Employee Engagement in Veterinary Medicine: Why It Matters and How to Improve It
Employee engagement isn’t just a corporate buzzword—it’s the foundation of a thriving veterinary practice. Engaged employees don’t just show up; they care. They bring energy, enthusiasm, and a sense of ownership to their work. They solve problems instead of complaining about them, support their colleagues rather than undermine them, and, critically, stay in their jobs rather than burn out and move on.
Yet, for all its importance, engagement remains one of the most misunderstood elements of workplace culture. Leaders often assume that because someone is showing up for work, they must be engaged. But that’s not how it works. Someone who is disengaged can still collect a paycheck, see their patients, and get through the day. What they won’t do is go the extra mile, advocate for better processes, or invest in the long-term success of the practice.
That distinction—between engaged and merely present—is what separates great teams from ones that limp along, constantly battling turnover, resentment, and indifference.
Understanding the Difference Between Employee Engagement and Employee Experience
Let’s get our definitions straight. Employee engagement and employee experience are related but not the same thing. Engagement is how much enthusiasm and commitment an employee feels toward their work. Experience is everything that happens to them in the workplace—the culture, the management style, the tools they have to work with, the clients they deal with, and the recognition (or lack thereof) they receive. The full workplace enchilada.
As leaders, we don’t control engagement directly. What we do control is the experience. And if we build the right experience, engagement follows. People don’t just wake up one morning and decide to be engaged. They respond to their environment. A practice that values its people, listens to them, and gives them the necessary resources will naturally have engaged employees. A practice that ignores, overworks, or undervalues its team? Not so much.
Why Engagement Matters in Veterinary Medicine
There’s no shortage of data on why engagement is good for business, but let’s cut straight to the veterinary angle. High engagement means better patient outcomes, lower staff turnover, and happier clients. Engaged teams take pride in their work. They are more likely to go out of their way to help a struggling teammate, more likely to advocate for patient care, and much more likely to stay with their practice rather than hopping to the next job in search of something better.
The numbers back this up. High engagement is linked to fewer sick days, lower workplace accidents, and higher profitability. One study found a 23% increase in profitability when engagement was high. Veterinary medicine isn’t, despite what the masses seem to believe, exactly a high-profit industry, so gains like that can make an enormous difference to a practice’s survival and success.
It’s also worth noting that veterinary medicine should, by default, have an advantage when it comes to engagement. Most people enter this field because they love animals and want to help them. This intrinsic motivation is powerful, but it’s not unshakable. It can be crushed under poor leadership, a lack of appreciation, or a toxic work environment.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in too many practices. Corporate structures, financial pressures, and poor management have taken what should be an engaging career and turned it into an profession with a burnout crisis. The advantage we have—working in a field people genuinely care about—is being squandered.
Measuring Engagement
If engagement is so important, why aren’t more practices measuring it? The short answer: because most leaders assume they already know the answer. They think they can gauge engagement just by looking around. They mistake busy-ness for commitment, assume that silence means satisfaction, and are often caught completely off guard when someone resigns.
The reality is that engagement needs to be tracked with real data. There are several ways to do this, but one of the simplest is the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). This works exactly like the client Net Promoter Score many practices already use. Employees are asked, on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely they are to recommend their practice as a workplace to a friend or colleague.
Scores of 9 or 10 are your engaged employees. Scores of 7 or 8 are neutral—people who are neither happy nor miserable. Scores of 0 to 6 are your detractors, the ones who are unhappy and disengaged.
The final score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. The result can range from -100 (absolutely nobody would recommend working there) to +100 (every employee is a promoter). In medine, the average scoare is just 18. In veterinary medicine, the truth is we don’t know. But generally anything north of 30 would be a really good effort. Score consitently north of fifty and my guess is you’re not reading this article. Instead you should be writing a book about your culture and how we can all do better!
There are other ways to measure engagement —absenteeism rates, staff turnover, tenure length, and surveys using Gallup’s 12 engagement questions. The key is consistency. One survey won’t tell you much. As it is with animal medicine, one test used to make a diagnoisis can be misleading. So using 2-3 measures consitently over time yield better quality data with which to make decisions. Regular check-ins over time will reveal whether you’re improving or heading for a crisis.
How to Improve Engagement
The best tool for improving engagement is the simplest one: listening. Conduct a survey, collect the data, and then act on it. There is nothing more demoralizing than being asked for feedback only to have it ignored. If you go to the trouble of measuring engagement, you must follow through with change.
What does that change look like? Start with the basics.
Review your processes. Most workplace frustrations can be traced back to broken systems. If your team is constantly running around putting out fires, it’s because something upstream isn’t working. Fix the systems, and the stress levels drop.
Hire better. Not just for skill but for cultural fit. Someone who doesn’t share the values of the team will drag everyone else down, no matter how talented they are. On the flip side, removing toxic team members—even ones who seem indispensable—can transform a practice almost overnight.
Fix the things that drive people mad. The broken equipment, the frustrating workflows, the tiny but constant irritations that sap morale. No one wants to work in a place where every day is a battle against avoidable nonsense.
Clarify expectations. People want to know what’s expected of them. If they don’t, they’ll default to whatever is easiest—which might not be what you want. Training is crucial. So is accountability. A team that knows exactly what’s required and is given the tools to succeed will always outperform one that’s left to figure things out on its own.
And finally, be transparent. If you can fix something, do so. If you can’t, explain why. Trust is built in those moments. Leaders who communicate openly—even when the news isn’t great—earn respect.
The Bottom Line
Team engagement isn’t a mystery. It results from good leadership, clear communication, and a culture that values people. It’s also not static. It requires constant attention, regular measurement, and the willingness to make changes when things aren’t working.
For too long, veterinary medicine has relied on passion to keep people engaged. That’s no longer enough. If we want to retain great people, avoid burnout, and build teams that thrive, we need to be intentional about engagement.
That starts with listening. It continues with action. And it ends with a practice that people don’t just work for—but one they believe in.
Want to know how happy your team really is? Get your complementary eNPS score and be part of the first real effort to measure and improve veterinary workplace culture by signing up for my Veterinary Employment Engagement Benchmark Study (VEEBS) now.