So, hello there, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good day, good, whatever it is, where you are and whenever you're listening to this. Thank you for tuning into the webinar vet, and thank you for clicking on this one. This is common sense conflict resolution.

Now I'll start off by saying I am not a vet, I am not a vet nurse. I'm not in the clinical side of the industry, but what I am is a barrister. And I've been managing sort of people and projects and so on and so forth for a while now.

The hope is that this can impact on how you think about people problems in your practises. And I use that wording at the start because that's what lots of people see HR or conflict resolution or creating these empathetic environments, as they see it as a HR issue, a people problem, that we've got policies for and we just follow the policy and then if it goes wrong, well, we follow the policies so it's fine. Well, it's not fine.

And this is hopefully gonna change the way that er some of some of you in the industry think and it's gonna change the way that the industry works and hopefully go some way, even if it was only a small way, towards supporting your staff and supporting your retention. The industry is on its knees at the moment and the reason for that in lots of cases is burnout. The reason for that in lots of cases.

These conflicts in the workplace is essentially people saying, well, you know what, I could earn better money doing something else, so I'm gonna go and do it, less hours, more money, and leaving the profession that they love. So why am I giving this session then? Well, the reason I'm giving this session and not a vet or a vet nurse is because oftentimes it takes an outsider to be able to see where the problems lie.

Now I've worked with a lot of vets and the vet nurses, in my professional career. I am an associate of the BVA. I'm an associate of the BVNA, but most importantly, I think, I have that outsider's perspective.

I'm not a veterinary professional, I'm not a veterinary clinician. I'm a lawyer, I'm a management educator, I teach for business students, I teach for law students, and I'm also a member of the Institute of Leadership and Management, and part of that is about me maintaining my ongoing skills to enable me to support the people that I work with, but also to deliver sessions like this to hopefully give you guys, the slant that perhaps you've not had before. There are 5 objectives of this session, principally.

And those objectives are short term, so in the next 50 minutes or so, they will, they'll be longer than that because we'll pause the recording at certain points for you guys to do some thinking and some jotting down of, of notes and so on. But over the next 50 minutes of me talking and, and however long of you thinking and jotting. We want you to be able to start off as, as understanding why the starting point for dealing with people problems is the reactionary responses, it's the HR policies, it's the discipline, it's the meetings, it's the hearings, you know, it's all those formal words, action plans, those words that nobody ever really likes to hear, but everybody still uses.

We want you to be able to consider alternatives to those reactions. I'm gonna talk about proactive HR I'm gonna talk about empathetic environments. We're gonna give you some practical skills in order to educate you on the business and management benefits, certified business and management educator, you're seeing why that was on the slide now.

The business and management. Benefits of creating environments where your staff are happy and where they're productive and where they're supported, whereas reactionary HR reactionary policies don't help you, so why use them? So we'll look at those alternatives.

We'll look at, look at the value of workplace buddy schemes. Now these are often overlooked, they're things that people don't really understand, they'll say, oh, this is, this is John, he's gonna be your buddy. Well, actually, what does that mean?

What does that mean for John's buddy, but what does that mean for John as well? OK. Look at the benefits of a person centred approach to conflict management, to personnel management and to management, generally.

Weirdly, people don't seem to realise that they hire people. Yeah, people forget that other people are people, and that's something that we need to stop doing. And then the last learning objective is really more of a feeling.

I want by the end of this 50 minutes of me talking and however longer if you jotted and thinking, to feel empowered to go away into your practises, be they big chains or small independent practises, and we'll talk about both today, to create those empathetic environments. And it's those empathetic environments really. That will start to get the industry back to the caring industry that it that it once was, and that to a certain extent I think under the surface it still is, but we've, we seem to have lost our way in terms of the way that people are being managed out or people are becoming.

For want of a better words, stressed, broken, burnt out. And no longer members of the industry. So as part of this session, I'm gonna assume that you've got a certain level of knowledge already.

I'm gonna assume that you know what your charter is, if, if you're a vet or a vet nurse, and you know what the relevant discipline rules are. Because, as you, you all should know, professional discipline supersedes anything. It supersedes HR it supersedes, company policy.

