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Reviewing your organisational culture
Culture impacts on veterinary practice in almost all areas.
What makes your practice stand out from the crowd?

Your organisational culture is what makes you stand out from the crowd. It helps to promote your business and makes you a place where people want to work and to stay.

Speaking at the SPVS/VMG Congress in January, business support manager Fiona Nichol described culture as the day to day interactions and values within a group. She explained how culture encompasses behaviour, tradition, practice history, values and rituals.

Culture impacts on veterinary practice in almost all areas, affecting training and development, teamwork, fairness, relationship skills and the way employees are recognised and rewarded. A good culture in a practice will help to retain employees, increase productivity and definitely improves staff/client engagement.

Cultures of course vary. In the case of the Apple brand, Steve Jobs maintained a culture of secrecy because he did not want information about his new products to be leaked. His employees adhere to this culture and his business is highly successful. Compare this with the recent Uber failure, where there were no defined rules of engagement and no set culture for the organisation.

Fiona talked about two culture models - those of Charles Handy, an Irish author and philosopher specialising in organisational behaviour management, and Ed Schein, an influential writer on organisational culture.

Handy looked at four different kinds of culture that can exist within organisations: power culture, where few have the power to make decisions; task culture, where individuals have specialist skills and responsibilities based on their tasks; role culture, which is based on roles and responsibilities, and person culture, where individuals see themselves as greater than the organisation and play by their own rules.

The Schein model describes three levels of culture: artefacts (for example, a visual culture where uniform and brands play an important part), espoused values - where the business plan and the goals are paramount, and thirdly assumptions and benefits - which concentrates on behaviours attitudes and unconscious beliefs.

Fiona quoted Peter Drucker, who is known as the 'father of management thinking'. She said that 'organisational culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner' to illustrate that no matter what your strategy may be, the culture of your organisation will override it.

She described cultural types such as 'flexible overstable' (ie. adaptive and dynamic versus orderly and controlled), and 'internal over external' (ie. inward and inclusive versus external and outgoing).

Fiona stressed the importance of reviewing your practice culture. This can be achieved by using internal focus groups and by creating a vision for the future with short-term wins. Her recipe for creating and maintaining a good practice culture was to define it, teach it, live it, measure it and reward it.

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Vets to run marathon for World Animal Protection

News Story 1
 Two recently graduated veterinary surgeons will be running the London Marathon in April to raise money for the charity World Animal Protection.

Alex Bartlett and Maeve O'Neill plan to run the race together if they are given the same start times.

Dr O'Neill said: "You're always limited in what you can do to help animals, so it is nice to raise money for a charity that helps animals around the world."

Dr Bartlett added: "I have never run a marathon before and am excited to run my first one for such a good cause!"

Both Dr Bartlett and Dr O'Neill have fundraising pages online. 

Click here for more...
News Shorts
BSAVA releases new Guide to Procedures

The British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) has published a new edition of its Guide to Procedures for Small Animal Practice.

It has added four new procedures; cystostomy tube placement, endotracheal intubation, point-of-care ultrasound and wet-to-dry dressings.

BSAVA says that it is an essential step-by-step guide to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed in practice. The textbook includes new images and illustrations, as well as high-definition videos for use prior to procedures.

Nick Bexfield and Julia Riggs, editors of the new edition, said: "We have built upon the success of the previous editions by responding to the feedback received from the BSAVA readership, and hope this new guide helps to further increase the confidence and accuracy with which these procedures are performed."

Print copies are available in the BSAVA store, with a digital version in the BSAVA library.