018: Work Life Balance in Vet Med: What Are We Missing?"

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:04):
Welcome to the Veterinary Culture Lab, where
science meets real-worldapplication.
I'm Andy Davison.

SPEAKER_01 (00:11):
And I'm Josh Weisman.
Together, we'll show you anevidence-based blueprint for
renovating culture in yourveterinary team one episode at a
time.

SPEAKER_02 (00:23):
Work-life balance is something we talk a lot about in
veterinary medicine.
And in many ways, we areoffering more of it than ever
before.
So why does it still feel socomplicated?
And what if the issue's not thepolicies themselves, but how
they show up day to day in thereality of our work?

SPEAKER_01 (00:41):
Happy Monday, Andy Davison.
How are you?

SPEAKER_02 (00:44):
Oh, Monday fun day.
Wait, that's not it, is it?

SPEAKER_01 (00:47):
Monday fun day.
I mean, it can be.
It can be, right?

SPEAKER_02 (00:51):
I guess that depends on what your definition of fun
is.

SPEAKER_01 (00:54):
Of fun is.
Yeah.
I I have to tell you, um, I I'ma little bit reticent to say
this because I just know howjust charged it could possibly
be for people.
But I am gonna say it.
For most of my life, um, I had acase of the Sundays, right?
Like, you know, Sunday wouldcome and I'd be like, oh,
tomorrow's Monday.
Uh, how quickly is it going tothe week where, you know, is it
Friday yet?

(01:14):
Is it Friday yet?
Right.
Uh, until I started Flourish.
And some of that is probablybecause it's like, it's my
company, I'm in charge, blah,blah, blah, whatever.
But I was in charge in the twoveterinary hospitals that I ran
and I didn't have the sameexperience.
There's something about thisparticular job.
It's not every, it's not everyMonday.
There are definitely like weekswhere I'm like, oh, I could

(01:36):
really benefit from just onemore day.
Um, but most of the time, like Iget up on Monday and I'm like,
hey, I get to go to work today.
That's kind of a cool feeling.

SPEAKER_02 (01:45):
What puts that spring in your step?

SPEAKER_01 (01:47):
Um, I mean, if I'm being totally honest, I get to
work with the most amazing humanbeings in veterinary medicine
and possibly the whole world.
Um, so that's a big part of it.
But like, I just, I don't know.
I feel like the work that we do,it's like just like really
meaningful to me.
It just feels like I'm doingmeaningful things.
Like there's tasks ahead,there's projects that have to be

(02:08):
done, but but they all feel likethey're there's like a purpose
to them and a purpose thataligns with my sense of values
and how I want to show up in theworld and the impact I want to
have.
And I that's really cool to getto do that and be paid to do it.

SPEAKER_02 (02:21):
Well, and I think what I'm hearing too is that
that purpose is it's a grandpurpose, right?
Like it's you're contributing tosomething meaningful that is
greater than just you, right?
There's this overarching abilityto contribute to something that
really matters.

SPEAKER_01 (02:41):
Yes.
Yes, I feel like a lot of whatI'm doing is not actually trying
to help me.
It's trying to, how do I putthis totally off the cuff?
To give the same gift to othersin our profession that I feel
like I have found for myself.
Yeah, it feels really good.
I really enjoy that.
What about you?
How is uh how is your weekstarting now that your boss has

(03:02):
just laid that out all out infront of you?

SPEAKER_02 (03:05):
No, no, no.
Starting out great, it is umMondays.
So Mondays for me always seem tobe super busy, right?
Like there's always stuff to doand there's always things to
catch up, and there's alwaysthis and that.
Um, I I don't dread Mondays.
I don't dread Mondays like Iused to dread Mondays, but it
always seems like the things aregonna happen on Monday, right?

(03:27):
Like you've got, oh, let's getall these things started for the
week and we're gonna do our likekickoff weekly check-in meetings
on Monday, or you know, we'regonna make sure to um, you know,
get the hay delivery on Monday,or oh, they're gonna come and
deliver shavings on Monday, orit's just always seems like all
the things happen on Monday.

(03:48):
And so for me, I know this, I'velearned this, and I try to set
myself up for success, right?
So I make sure that all myponies get ridden through the
weekend so that they can haveMonday off, so that I can focus
on some of the other things thatI need to focus on and want to
focus on on Monday, right?
Like kicking off the work week,getting everything going there,

(04:10):
making sure that whatever lastminute farm chaos that also
inevitably happens on a Mondayis it has space, right?
So that, you know, I've justkind of learned to balance it.
So so yeah, I don't dread themeither.

SPEAKER_01 (04:24):
I love it.
I love it.
Well, this Monday is kind ofspecial.
Um, even though this episode isnot coming out this time, it'll
be coming out a lot later thanthis, of course.
But this Monday is uh the Mondaybefore Christmas.
It is.
Um and it's special uh aroundhere because we we do something
really um, I don't know if it'sunique necessarily, but we do
something in particular aroundChristmas here at Flourish.

(04:46):
But I want to tell you a littlebit of a backstory, Andy.
I'm not sure if you actuallyknow this or not, but way back
in the day before we brought youonto the team, before we even
knew that you would be applyingfor this position, we were
preparing for expanding Flourishas an organization.
So by we, I mean Tess and I.
So Tess at the time um did notactually work for me formally,

(05:08):
she was not a uh Flourishemployee per se, she was a
contract employee.
So um she did some contract workfor Flourish at the time, and we
were gearing up to bring heronto the team officially and
then hire our next positivechange agent, which turned out
to be the incomparable AndrewDavison.
Um, anyway, so we were talkingabout like what's this gonna
look like from like an HRpolicies type perspective?