They are CVS are above all of that. OK, the only thing above them in, in your industry is the criminal law. So it's certainly worth, worth bearing in mind that, you need a good understanding of that first, and all of this should be taken in context with that.

I'm gonna assume that you've got an understanding of the various professional codes. OK, so the things that you have to and the things that you should do in terms of managing your own practise. I'm gonna assume that you've watched another webinar vet webinar called Professional Discipline Fundamental Consideration in Modern practise, because these two do go hand in hand.

They go hand in hand, not only because you need to be aware of the professional discipline implications of whatever policies you have, but they go hand in hand because when empathetic environments aren't created, the possibility for professional disciplinary breaches, professional disciplinary cases increase tenfold, and the reason for that is because people are stressed and when people are stressed, they make mistakes, and when people make mistakes. We end up in complaint and disciplined territory, and that's what we want to avoid. So I'd honestly recommend that you go and watch that and and treat these as two interlinked related but different webinars.

Have a look as well at the understanding of how mental health and physical health does and could impact on wellness in the practise. And again, to a lesser extent, efficiency. I'm aware that there'll be business managers and practise managers watching this, as well as JVPs and so on and so forth.

What I want you to focus on in terms of That last bullet point is the fact that mental and physical health affects the wellness of your practise, which then affects efficiency. So if you've got an understanding of how that happens, then you can go on. If you've not, that's fine, pause the recording at this stage, go and get that knowledge and then come back to it.

And you'll benefit much more if you do it that way. The way I conduct these seminars are probably a bit different from the traditional clinical seminars that you'll be used to, and my methods include two principal ways, thought provocation, so there'll be a lot of questions. There might be some answers, but a lot of the things are going to be there for you to think about and for you to go away and really chew on, and get your teeth into.

And then there's another technique called springboard empowerment, so I'm gonna give you the starting blocks of lots of different races, and then you're gonna go and run those races back in your practises. And to that end, I do give my contact details at the end if you've got any questions or, or you want some further support after watching this, this, this webinar. So, thought provocation, you're gonna be thinking and springboard empowerment, you're gonna start at the starting blocks and you're gonna run the race back in your practises by implementing some of the things that we talk about today.

So we start on that first learning objective and we start with these reactionary responses. So this is the traditional. Thing that everybody thinks about when they think about HR involved, let HR deal with it, OK.

Reactive human resource management is the traditional approach to human resource management. It's where you have a problem with a member of staff or a group of staff and you take action to satisfy the business needs that those staff either leave or fix the problem. OK?

It costs more, OK, these things are often protracted, they often get messy, OK? It costs more and it takes longer. Yet it's often seen as this quick and dirty approach that's not really thought through, and both of those things, although they seem in the antithesis of one another, are still true, that it costs more and it's protracted because it takes so long.

We all know HR processes take far longer than they need to. But also because it's following a generic policy in order to try and be quick and in order to try and be more efficient. The dirty element comes through because they make mistakes, they send the wrong letter, they give the wrong information, they give the employee expectations that they then then don't meet.

So actually, not only is it protracted and and costly, the essence of, let's be quick and just get it done leads to mistakes because they're trying to limit the cost and the protracted nature of the proceedings. So reactive HR is bad. OK, that's the overarching, you know, I'm not a theorist.

I'm giving it to you as it is, reactive HR is bad management because it reacts to the problems, OK? You know, you wouldn't give a a dog a medication. You know, when you see the problem and, and you see it happening, if you can fix it earlier, OK, reactive HR is what chooses to see the problem, do nothing about it, and then when it becomes a problem that we actually do need to fix, then we fix it.

That's what reactive HR is, OK? It uses these words that everybody hates hearing, yeah, action plans, warnings, final warnings, written warnings, verbal warnings, dismissals, hearings, yeah. You'll see the whole tone of reactive HR is negative.

Yeah, it's a negative tone. I've been put on an action plan at work, that doesn't sound great. Yeah.

We tried renaming them support plans, but then support plan had the same problem. Yeah, oh, I've got a warning or X, Y, and Z, it doesn't work, it's not healthy, it doesn't create a sense of support, it doesn't create an empathetic environment, and it doesn't actually help the business because the business ends up dealing with conflict rather than fostering empathy and fostering a positive working environment. So reactionary responses to stress, reactionary responses to HR is exactly the same thing.

