Veterinary team struggles and signs you shouldn’t ignore

Caring about your team members should be on your daily to-do list. There will always be team members’ struggles and signs you shouldn’t ignore. What are they and how can you help?

As a team leader, you have to get to know every single one of your employees and notice when something is different and they are not as productive and as committed as you knew them when you first hired them. The employer should be the one to ensure team members with a healthy work environment.

For us, veterinary practitioners, it is almost impossible to separate our personal and our work lives. As a result, for some of us, personal problems (and not only) can have a very big impact on productivity and mental health.

Employers must be sensitive to the issues impacting performance and offer support taking away the stigma of asking for help and making it effortless to access it.

In some of the Western-European countries, there are special programs that employees can access. When entering such a program, they can find the right path toward solving or dealing with their problems.

But even in countries that don’t have such programs in place, offering a counseling option to your employees can be beneficial for them and for your business.

As a result, this demonstrates to staff you are a compassionate employer. Also, it proves you are interested in providing workers with the resources and anonymity to seek help in a safe and secure environment.

Team members’ struggles and signs you shouldn’t ignore:

The veterinary industry— can be characterized by ❌ burnout, ❌ frustration, and ❌ stress. Unfortunately, employer-provided counseling options are not as widely available as they should be. Also, anecdotal reports indicate only a small percentage of employees use these services.

So where do we go from here?

1. Build awareness

Let your team know you can offer them this kind of support. And don’t forget to mention that it will all be confidential.

Destigmatize mental health issues. Do that by emphasizing that in the course of a lifetime, most people undergo physical, emotional, and psychosocial changes that can affect their well-being.

It is not a sign of weakness to seek help during these times of transition.

2. Educate yourself

Team member struggles and signs you shouldn’t ignore:

• Chronic tardiness or absenteeism, a pattern of Monday or Friday absences

• Increased irritability, including confrontations with coworkers, clients, and managers, or uncontrollable emotions

• Reduced productivity or deteriorating performance

• Poor personal hygiene or grooming

• Fatigue or lack of interest

• Inability to focus

• Failure to complete routine tasks

• Withdrawal

After educating yourself and your staff, you can provide pertinent information to the employee and offer constructive solutions before a crisis occurs.

These are just a few of the behaviors that may strike a manager as odd. It often happens for managers and colleagues to notice something amiss with the employee. And that, even before he or she is aware, they are acting differently.