Correcting a toxic culture at a veterinary practice is hard work. It isn’t easy to change hearts and minds, especially when trust has been broken. Policies and behaviors that consistently prioritize the practice’s needs over the well-being of its employees can lead to a demoralized and burned-out team. If the practice owners are always looking to squeeze the most productivity from their employees but offer minimal benefits and wages, turnover is likely to be high and morale low. Bosses who do not support their team or have their employees’ backs create a disengaged, negative workforce. Add in poor communication, lack of psychological safety, ineffective leadership, conflict avoidance, and favoritism, and you have all the ingredients for a toxic culture.
How to Correct a Toxic Practice Culture
So, how do you turn this culture around? In toxic workplaces, employees generally fear speaking up, so start here. People must feel comfortable giving their opinion, taking risks, challenging each other, and asking for help. Psychological safety requires clear expectations, reasonable demands, and team support. Six key areas of work, when not properly addressed, can make workers feel psychologically unsafe, stressed, anxious, anddissatisfied. They include:
- Demands: This includes workload, work patterns, and the working environment.
- Control: How much say the employee has in how they work.
- Support: The encouragement, recognition, training, and resources provided by the practice leadership and colleagues.
- Relationships: This includes promoting connection and dealing promptly with unacceptable behaviors at work.
- Role: Employees should understand their roles clearly. The practice should ensure there aren’t conflicting or unnecessary roles, that veterinarians aren’t expected to perform roles better suited for a staff member, and that technicians are allowed to perform work they are trained to do.
- Change: How practice leadership manages and communicates change (large or small, external or internal).
Leadership’s Responsibility
Toxic company culture often filters from the top down, and leaders are the only ones who can prevent and correct it. Leaders must model safe interpersonal risk-taking so employees feel like they can too. Seeking input from others, asking questions, and being comfortable saying “I don’t know” will help. Admitting mistakes and failures allows leaders to steer away from the expectation of perfectionism. Leaders that model good boundaries and balance between their life priorities and work allow their team to trust they won’t be judged negatively for doing the same.
The Role of Team Building
Team members are also susceptible to competitiveness, office politics, misunderstanding, and passive-aggressiveness with their peers. Knowing each other as whole people can widen understanding and increase acceptance. This makes it less likely that words or actions will be misinterpreted or cause feelings of resentment. Leaders can promote honesty and openness by example, which will build trust. In addition, creating opportunities for team-building activities can help coworkers get to know each other more fully.
Final Thoughts
Correcting a toxic culture takes time, self-reflection, and growth by practice leaders, but it is worth the effort!
Related Reading
- Equine Veterinary Sustainability: The 7 Pillars of a Healthy Practice Culture
- Equine Veterinary Sustainability: How to Attract Interns to Your Program
- Equine Veterinary Sustainability: How Leaders Create Psychological Safety
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