(05:31):
And we got to uh the topic oflike work-life balance, you
know, and all those kinds ofthings, and we started to talk
about PTO.
And my immediate reaction waswell, the flourish ethos demands
that we have an unlimited PTOpolicy that like anybody who
works here should be able totake any time off whenever they
need it for any reason.
Uh, and Tess actually pushedback on that.

(05:53):
And I was a little bit surprisedbecause I thought, like, you
know, if anybody in this worldis on board with that kind of
stuff, it's Tess Warner.
Uh, and she was, she wasactually on board with it, but
she was pushing back from apretty intelligent and
thoughtful perspective.
Tess shared with me someliterature that suggested that
organizations that have uhunlimited PTO policies actually

(06:15):
have people who take lessvacation, which is at first
glance like a little bit odd,right?
Like, wait, what?
How is that possible?
You think if people hadunlimited access to vacation,
they would take more, butactually they seemed to take
less.
And a lot of it, um, I thinkwill be uncovered in the paper
that we're going to talk abouttoday.

(06:36):
I uh I read this paper and Ifound myself thinking over and
over and over again if work-lifebalance policies exist, but
people can't safely andconsistently use those policies,
they're not actually a benefit.
We call them benefits, we callthem perks.
They're not, they're just linesin a brochure.
It's marketing, right?

(06:58):
And that's what this paper isreally about.
But before we get into thepaper, Andy, I had a question
for you.
When you hear the phrasework-life balance, what does
that actually mean to you?
What does work life balance meanto you?

SPEAKER_02 (07:10):
The phrase itself means for me the ability to
focus on work and your personallife in a way that feels
balanced, right?
In whatever, whatever it is thatyou need, that you're not being
expected to give everything youhave to work, that you're also

(07:36):
recognized for being a humanbeing that has other things
going on outside of work thatalso need your attention.
And so I think that concept ofwork-life balance is the ability
to give an equal amount ofattention to the professional
things in our lives that demandit, as well as the personal

(07:58):
things in our lives that demandit.

SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
Um, I will often talk about life as a pie.
I'm trying to think likeChristmas, what's Christmas pie?

SPEAKER_02 (08:07):
I'll say what kind of pie?
I need to know.

SPEAKER_01 (08:09):
Would Christmas be like pecan pie?
Like, what's what's a common piearound Christmas?

SPEAKER_02 (08:15):
I mean, I feel like pumpkin pie carries over.
It's fairly Thanksgiving-y, butit's that time of year.

SPEAKER_01 (08:20):
Okay, I mean, I don't get me wrong, I'm not
gonna push back on that.
I am a massive fan of pie ingeneral and love pumpkin pie.
By the way, Christmas, I gottatell you, I love Christmas, but
it's strange to me how everybodyseems to get a little bit
sentimental.
Ah, that was bad.
That was bad.
Anyway, as I'm listening to youtalk, as I'm listening to you
talk about your definition ofwork-life balance, I'm I'm

(08:42):
thinking back to this idea ofpie, right?
Like, so if if your whole beingis a pumpkin pie, right?
It's a limited resource.
There's only so much AndyDavison that you can give to the
world.
Um, work-life balance for you isabout like looking at that that
pie of of who Andy Davison isand determining like this is how
much of the pie I want to beable to give to stuff that has

(09:03):
to do with work.
And this is how much of the pieI want to give to stuff that has
to do with my life outside ofwork.
And as long as like the thedivvying up of the slices of pie
actually fits what you want itto look like, that's work-life
balance.
I think that's what I'm hearing.

SPEAKER_02 (09:19):
Yeah, well said.
Okay, and it involved pie,perfect.

SPEAKER_01 (09:23):
Perfect, always perfect when there's pie.
Yeah.
Okay, so I want you to imaginefor a moment, um, the average
sort of veterinary professional,right?
Just like the typical person invetmed.
Let's say that this particulartypical person is your typical
credentialed veterinarytechnician.
So she's just like, you know,Eve St.
Thomas' typical veterinarycredential technician.

(09:46):
No, she's interviewing for a jobat a local veterinary hospital.
It is a very typical practiceand a very typical town
offering, very typical services.
Okay.
She sits down with theinterviewing manager who tells
her, Hey, Eve, I want you toknow we have several work-life
balance policies here at our ABCveterinary hospital.
We've got things like generouspaid time off, we've got paid

(10:09):
holidays, we have, you know,family medical leave, all that
kind of stuff, right?
When this typical anyonetechnician is sitting in that
interview and hears that fromthe interviewing manager, here's
our work-life balance policies.
What do you think Eve St.
Thomas, typical credentialtechnician, is actually thinking
when she hears the list ofwork-life balance policies?

SPEAKER_02 (10:32):
The very first thing she's thinking is, yeah, that's
great, but am I actually goingto get to use it?

SPEAKER_01 (10:38):
Yeah, not surprised.
Not surprised.

SPEAKER_02 (10:41):
And then I think the second thing she's gonna think
is, and when I do use it, howheavy is that guilt trip gonna
be?

SPEAKER_00 (10:49):
Yes.
Oh, the guilt trip.
We've all we've all felt theguilt trip.
Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (10:55):
You'll hear uh at some point today, I think a
story of me actually deliveringsaid guilt trip to your typical
credentialed veterinarytechnician.
Not my most shining moment inveterinary leadership.
Um, I I think you're spot on,Andy, and I totally agree.
And that's really what thispaper kind of covers.
So uh the paper that we're gonnatalk about today is titled How

(11:16):
Effective Are Work Life BalancePolicies?
The importance of inclusion.
Uh, this was um the authors wereCasper Hyde Smith Amir Kamali, I
think is how it's pronounced.
That's a fun name, yeah.
It is a fun one.
Um A-M-I-R-K-A-M-A-L-I.
I apologize for butchering thatname.
Uh, and Wayne.

