on making their practices the best they can be for over a decade. In fact, two of their practices (Wayville Animal Hospital and Fulham Gardens Animal Hospital) are already considered ‘Hospitals of Excellence’ under the Australian Small Animal Veterinarians (ASAV)’s Accredited Veterinary Hospital Scheme, with future plans for their third practice, Unley Veterinary Surgery, to join the list. They saw the AVA’s Employer of Choice Accreditation Program as a logical next step to achieve this aim. “Having a healthy workplace,” Practice Administrator Julia Slade and owner Dr Alan Dalgarno say, gives them “more mental energy to focus on [their] clients.” Part of their strategy is to focus heavily on their team’s personal development and leadership skills. Management “try to minimise the barriers, reduce the challenges and upskill the team” to help them have veterinary careers “as meaningful and fulfilling as possible.” Creating a positive working environment is a priority, with staff given “freedom to ask questions, learn, seek guidance, feel safe and enjoy coming to work.” They also have an Employee Assistance Program giving staff regular and anonymous access to nominated psychologists – regardless of the reason.
While they already had a strong foundation and great employee workplace satisfaction before embarking on the EOC Accreditation journey, building a positive and supportive workplace is an area of continuous focus for PATP. “We felt that it was important to have an independent authority review what we were doing to ensure we were doing … as well as we could,” say Julia Slade and Dr Dalgarno. Additionally, they view the AVA EOC process as a way to uplift workplace standards industry-wide, which is “important in making the whole veterinary profession more sustainable by improving the quality and length of careers.”
They viewed the EOC process as a means to “developing and enhancing [their] current systems, procedures and policies.” They now have a calendar of scheduled monthly tasks designed to “review and improve various areas.” The EOC program also shone a light on Workplace Health & Safety – while this has not previously been a problem for PATP, they still welcomed the opportunity to become even more proactive around WH&S issues, particularly in the area of mental health.
Already, there have been tangible benefits of achieving EOC Accreditation, with staff feeling a “huge sense of pride and satisfaction” to be part of an Employer of Choice team. Additionally, “it has already made a difference in [their] success of recruiting new staff.”
For practices considering embarking on the EOC Accreditation journey, they have this to say: “Get started. Do the EOC training course. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. By starting the process of developing better employment systems, you can build a better [workplace] for your staff.” The Accreditation process is an opportunity to identify areas to “improve, grow and learn from… or to confirm you are on the right track.”
For PATP, despite having achieved the huge milestone of being EOC-Accredited, they are still embracing the growth mindset that underpins their entire philosophy. “We are not ‘done’,” say Julia Slade and Dr Dalgarno. “Our goal is to be ‘even better’.”