You're stressed, you get a knee jerk reaction. You have a HR problem, you have a knee jerk reaction, you have somebody here for a hearing, you have an action plan, you have a warning, etc. Now I'm not saying there's not a place for disciplinary.

Procedures, I'm a professional disciplined specialist, of course there is, you know, but they, they have their place and their place is when things are beyond the help of empathy and beyond the help of support, because actually, if you jump straight to those, the first thing that your disciplinary professional is going to say to you, or the first thing that the employment tribunal are going to say to you is, right, well, what actions did you take prior to jumping in with the nuclear option? And if your answer is, well, we didn't, then there's a problem, OK? There is an expectation that informal processes are gonna be used first and that is what we're gonna talk a little bit about today, but we're not just gonna talk about an informal chat, which is what most people think informal processes are.

We're going to talk about how you can embed human resource support into your practise, policies and protocols, OK? So the overarching method of this slide is reactionary responses, reactive HR is bad. OK, so just get that in your head, reactive, bad.

We're gonna look at the different options and the different policies in relation to principal case studies, OK? These are both anonymized, but they are both real. They are former clients of mine, OK?

They are real, but they've been anonymized for obvious reasons that you'll see when I, when I present them to you. So we'll start with registered veterinary nurse A. OK.

Now, A was a newly qualified vet nurse. 2nd year out of, out of school, so she'd done her placement year in 2nd year, hired by an established practise, local first opinion set, as a sole charge nurse. So there was one vet, the owner, one nurse of VNA and a HCA or sorry, not a HCA a VCA.

Hair induction consisted of a short tour of the practise. OK. They were expected to hit the ground running, and I apologise for the typo there, that shouldn't be there.

But they were expected to hit the ground running. They had a full ops board, they were expected to do a number of other, other roles within the practise, you know, as, as normal veterinary nurses are, you know, cleaning, client care, cashing up at the end of the day, so on and so forth. But she was also expected to create this brand new product for the vets to offer, which was nurse clinics, they've not had them before, and they wanted to bring themselves more into line with, with their competitors and offer them.

RVNA's success would be measured by way of. The the customer take up of these clinics, OK, but they weren't given any time during the day to do this, OK, cause they had full ops boards, they had customers coming in, so on and so forth, you know, the vet was a very needy vet for want of a better word, you know, they'd need a nurse constantly in, in, in wherever they were, even if, you know, there's no, not necessarily a clinical need. So they didn't have any time to do this.

They ended up doing a lot of the work at home. OK, that's important, that's a really good early warning sign, especially if you've got admin staff doing, doing things like that, or, or project work at home. On top of all of that.

Their pay packets were regularly late, the vet would blame that on accounting issues, and they'd frequently need to chase the practise for their pay slips or, or other elements of, you know, P60s or whatever. All of that personal information went to one email address that the practise had, and all staff had unrestricted access to that address. The accountants would send the data to that address, and then staff would be expected to go into the inbox and, and pick it out.

Obviously that's legally a big problem, but also from a moral, you know, from a a morale perspective. It's an issue, especially if that VCA then knows how much the RVN's getting paid and and so on and so forth, which all the information was there for players' Day. On top of that, and there's a pattern arising here, RVNA suffered from a chronic illness, and that illness impacted their ability to stand.

It impacted their ability to sort of work long hours. They'd have constantly a, a high heart rate, palpitations, dizziness, and on occasion they'd faint. Their condition was made worse by stress.

Bear that in mind, and they also suffered from anxiety and depression. This went on for a considerable period of time. RVNA actually resigned and when she did resign, she took a pay cut.

OK. Now. That's case study one.

You'll already be seeing screaming issues there if you have any awareness of how practises should be run. But we're not going to delve into them right now. I'm gonna give you the two case studies and then we're gonna go through some points and, and see how they impact on these two RVNs.

The next case study is RVNB. This LVM was employed at a chain practise, you know, one of these big national chains. HR was managed by a central team, so national chains, central team that managed the HR in conjunction with the local practise partners, JVPs, those type of people.