(11:36):
This was published in um theannual review of organizational
psychology and organizationalbehavior in 2025.
The authors wanted to understandwhy it is that work-life balance
policies frequently have minimalpositive impact on team
well-being and performance?
That is, why is it that allthese organizations have all of

(11:57):
these work-life balancepolicies, but they pretty
consistently fall short inemployee experience?
So, to answer this question, theauthors conducted what's called
a narrative review of decades ofwork-life balance research,
including some large-scalemeta-analyses as well.
Um, a narrative review is it's aspecial kind of review.
So it's not like a systematicreview.

(12:17):
Um, a narrative review is whereresearchers essentially
synthesize decades of studiesinto a coherent story.
They're like looking at alldifferent kinds of research in a
particular area and they'retrying to weave like a story.
What is the story here?
What are the things that weknow?
What are the things that wedon't know?
Where are the gaps?
Where are the patterns?
And then from that, they combinethat into a way that gives us

(12:39):
like um uh, I don't know, aclear baseline or some sort of a
structure, right?
Like this is the story that thedata tells us, essentially.
It's a little bit different thanwhat like a meta-analysis or a
systematic review might be.
Um, the authors looked at thesestudies and then they they
basically framed effectiveness.
So work-life balanceeffectiveness is showing up in

(13:01):
two buckets an employeewell-being bucket and an
organizational effectivenessbucket.
So they were looking at outcomeslike um, you know, does
work-life balance policiespredict, say, less work-family
conflict?
As you can imagine, Andy, if uhif it feels like we are pulled
to our work constantly and wecan't actually get away from it,

(13:22):
so there is no work-lifebalance, that might in fact, in
fact, impact family life, right?
So they were trying to determineif organizations have these
work-life balance policies.
Does that predict higher orlower work-family conflict?
Does it also predict things likeemployee well-being, career
growth, and outcomes, andorganizational citizenship

(13:43):
behavior, which is basically afancy way of saying people go
above and beyond to help eachother out, right?

SPEAKER_03 (13:48):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (13:49):
Well, here's here's the the key findings.
Work-life balance policies canactually be quite beneficial for
all of these outcomes.
If, and that might be like anall-caps, bolded, underline,
we'll even add italices and andeven highlight it if you want
to, if people can actuallyaccess and use them, which

(14:09):
harkens back to what you weresaying when I asked you what is
that tech going to be thinking,right?
Yeah.
And using them doesn't come withstigma or some form of
punishment.
Oh, what a shocker, right?

SPEAKER_02 (14:20):
Guilt trip.

SPEAKER_01 (14:21):
So yeah, exactly.
The guilt trip.
So the authors ended upidentifying eight barriers that
seem to block people fromfeeling like they can actually
utilize work-life balancepolicies and practice their form
of work-life balance.
You might imagine this likefilling a prescription.
All right.
So you're Dr.
Davison now, and you know, Joshcomes in with Rue, and Rue's got

(14:45):
some sort of infection, and youput him on Cepho, you write the
script for me, and I take thescript over to my favorite
pharmacy, and I hand it to thepharmacist there.
And the pharmacist looks at mekind of side eyes and says, This
drug is out of stock.
And for us to order it's goingto require three approvals.
And then they hand it over tothe uh to the actual attending

(15:06):
pharmacist who rolls their eyeslike I'm being all sorts of
dramatic and needy by evencoming in and asking for this
drug, right?
That's what work-life balancepolicies tend to feel like to
employees in many workplaces.
The prescription exists, butaccess barriers and judgment
make it essentiallyinaccessible.
So, what are some of the bigmeaty takeaways here from this

(15:27):
narrative review?
Well, I'm going to share just afew.
This is a big paper, and Iencourage people to read it.
I'm just pulling a couple thingsout of here.
The first one is that work lifeisn't just about family.
It's actually about detachingfrom work and having real
recovery time.
I think far too often inorganizations, when we are
crafting and talking aboutwork-life balance policies,

(15:50):
sometimes implicitly, sometimesmore overtly than uh I think
people might realize, we're sortof referring to these as family
time, right?
Like we're sort of thinking ofwork-life balance and all the
policies that allow you to useit as time to spend with family,
which means that we'reaccidentally designing work-life
balance as work family policies,or in worse cases,

(16:12):
parent-centric policies.
I think of like um my wife uhworked at a large
biopharmaceutical organizationmany years ago, and they had a
policy in place that people wererequired to be on site between,
if I remember correctly, it waslike the hours of 10 a.m.
and 3 p.m.
So they had flexibility withtheir schedules outside of those
hours.
You could show up at 10 and worktill 5 if you wanted to.

(16:34):
You could show up at 8 and worktill 3.
It was up to you, right?
But you had to be on sitebetween the hours of 10 and 3,
unless you were a parent.
And then you got specialdispensation to leave early or
to show up late based on yourkid's schedule.
That's what I mean by that,right?
Like if if that if those kindsof uh, you know, tweaks and

(16:55):
policies and procedures are inplace, that starts to send the
message that what's reallyimportant here is family, and
it's not, it's not just aboutit's not about detachment
recovery.
But that's the thing.
Work-life balance is actuallyvery much about recovery and
detachment.
Family is one way that peopledetach from work and recover,
but it is not the only way, andit is not necessarily the best

(17:17):
way for everybody, right?
This is something we actuallytouched on earlier, Andy.
If you remember back in episodetwo, we talked about the drama
needs, my favorite kind ofdrama.
And and two of those needs, twoof those important psychological
needs for well-being, for allsorts of outcomes, beneficial
outcomes for employees, aredetachment and recovery.

(17:37):
So if we only legitimize familyneeds, what we quietly do is
delegitimize recovery needs.
The research is clear here.
The absence of detachment andrecovery is a high-speed train
to employee burnout.
Andy, when you think back onyour time in clinical practice,
I don't know, take us back toyour like technician manager and

(17:58):
large animal hospital days,right?
What did real detachment andrecovery actually look like for
you after a hard work day?

SPEAKER_02 (18:06):
For me, what I needed in order to truly detach
was to be alone and be with myhorses.
So for me, true detachment andrecovery was time with my horses
alone, where I would, you know,get to ride, go out in the

(18:26):
backfield and hack around, go tothe barn, be able to really
immerse myself in that time.
And the most powerful recoverywould come when I got to do that
alone.
So, you know, it wasn't me andsix of my horse friends, which
don't get me wrong, I enjoythose times with me and six of
my horse friends.
But when it comes to trulyrecovering, it was most powerful

(18:50):
when it was me, my horse, andquiet.

SPEAKER_01 (18:54):
So, so you just got done with like a 13-hour day of
pure insanity and you werecompletely exhausted.
You're not, you're not lookingto go hang out with friends.
You're looking for quiet timeout in the barn, maybe out on a
hack with one of the horses, norush, no pressure, no sense of
obligation, just you out in thequiet of Florida um on top of

(19:16):
one of your horses.

SPEAKER_02 (19:17):
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (19:18):
Yeah, that totally makes sense.
Um again, taking us back tothose days, did you always get
to have that?
Or were there things that maybegot in the way from you getting
to experience that real sense ofdetachment and recovery?
And and if so, what were thosethings that got in the way?

SPEAKER_02 (19:35):
I rarely got those moments.
And the biggest thing that gotin the way was the fact that the
team that I managed.
So the situation that I was inis that I managed a team of 20
plus technicians, which isgreat.
Except you have to remember whenyou're working at a big academic

(19:56):
hospital, it's a 24-7 hospital.
And so the technicians on myteam were working 24-7.
I had awesome humans that I wasresponsible for 24 hours a day.
And I was their first line ofcommunication.
I was their first line ofdefense.

(20:17):
I was the one that they would goto when they needed something or
something wasn't lining up, oryou know, they whatever.
When some dumpster caught onfire, I was the first one that
they called.
And they called me or texted meoften.
Now, I'm not saying that that'sa bad thing.
However, it absolutelyinterrupted those times.

(20:40):
So when I would come home afterthat 13-hour shift, there was
still a whole team of techs atthe hospital.
And when they needed something,they called me or they texted
me.
And it would interrupt thattime.
It would wake me up when I wassleeping.
It would pull me away from mytime at the barn where I had to
get my phone out and answerthose text messages, which was

(21:02):
expected of me.
It was expected of me to beavailable to my team 24-7.
And that got in the way.

SPEAKER_01 (21:12):
So structurally, you were not the only person in
management or leadership at theorganization, but culturally,
you were expected to always beavailable for the rest of your
team.
Nobody else in the buildingcould actually help or support
them.

SPEAKER_02 (21:29):
Correct.
And that's because I was theirmanager.
And they had one manager for theteam of 20 plus technicians that
worked 24-7.
And being one human being, Icouldn't be at work 24 7.
And so when I wasn't, I wasstill their go-to person.
And it didn't really matter whattime it was.

SPEAKER_01 (21:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Um, that sounds all sorts offun.
It yeah, it's a lot.

unknown (21:57):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (21:58):
Um, I'm really sorry you went through.
That.
Um, I'm I'm even more delightednow when I see stories on
Instagram of you on the back ofBoston or Marshall out on a
hack.
That makes me happy.
Okay.
Um, the second meaty takeawayhere, uh, for me at least, was
that in practice, policy isactually rarely the problem.

(22:19):
It's not that we don't have thepolicies in place or that we
don't have enough or the rightkind of policies in place.
In fact, most organizations havepretty decent work-life balance
policies already.
I I honestly don't know of verymany veterinary practices that
don't have something like thisin place.
The problem isn't that thepolicies aren't there.
The problem is that accessisn't.

(22:41):
As we discussed earlier, havingwork-life balance policies is
just marketing.
Like if if you just have it, butno one gets to use it, it really
is just marketing on a brochure.
For it to be have a realbenefit, it has to be accessible
and it has to be free frompsychological burden.
It's got to be guilt-free,right?
The organization has to make iteasy for people to use those

(23:03):
policies, and they have tosupport them in doing so.
Instead, what we have is thisweird, like, we must be fully
staffed at all times mentality,or the manager must be
accessible at all timesmentality, like you experience,
right?
And then leaders end up actingas gatekeepers, and then there's
this stigma around use.

(23:24):
In fact, sometimes we see thisup.
I know you've seen this, I'vedefinitely seen this.
We end up martyring people whonever take a day off.
Like Andy's always there, she'sso reliable, she's always
accessible, right?
Like we turn them into martyrsand heroes, and then we view
people who use the benefits aslike less committed.

(23:46):
If you've ever heard or gasp,been the person to utter a
phrase like this, must be niceto take some time off, Andy.
You're actually seeing thebrochure effect in real life.
Like that's exactly it, right?
When I got to this point in thepaper, I thought back to a time
like I literally did this, and II can even picture, I'm I'm

(24:07):
like, I've got my eyes closedbecause I can see myself in my
office at the last hospital.
I was the managing partner ofus.
This is a practice in Cheyenne,Wyoming, and I'm sitting in the
office, it's first thing in themorning, and I get a ding on my
phone.
Hey, so-and-so tech is on theline.
She wants to talk to you.
And my heart drops because Iknow why she's calling.