RVNB was diagnosed with cancer, and was signed off work to receive chemotherapy treatment, as well as a number of surgeries, that resulted in parts of the body being removed, parts that wouldn't affect the work, but nevertheless, parts of the body being removed. The chain after a period of sickness. Instituted disciplinary procedures against the RVN on account of their inability or willful refusal to work.

Their manager cut off all contact with them, and RVNB asked the train's HR team to work with a friend, a friendly representative, as they couldn't cope with the process because of the stress of not only the cancer and the treatment, but also the fact that they were being fired from their job and as they felt forced out. The chain refused to do that, and they refused to do that on the basis that the only support that this RVM was entitled to was either a trade union rep or a colleague. Now, legally, they are completely correct.

The only statutory entitlement is to a trade union rep or a colleague. That being said, this is one of the times where people mix up the law and policy. Policy is whatever the company say.

The company could say, you can have a lawyer come in for you if you really want. They are allowed to say that. The statute sets a minimum, it doesn't set a maximum.

So although there's no right to a representative that's not a colleague or a trade union rep, there's nothing to stop the chain doing that. Now that was added to difficulty by the fact that they were essentially forcing the RVN to have a subordinate in there to support her. And this RVN was a.

Head nurse, and the only colleague that was realistically able to support would have been somebody junior to her, as the, the vet was, also the practise owner, so he was involved with the proceedings, even though he'd cut contact. So that put RVMB in a significantly sort of tight spot in that she's either got no help, no support that can go in with her, or she's got, So the support of somebody junior to her, then she's gonna have to go back in and manage if she's successful, and that's going to undermine her position greatly. So you can see there that two very different scenarios, but two scenarios nonetheless where.

That clearly is an environment of. Overwork, there's an environment of formality, you know, the cutting contact, leaving it to HR, there is an environment. That actually doesn't make RVNA or RVNB feel particularly welcome.

And these are just two examples. I could pick dozens from different RVNs that that I've met, that I've worked with from different vets that I've met and I've worked with. But these are just two that we're using for today's purposes.

You will have examples of things just like this from your own practises. And actually what I'm gonna ask you to do now is pause the recording for maybe a couple of moments, and. Consider In your own mind, or if you're watching this in a group, in a group, as to what examples you know from practise where somebody's been made to feel particularly unwelcome or overworked.

So pause the recording now. And have that discussion. So now you've done that, and you've had that discussion and and established in your own mind some of your examples as to how these things can manifest and how these things can get worse.

You'll be able to think about both the examples of RVNA and RVMB and your own examples when we go through some of the things that can make the whole process better. So we started by talking about reactionary HR. Reactionary human resource management is bad, so what's good?

Well, the clue's in the name really. Proactive HR management is good, OK. What this does is takes business goals, pre-amps barriers that are in the way of those goals and fixes the barriers, OK?

This is very much like you're telling a dog that the dog needs to lose weight in order to stop further bigger problems happening down the line. Yeah, this is the proactive treatment rather than the reactive treatment, and it's exactly the same in HR. Reactive treatment, not ideal, we'll do it if we have to, but we don't want to.

Proactive treatment, proactive HR is the better option. Now this Focuses on business goals, but doesn't affect the business goals directly. You don't say we need to increase revenue, so put a revenue target on all of your RVNs.

You've got to do X many consults, you've got to upsell X many, you know, collars or whatever. Yeah, you don't, you don't do that. That would be a reactive way of doing it.

Problem, and knee jerk reaction is a target, reactive. Proactive, we need more revenue. OK, so what's the problem?

Have we got a training need that if we had a behaviourist, for example, we could make loads more money, so we'll implement behaviourist training. OK? So you look towards the skill set, you improve the skill set, OK?

Do we need more talent? OK, well, we need to improve compensation to attract that more, that, that bigger better talent in order to make more money. Yeah.

It's things like that. Do we, do we need a really, you know, specialist nurse with an interest in bereavement, because we've got loads of PTS's and we get bad reviews for them. OK, well you need to go away and hire the right person for that.

OK. So what it does is it focuses on retention, it focuses on motivation, and it focuses on equipping the team to achieve the goal, not prioritising the goal at the expense of the team. OK.