(24:27):
She's supposed to be into workin five minutes, right?
And I pick up the phone and shesays, Hey, I'm really sorry.
I've been up all night with GIissues.
I really don't think I can makeit into work today.
And no shit, my response likewas exactly like this.
All right.
I mean, I guess I can help outon the floor.

(24:49):
Thanks for letting me know.
Like, how shitty is that?
Right?
Right.
How shitty must she have felt?
How horrible must she have beenfeeling sitting there the whole
day, either just like feelingguilty like she's letting the
team down, or worse, feelingangry and what an asshole boss
she has.
And like, I mean, just terrible,terrible response.

(25:09):
I was contributing to that.
Like, that's that's how I wouldapproach those kinds of things.
Yeah.
But here's the thing, Andy, I Ithink you'll agree with me.
I hope you will.
Hopefully, in private, you wouldagree with this.
I'm not a villain, and mostveterinary leaders aren't.
Most people in leadershippositions in veterinary
medicine, I think, are reallygood people just doing the best
they can with the tools theyhave under the circumstances

(25:30):
that they exist.
Uh, I think that applies to me.
I think that applies to you.
I think that applies to the vastmajority of people that we've
met.
I think most of the time whathappens is that we get into
these management positions.
I imagine you probably felt thisway when you were the technician
manager at a 24-hour facility.
You feel trapped by the burdenof your role and the obligations

(25:50):
that come with it, right?
That's how I felt.
Andy, what do you think whenwhen you've got somebody who's
in a leadership position,they're a good person, but
they're feeling trapped.
Something is contributing totheir sense of fear.
What do you think is making themafraid to make the work-life
balance policies more usable?

SPEAKER_02 (26:10):
I think fear is a fantastic word to use here
because there are a couple offears that I know I experienced
when I would get that earlymorning phone call or late night
phone call, right?
And it was always a phone call.
Like you knew they had to callin sick.
They couldn't text in sick, theyhad to call in sick, right?
And you knew it's like you said,your gut would drop and you'd be

(26:32):
like, oh no.
And the fear would kick in.
And for me, it was a couple ofdifferent reasons.
First of all, I'm terrifiedbecause now we're gonna be even
more short-staffed than wealready are.
I'm also terrified because thetechnicians that did come in or
that were on shift at that timewere gonna be overwhelmed,

(26:54):
pissed off that so-and-so wasn'there, that they had to pick up
the extra work, and they weregonna make that known.
And then the morale of the shiftwas gonna tank because it's oh,
we're already starting outshort-staffed.
I think another fear that I feltthat I really had to like sit
with and be okay with, becauseit was really there, and I

(27:16):
didn't talk about it a wholelot, was that fear that like I
was gonna have to go out andcover for them.
Right.
Like I was gonna have to putdown all the things that I
needed to do that day and go outon the floor and cover for them
because I didn't want my team toget overwhelmed.
I didn't want them to get upset.
I didn't want the morale of theof the shift to tank.

(27:38):
Okay, fine.
I had to murder myself out andgo cover for them.
And that was a fear as well,because that it just didn't make
for it didn't make for aconfident sort of experience.

SPEAKER_01 (27:52):
Yeah.
I I you've you've hit the nailfor so many of the things that I
felt too.
I was always like, I mean, inthat moment, as I was listening
to that technician tell me thatshe had these GI issues and she
wasn't gonna be able to come in.
And uh what I was actuallythinking behind what I was
saying, what I was actuallythinking was, I'm gonna have to
go tell the team now.
They're all going to be pissedoff.

SPEAKER_02 (28:13):
All gonna be mad.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 (28:15):
And then I'm probably going to have to go on
the floor and help them, whichwas a fear for two reasons.
Because A, it meant that I wasgonna be behind on the work that
I needed to do at my desk.
But more importantly, bigger forme was I'm not a credential
technician and I'm gonna have togo help them out.
And I'm like, I'm terrible.
Like I'm terrible at theseskills, right?
Um, so yeah, there was anotherthing that you said that really

(28:36):
stood out to me um that I thinkspeaks to a lot of the ethos of
this particular paper.
Um, you said that they had tocall, they couldn't text.
What do you think about thething?
What do you think was yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well what do you think was thelike intention behind that
policy?
Why call and not text?

SPEAKER_02 (28:54):
Um, the official intention had to do with the
like reception of the callingout, right?
So in order to ensure that yourmanager knew that you were not
gonna be there, you had to havelike an exchange in
conversation.
Oh, you couldn't just send atext and assume the other person

(29:15):
got it.
However, nobody likes to make aphone call.
That's really, really scary,right?
And you better think good andhard before you pick up the
phone, call your damn managerand tell them that you're not
coming in today.
That takes extra courage.
That takes extra.
And it may talk some people outof calling out sick if they have

(29:36):
to actually pick up the phoneand make the call.

SPEAKER_01 (29:39):
Exactly.
I think you're spot on.
Yep.
It it's um it is a way topsychologically discourage
people leveraging, utilizing thebenefit of work-life balance
policies.
Yep.
Yep, 100%.
Yep.
Um, the third big takeaway thatI wanted to share, Andy, is that
work-life balance is a biggerburnout prevention tool than we

(30:01):
might actually think.
Andy, we've talked about thisbefore.
Burnout is more than just aworkload issue.
We tend to simplify it too, likeyou burn out because you're
working too much, too long, toohard, whatever it is, a workload
issue, right?
But in fact, we know fromresearch that people can work 10
hours a week and still burn out.
Mozlok and Leiter teach us thatthere are actually six areas of

(30:22):
work life that on the upside canpotentially contribute to real
professional satisfaction, buton the downside lead to burnout.
Those six areas, we're not goingto go into them deeply here, but
we will share a link to a paperon these six areas in the show
notes.
The six areas are workload, yes,but also control, fairness,
community, values, and reward.

(30:43):
Effective work-life balancepolicies can actually be a
lever, a balm in all six areas.
Workload is the obvious one,right?
Like if you have work-lifebalance, then you know you can
manage workload.
But control.
Control could mean allowingpeople to actually have
influence over their ownschedule.
It's not just dictated to them.
They have a voice in it.
Fairness, fairness could comefrom equitable access to

(31:06):
work-life balance policiesacross roles and tenure.
Community.
Community might be actuallyelevated when work-life balance
usage becomes normative and it'ssupported throughout the entire
team.
Values.
Values are shown when work-lifebalance policies prove to people
that people matter here.
Your well-being is important,right?

(31:26):
And then reward.
Reward can come from work-lifebalance enhancements, such as uh
giving extra PTO for tenure orfor uh bonuses, things like
that, right?

SPEAKER_02 (31:36):
Well, hello there.
If this conversation is landingwith you, I'm willing to bet
you're not alone.
Why not follow the podcast orshare this episode with some of
your fellow vet crew?
Together, we can all be part ofa community that believes that
thriving in VetMed is possibleand actively works to build the
profession that we all deserve.
Now, if you're ready to take thenext step, check out our

(31:57):
upcoming Flourish Academymasterclass to support your
positive leadership skills.
It's linked in the show notes.
Now, back to the culture lab.

SPEAKER_01 (32:08):
Okay, so a veterinary leader comes across
this paper, is just listening tothis episode and says, Hey, you
know what?
I I'm into this.
I want to renovate the culturein my organization so it can be
more inclusive and offered amore equitably utilized
How do I do that?
Well, we've got four ideas hereto share.
Let's see if we can get throughthem today.

(32:29):
Uh, the first one is to createwhat I'm I'm thinking of as
recovery standards.
So this would be like adocument, okay?
In this document, what we'redoing is we're basically we stop
treating work-life balance likea perks menu and we start
actually treating it likerecovery infrastructure.
I think that sometimes invetmed, the biggest non-work
need often isn't actually familytime.

(32:51):
You and I already talked aboutthis.
It's detachment and recovery sothat people can come back with a
full battery and give what theyneed to give to the next work
shift.
So, what we need to do is weneed to build norms that protect
off time.
You could think of these likeshared agreements.
They're non-urgent things like arule that says uh after hours,

(33:12):
if somebody's off the clock,they're not here.
Uh, the only texts that areallowed are, you know, these
kinds of specific emergencies,or the only phone calls that are
allowed to them are these kindsof specific emergencies.
Or we just don't contact peopleafter hours, period.
Right?
Sort of like some organizationshave like a no-email rule or
something like that.

(33:32):
It could be that it could bethings like that.
Or we actually mandate breaks.
Like we determine what the breakschedule is going to be like in
advance and we hold to it as ifit is sacrosinct.
Uh, we have a culture wherestepping away isn't a character
flaw, or we actually mandatethat.
Like we we speak that out in inmeetings, it's written down,
it's in our employee manual,it's part of our training, that

(33:55):
we give people ampleopportunities to step away from
work throughout the workday andbeyond.
And we don't treat this as acharacter flaw, we don't guilt
this.
In fact, we celebrate it.
One example that I thought ofhere is um you and I actually
both know of this practice.
It's an emergency hospital thathas two really cool work-life
balance policies that theymandate, trained into their

(34:15):
leadership development, and theystick to it guaranteed every
single shift.
The first one is that everybodyon shift, every full-time
employee working a certainnumber of hours, gets a mandated
one-hour lunch break.
Like it is scheduled, it isstuck to.
Everyone in the hospital, Andy,it's 11 a.m.
You're on your lunch break now.
Bye.
And you go away for an hour andyou can leave, you can do

(34:37):
whatever you want, right?
The other one is, and this oneis really cool because it's
actually informed by literaturefrom human medicine, in which
they determined um acrossmultiple studies in human
medicine that a significantincrease in medical errors
occurs after people work 10consecutive hours.
And so in this particularhospital, they have a mandate
that says no one ever works morethan 10 hours, and they stick to

(34:59):
it.
Like literally stick to it.
You know what, Dr.
Davison, you're at 10 hours.
This doctor's gonna step in andtake over this patient now.
Bye.
Wow.
So yeah, I think those arereally cool.
Yeah, so these are recoverystandards, right?
So if we want people to thrive,recovery cannot be optional.
It can't be like a a side perkthat you get to do if there's

(35:20):
time.
It has to be designed in to ourorganization.
Andy, when you think of like arecovery standards document,
what are one or two rule rulesthat I maybe haven't shared yet
that you think should beincluded in pretty much every
veterinary hospital's recoverystandards?

SPEAKER_02 (35:36):
Um, I have a couple of thoughts here.
The first one, it's againsomething that I experienced,
right, when I had my team ofamazing technicians that when
they wanted time off, it wasexpected that they were the ones
to be responsible for findingthe coverage.