So that's certainly something that you want to focus on, you want to look at, you want to properly consider in terms of your approach to management HR. You want to be proactive rather than reactive. That ultimately is the overarching message of this seminar, presentation, webinar, whatever you wanna call it.

Proactive rather than reactive, and, and what I'm gonna do from now until the end of the seminar, excuse me. No You me for that. What I'm going to do now between this stage and the end of the seminar webinar is going, he's gonna be to look at.

Ways in which you can be proactive, ways in which you can set up a culture of proactivity in terms of your human resource management, OK. So, what I want you to do at this stage, if you're on your own or in a group, is pause the recording and think about. What Are you more now?

OK, are you more reactionary or are you more proactive? Yeah? Have a think about what policies you use at work, what policies you're subject to at work, have a think about your working environment, maybe draw a Venn diagram, OK, and think what's proactive, what's reactive.

OK. Pause the recording now, maybe take 2 or 3 minutes just to have a think, have a little bit of a brain, brain party and just jot some ideas down in in that Venn diagram or, or just think about it. For 2 or 3 minutes.

Are you more proactive or are you more reactive? Couple of minutes just to pause and do that. So, now you have considered whether you're proactive or reactive, and hopefully you're more proactive than reactive, but the industry is certainly more reactive, so don't be worried if you are.

Let's have a look at some things that you can do to improve your proactivity, to make you more proactive than reactive. And the first thing I want to talk about is informed and considered proactivity. OK?

So to be proactive, you need to know what you're working with. OK? That's the starting point.

How much do you know about your team? Do you have them fill in personal profiles when they start with you? Do you know what motivates them?

Do you know what their goals are? Do you know what their support needs are? Do they have any mental health or medical needs, OK, that you can deal with.

So RVNA for example, struggle struggle standing. So the first thing that I asked was, did they offer you a stool in theatre? No, OK, well that's something that they could have done so easily.

To help our VNA. With her medical need. So do you even know what their medical needs are?

They don't have to tell you, of course, but if you're offering support, then, you know, they're gonna be more inclined to to discuss these things with you and be open and and have that dialogue. Do they have any professional development needs? So this was RVNA for example's first time in effect as a head nurse.

She was the only nurse in the practise. So Does she have any development needs in terms of that? Does she need any training, for example, she was a qualified clinical coach, but she'd never done it before.

So did she need training in terms of getting the students in because on top of all of what she was dealing with, she also had to, to start to get a, a training practise accreditation. Do you know what the other. X many days of the week, X many hours of the week, X many years of the life is all about.

People spend 33.7 years working of their life. What about the other 47.2 years?

Do you know anything about that? Do you know if they're a volunteer? Do you know if they've got caring responsibilities?

Do you have this profile on your team? Because without that informed. Element, you can't be proactive because you'll put one thing in.

And it'll stuff X, Y, Z many things up on the other side because you don't know about them. Only with that information and that intelligence can you then assess where you want to go. And you, it's not just enough as well to just know about those things.

You have to actively consider them. You have to be informed and you have to be considered, OK? You have to consider each of those points and incorporate it into your strategic plan, your tactical plan, your operational level of management, the tasks you assign, the environment you use, the time scales for different projects, all of that needs to be considered.

One area of the country, sort of 111 industry has done this particularly well, and they were forced to do it, they didn't do it naturally, but they were forced by a number of, of, of quite big failings to adopt an informed decision making. Model, and that's the emergency services, and they've adopted what's called the GEI decision model and the Jessip decision controls. Jessip is Joint Emergency Service interoperability procedure protocol programme, whatever you wanna call it.

OK, it's it's the system that the police, the fire service, the ambulance service, the coastguard, and so on all use when they're working together. And it's just as applicable in education, I have a copy of it on my wall for when I'm making decisions about my programme and it's just as applicable to you guys in practise. So let's start and look at that.

So the Jessic model is on the left-hand side, it's this sort of star spider diagram. And it's a circle, OK, so you will have already started. Doing things if you've got an up and running practise, yeah, you'll have taken some action.

You, you'll have, you'll have hired somebody, for example. OK, so let's start from that point. You've hired somebody.

So next you need to gather information about that person, intelligence about that person, OK, assess what their strengths, weaknesses are. Develop that working strategy. So for example, it's a threat to the business if RVNA is off because she's poorly.

So actually, if we give her a stool in theatre, it reduces the risk of her getting fatigued, it reduces the risk of exertion, it, you know, it, it does X, Y and Z. So there's, there's your risk, it's a risk if she's off it. What powers, policies, procedures do you have?

Well, you have the power to buy a stool and put it in theatre. You have a infection prevention control policy, so you just need to add a line about cleaning the stool. I identify options by a stool.

Implement the option. Put the stool in theatre. Take action and review what happened.

Did the stool help? RVNA did the stool help? Yes, it did, thank you very much.

What happened, it made the job easier. Thank you, right, you've assessed, gather information and intelligence. Is there anything else we can do?

Oh, well, actually, yeah, if, you know, if, if, you know, I could just have fresh water available, that would really help. OK. We'll get a water machine sorted.

And it's. Takes that turn, it follows that circle, OK, that was a really simple example. But it follows the circle and anything follows that circle, OK.

The emergency services, they use this to work together to reduce harm and, and to save lives, and ultimately that's what you're doing to your business. You're saving money, you're reducing harm to your business by following this set model that helps you to make informed and considered decisions. And then There's the decision controls as well.

And this is the, the flow chart on the right hand side of the screen. The decision controls are there to protect your decision making and to say, right, actually, is this a decision that, one, we need to take, and two, we should be taking. And it starts off by asking why, OK?

Why is there a reason behind why you're doing something. So if you're going to say, right, RVNA, we're gonna put you on a disciplinary, why are you doing that? OK, or right RVMB, you know, we're gonna put you on a disciplinary.

Why are you doing that? What's the rationale? OK.

Has it been agreed by everybody involved, and if not, why not? Does it support saving the money, saving the business, reducing harm on your employees, on your staff? OK, so you can adopt these.

They're not the perfect tool for, for the veterinary industry, but they're a fantastic tool that's worked really well in the emergency services. It's worked really, really well in healthcare, it's worked well in education, so it can work well there as well. It might need some change, and every practise is different, so you might want to tweak it a bit.

But you can use it as a really, really good starting point. So why are you making the decision? What's the response to that decision going to be?

Is the benefit of the decision, the action, is that, you know, more than the risk, is it worth the risk? OK. And you can go through those points.

And that's really, really important because if you can say, look, this is how we make our decision, if worst comes to the worst, and you are before an employment tribunal, you can say, look, we had a really robust decision making process behind this that was focused on support, it was focused on maintaining business needs but also making sure that the employees were, were looked after. And that's what a lot of people don't do. So you need that backing, you know, when the judge asks you, right, well, what did you do prior to this?

How did you make your decisions? What process did you follow? You need answers to all of this.

And those answers should be founded in support in that considered. Decision making and that informed decision making. Now Arguably all of this starts at the orientation process.

You've hired somebody. That's probably gonna be the last thing on on one of these wheels, you know, you might have said we need another person. The risk is financial, but we're OK, we've got the power to do it.

OK, these are the options for what type of person we need. We've chosen this person after interviewing, now it's about orientating that person and gathering information and intelligence about that person. So, let's talk about orientation.

There is a difference between job and personal orientation. OK. Job orientation is, here's prep, here's the back room, here's the consult room, here's reception, this is how we catch up.

That is a job orientation. A personal orientation is personal to that person. So, how many times, ask yourself this, and locums if you're watching this, you know, consider, consider this especially.

How many times have you walked into a practise and said I'm the locum, er, and nobody knew they were expecting you? I know people it's happened to, and if I know them, it must certainly happen wider in the industry. Nobody knew where I was starting today.

What impact does that give? Oh, we've not got your login, you'll have to use mine here and there's a username and a password jotted down on a, on a Post-it note. OK, well, they clearly don't care about me then, do they, if they've not even bothered to do that.

Here's prep, here's that, here's that. Now go and jump into theatre. Well, well, what's expected of me?

Do I have to set theatre up? Do I have to clean it? Have we got somebody for that?