(35:57):
And that it was, you know, theirsole responsibility.
And if they could come to mewith somebody already lined up
to cover their shift, oh yeah,cool, no-brainer.
Now, one of the tweaks that Imade when I stepped in was that
I encouraged them to do thatfirst.
And if they couldn't find or,you know, nobody else was

(36:18):
available, then I would helpthem because time off was a
really big deal to me, clearly,because you know, I knew what I
knew, I knew what I was missingout on and I didn't want them to
miss out on it.
Um, but that idea, right?
That like it's the it's thatperson's sole responsibility to
find coverage.
No, it should be a sharedresponsibility.

(36:41):
They should have a resource, aperson, a a manager, a database,
something that gives themresources to help find coverage
with options so that it's notthis like black or white thing.
The other thing I think thatshould make its way into

(37:02):
recovery standards is theencouragement to use your time
off for good days.
And the best way I can think todescribe that is yeah, we'll
call in sick.
We'll call in when we have amigraine.
We'll call in when we feel likeour head is exploding and we

(37:23):
can't possibly get off the couchbecause if we get behind the
wheel of the car to drive intowork, we're gonna throw up all
over the dashboard.
We will call in for thosereasons.
But what I would love to see isthe encouragement for people to
call in when it's been 500degrees for the last three
months.
Yeah, and it's finally cooledoff and there's a breeze, and

(37:46):
you have the afternoon to whereyou could go out and ride your
horse.

SPEAKER_00 (37:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (37:51):
And you wouldn't sweat, and it wouldn't be like,
oh, it's so hot.
And that that would be anacceptable reason to call out as
well.

SPEAKER_01 (38:00):
Yeah, I'm gosh, this is I love this idea.
Okay, so I'm there's a couplethings that I'm thinking of.
I'm gonna try and get out herereally quickly.
What this sounds like to me islike it's almost like mandatory
time off, right?
So this goes back to what I saidearlier when Tesla pushed back
on us having uh an unlimited PTOpolicy because people don't use
it.
And so what we ended up decidingto do is that we were gonna have

(38:22):
a generous PTO policy ofmultiple weeks off.
But in addition to that, as anorganization, we would shut down
twice a year, uh, the week ofthe 4th of July and the week and
a half between Christmas and NewYear's, and that that time would
be completely shut down.
The whole company at Flourish isshut down.
So nobody has to worry about,oh, but Kelly's still working
and she might need help.
And it's paid time off.

(38:44):
And so this is setting asidegood time, right?
Is kind of what you're after.
And then this is making me thinkof like, you know, some of the
stuff that we talked about inprior episodes, the importance
of, especially in a managementor a leadership position, uh
cultivating high-qualityconnections with your team
members and knowing that like ifI'm your manager and riding
horses is something that you dothat's really important to you,

(39:05):
it's very central to your lifeoutside of work and what
nourishes your soul.
If I know that, and I know thatit's been 105 degrees for the
last two weeks, but next Tuesdayit's only 78.
Guess what I can do?
I don't even have to wait foryou to call in on a good day.
I can go to Tess and Kelly andsay, Hey, do you guys mind
covering for Andy next Tuesday?

(39:25):
Because she hasn't gotten toride her horse in quite some
time, and Tuesday looks likeit's gonna be a great day for
her to go do an extended ride.
And then I can go and just giveyou the day off.
Talk about work-life balance,right?
Um, yeah, those are great ideas.
I love that.
Yeah.
But the second culturerenovation idea here is to make
access visible and fair.

(39:46):
One of the things aboutwork-life balance is that
confusion breeds resentment andfavoritism really kills trust.
So creating a simple like accessmap by role.
Things like what flexibilityexists for all the different
roles in the hospital and whatdoesn't.
You could think of this like umkind of like a list of work-life
balance buttons that people canpush all on their own.

(40:08):
Things like how they can swapshifts without management
approval.
Um, things like PTO requestprocedures, like exactly what
that looks like, how it how itlooks, and what are the things
that you can do to maximizeapproval for PTO requests?
Um, things like uh what kind ofwork they could do remotely.

(40:28):
I know, shocking, right?
Wait, in a veterinary hospital,that makes no sense.
We all have to be in thepractice.
That's not necessarily true forevery role and for every uh task
that every role has to do.
And so, like publishing thosethings, giving those clear rules
of the road so that peoplearen't guessing who gets what or
relying on back channel favorsto take advantage of their

(40:50):
This is how we can improvefairness and community, which
are two of the biggest driversof burnout that have nothing to
do with workload, by the way.
The third idea here is toredesign staffing assumptions
from fully staffed to reliablycovered.
I'd really like for us tochallenge the sacred belief that
the hospital must always be,quote, fully staffed.
First of all, I think that's anebulous term, and I think it's

(41:10):
meaningless most of the time.
What does that even mean?
The fully how are you gonnadetermine that?
We are not building widgets in aveterinary practice.
Veterinary practice is by itsvery nature variable and
unpredictable.
And so what does fully staffmean?
I have no idea who's coming intomorrow, what the cases are
gonna be like, what emergenciesare gonna show up, what
unexpected issues we're gonnahave with patient A versus

(41:32):
patient B.
There's no way to ever be fullystaffed.
So let's let's get rid of that.
I know it sounds noble, but itoften turns time off into a
guilt trip and makes policiesvery unusable.
Instead, I think what we need todo is aim for reliably covered.
Now, this could meancross-training a few tasks,
making sure that people uh havemultiple skill sets, building in

(41:54):
a float shift, capping same-dayadd-ons, making coverage plans
predictable.
I I think the coverage plan oneis actually a really big one.
I think what what I see most ofthe time out in the wild is
people being like, oh shit,someone called in.
What do we do now?
And they freak out and theyreact, right?
I don't think it should be thatway.
I think we should have a plan inplace in advance.