Do I have to prep a train in a certain way, you know, is the cannulation kit, you know, organised in a certain way, where's the crash trolley? What's the procedure, what's the protocol, what's the anaesthetic protocol? You, you know.

You need to know what's expected of your employees. So the personal orientation fixes these. It's having their buddy, we'll talk about in a minute, there to meet them.

It's having a tour of the practise before the practise opens. It's having all of that sort of stuff there, a welcome pack, yeah, meet the team, sitting down for a brew before you start, what's actually expected, how is the day gonna run? Here's your login.

Yeah, here's your key, here's the code, and so on and so forth. You need to do all of those things in terms of the personal orientation side. And it's that personal orientation that sets the really, really good tone for.

The development of the rest of that model. So where do you start with personal orientation then? Well, the research suggests that you should start with a buddy.

OK. . Nancy McCall, and Jennifer Riley and others, recently conducted a study into buddy schemes er throughout the pandemic.

And they said the quote from their reports here in the white at the bottom. That among the participants, . Their views were that the buddy system provided a useful intervention for mitigating personal distress via PF support and connection, overwhelmingly requested that it become a permanent part of the team wellness programme.

So the buddy fatigue scheme in this study was part of a general wellness programme, but you can use it as that, but you could also use it during an orientation. Cooper and Wright in their 2014 study outlined that buddy schemes should not form. A, a way of monitoring an employee.

They should not be, subject to supervision by their buddy, so their manager shouldn't be their buddy, it should be someone of an equal, equal standing to them. Do not choose senior or these veteran employees to be buddies. That's the thing lots of people make the mistake on.

Oh, you know, Sarah's been here for 10 years, she knows all the stuff, you know, she'll look after you. No, she's the person that's been there for 6 months or a year. They're closer.

To the person in terms of professional age, in terms of the time in the role. And they'll be able to understand and and remember how it felt to be new, so choose the new buddies, OK? Make sure that this buddy has time for buddying, OK, it's not an extra job or a chore that's thrown onto somebody.

Oh, just look after the new person, will you? Now, if that's not it, it's a, it's a really, really important role that needs to be considered. And it needs to be there to present.

That person with the support opportunities, the opportunities to speak up, the opportunities to say actually, I don't understand this, this element of the role or this element of the business. Can you explain it to me? So actually that workload allocation needs to be there.

And the importance of the allocation is just as important. So don't say, OK, well we don't want a veteran, so it's got to be, you know, Sarah cos she's been here the shortest or it's got to be Joanne cos she's in the same role or whatever. Give it as much thought as you gave to hiring the new hire.

OK, and you should do this for locums as well, this isn't just for permanent staff. Locums should benefit from this as well, they should be supported, whether they're there for a day, there for a week, or they're a long-term locum. They should still benefit from that initial support structure.

It might be shorter in duration if they're only there for a day, but it's still there nonetheless. And that buddy scheme leads you. Into a person centred approach.

And it's that person centred approach that fundamentally. Has the benefit of. The proactive HR, OK, so you, you all know what a patient centred care is.

This is the same but for employees or locums or volunteers or placement students, for example. And the big thing to note is it is not an employee centred approach. OK, it is a person centred approach.

Don't treat them as just an employee. They're not a personnel number, they're not someone who's just there to do a job. They are a person with feelings, and they're a person with a personality, and they're a person with beliefs and health needs and development needs.

They are a person, not just a number that's there to fill a role, OK? Make use of personal profiles, and if this is one thing you take away from this seminar, I'd certainly tell you to do it. It's one sheet of A4, right?

It's got the name on it, it's got the photo on it, and it's got 3 sections. What people appreciate, what's important, and how to support, OK? And those 3 sections aren't gonna, are gonna massively help you as managers, but they're also gonna help the team, OK?

You could put these on a notice board, OK, so long as people are happy for it to be there, you could do one for the manager and one for the rest of the team, you could do 2 and put the team ones on a notice board. And what that does, Is it shows people the personality underneath. It shows the person, somebody, the person under the role, OK?

So it might be, let's take RVNA in my example, what do people like and admire about it? Well, she's funny, she's really, really knowledgeable, she is. Able, excuse me, she's able to support students in their roles.

OK, so that's what people like and admire about, about RVNA. What's important to her. Well, it's important that I know what's expected of me, OK?

It's important that I'm set really clear goals and I'm given a list of stuff that I need to do, cos I work methodically, OK, great. What's important to me in the future, eventually I want to be a specialist, small, specialist small exotics nurse, so anything with Komodo dragons and rabbits really interests me. OK, that's important, that's noteworthy.

So how to support me. I get, I suffer with anxiety, so I, I appreciate people to just talk to me if there's an issue, I might not realise it, but I'd rather be spoken to at the time rather than 6 months down the line. Or I'm, I expect my manager.

To check in with me regularly about this health condition that I've got, or, or so on and so forth. And by doing that sheet of A4, and it is literally just that, they can fill it out on their first day, the likes of my section could be filled out by their colleagues. Throughout their first few shifts and that that'd be a morale booster, yeah, you've gotta write something nice on the board, yeah.

By doing that, it allows you to develop this informed and considered action, and it allows you to develop this informed and considered response, which falls into your decision making, it falls into your policies and. Ultimately, it falls into the duty that you have as a professional to manage your practise and and your registration adequately. Because it shows that you're being empathetic, it shows that you're caring, it shows that you are taking reasoned and rational decisions, and it shows that you're treating everybody as you would wish to be treated yourself.

So what does that leave you with then? Well, it leaves you with an empathetic environment. We've talked about information.

So information, intelligence, knowledge, we've talked about all of that. We've talked about this considered action, the Jesit model, you know, taking step by step by step, what information do I have? What are the risks, what are the goals, what are the benefits?

What are the policies, the procedures. What powers do I have? What action can I take?

Review, did the action work? Let's gather some more information to see if we can improve it. It goes towards that, the information to consider action.

OK. That can only work with a genuine care as well. Now that might be a care for your business and wanting the business to succeed.

Which is fine, or it might be, and I'd prefer it if it was, frankly. A genuine care for the people that you're working with and the animals that you are trusted with, because if you've got a good team and an empathetic environment, then that empathy's only going to positively impact patient outcomes because people are gonna want to get together as a team, they're gonna want to support the patients, they're gonna want to support each other to support those patients. So that it's that genuine care, that veterinary spirit.

Combined with. Understanding your team, knowing your team. Combined with.

That rational, reasoned, considered approach that creates empathy. And that doesn't just create empathy in a manager or the appearance of empathy from a manager, it creates empathy in the team. Because if the team see that management care.

About them, not just their job role. So the genuine care for management, about the information that they've given management about them. About their wants, their desires, their needs, their expectations, their support.

And they can see that that information has gone in to a considered decision and a considered action. Then they are gonna have that empathetic experience and that empathetic environment themselves. So use the sort of different bits of the seminar today.

Along with those two case studies. To think about The way that you can impact your practise. And create this informed, considered, caring.

Empathetic environment at work. Because if you can do that, I promise you that it will go a long way to making sure that your staff and your patients both thrive. And when they thrive, your business will thrive.

So I hope that's been a bit of a common sense approach to conflict measurement. You'll know I didn't say anything in there about formal disciplinary procedures other than saying they're a bad thing. And that's because you can avoid 90% of disciplines by doing the good stuff early.

OK, so tell the dog to lose weight. And it won't get sick as much. Treat your staff empathetically and your business won't get sick as much.

So, thank you very much. Use the case studies that I've given you, use your own examples, go away and think on this, springboard it, and if you do have any questions, my contact details appear on the slide at this stage. So thank you for tuning into the webinar there and thank you for picking this seminar.

Like I say, there are others available by me, and other exciting ones. I'm not even a clinician and some of them look really interesting, so I'm gonna give them a watch. So do have a look round the website and, and have a look.

But thank you for tuning into the webinar there. I've been Philip Cowburn. If you do have any questions, feel free to get in touch and long may your practises benefit from empathy.

In both employee care, client care, and self-care. So look after yourselves and treat yourselves with empathy as well. Thank you very much, have a good night and.

Day and morning or whatever it is while you're watching this, thank you very much.