(42:16):
So that's what a coverage plancan be.
It's a pre-agreed set ofprocedures that a team's gonna
follow when call-offs happenbecause they will, they
inevitably happen all the time,right?
So let's plan for those inadvance.
And when they happen, this thiscoverage plan allows people to
respond predictably instead ofpanicky, guilt trippy, or just

(42:36):
improvising on the fly, right?
So maybe we'll have a coverageladder in our coverage plan.
And this is like a list ofquestions.
So, okay, hey, Andy called insick today.
Here are the three questionsthat we're gonna quickly review
as a team in a quick huddle inless than 10 minutes before we
start our day.
What are the things that wecan't get off of our plate
today?
What are the necessary things?
What are the things that maybefeel urgent, but actually can be

(42:59):
kicked, you know, that can bekicked down the road to the end
of the day or to tomorrow?
What are the things that we canviably reschedule to free up
some resources for today?
Right.
Like we could do that as a team,as a huddle, once the once it
calls in, once somebody callsin.
It's basically like triaging theday, right?
This restores control, by theway.

(43:20):
So people can plan their lives.
And control is one of the sixareas of work life that can help
us reduce burnout.
So it can reduce the PTO penaltythat quietly fuels burnout.

unknown (43:30):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (43:30):
The other thing that jumps out to me about this is
this is um what the resilienceliterature will kind of support,
right?
It reminds us that this is a wayto boost our resiliency in
challenges, chaos, adversity,all of that.
If this happens, right?
So if so and so calls out sick,then I will I will ask these

(43:54):
three questions to my team sothat we can triage the day.
I will see who's here that'sbeen cross trained in.
Anesthesia, so that we can makesure that all the procedures are
still happening.
And it exactly works because ofthe restoration of control.
It keeps our mind chatter fromgoing, oh God, the world's
ending.
All the dumpsters are on fire.

(44:14):
We're never going to get itdone.
This is terrible.
To no, actually, we do have somecontrol over this.
And we are going to be able towork together through this
challenge.
And we will come out a betterteam because of it.
And that's like my resiliencebells are going off because look
at that.
Look at that.
It can contribute to resiliencyas well.

SPEAKER_01 (44:33):
I'm I'm listening to you, and all I hear in my head
is it's the work-life balanceshuffle.
Um, Andy, as you know, I'm afootball fan.
Um, and back in the day, so thisis probably I'm gonna guess in
the early 90s, um, theCincinnati Bengals had a running
back who was pretty well known.
His name was Icky Woods.
And Icky Woods, when he wouldscore a touchdown, would do the

(44:53):
icky shuffle.
And I'm thinking like, you know,like the 30-second dance party,
right?
Like, okay, all right, techtechnician Susie's called in.
It's time for the work-lifebalance shuffle.
Bam! And we all do the dancewhere we triage the day and
figure out what we're gonna doto um to get through the day as
well as we can with someresilience.
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
It's like group resilience.
The last idea that I had herewas um to train leaders to kill

(45:16):
stigma.
Because it turns out that whenit comes to work-life balance,
managers are actually one of thestrongest levers here.
I think we have to train leadersto eliminate the stigma.
Supervisors are the gatekeepersof whether these policies are
real or just marketing blabber.
Leaders need to model use,right?
They need to normalize it, andthey need to be very careful of

(45:37):
their language, theirnonverbals, their responses.
No must be nice to get the dayoff, no eye rolls, no
punishment, no heavy sighs, nolike implied guilt tripping,
right?
For being human.
We also need to do quick stigmachecks, I think, right?
We need to check in with ourteam and with each other.
Uh are there people here thatare actually re afraid to

(45:59):
request time off?
Are there people that are afraidto call in sick when they really
probably need to or should?
What do they think would happenif they did?
Because here's the truth if apolyxy exists, but you can't
safely use it, it's not abenefit, it's a brochure.
And leaders have to play acritical role here.
Now, there's one person that Iknow that I think actually does

(46:23):
practice pretty good work-lifebalance.
I think, Andy, I think you mighthave an example of that for
today, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 (46:31):
I don't know if balance is the word I would use.

SPEAKER_01 (46:34):
Perfectly imbalanced.
How about that?

SPEAKER_02 (46:36):
Right, right.
There we go.
Perfectly imbalanced,entertainingly imbalanced.
Because this week's Florida Manheadline is hilarious.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
I'm so ready.
I can't, I can't even.
I'm just laughing already.
Florida man goes to bar insteadof hospital after shark bite.

(46:56):
After shark bite, of course.
Yeah.
After shark bite.
So apparently, this Florida man,yeah, it's it's priorities, I
guess.
But this particular Florida manum was out surfing and shocker,
got bit by a shark and came inonto the beach, and his buddy
was getting excited with himabout the fact that he had been

(47:18):
bit by a shark, and they decidedthat if they went to the bar,
everybody was gonna buy themdrinks because after all, he had
just been bit by a shark.
So, gushing blood, thisparticular Florida man hoofs it
off to the local bar to takeadvantage of the fact that he
just got bit by a shark so thateverybody will buy him drinks.
Did he ever end up at thehospital?

(47:39):
Do we know?
Um, we don't know.
We don't know.
Nobody knows.

SPEAKER_01 (47:45):
Oh my gosh.
Yep.
I've checked it all Florida.
Which one of the two is is moreFlorida man?
The one who had the go to thebar to get free drinks idea, or
the one who got bit by the sharkand agreed it would be a good
idea.

SPEAKER_02 (47:59):
I mean, this is definitely like a Florida man
cultural app, right?
We always talk about modelingthe behavior and celebrating the
behavior that you want.
This is this is this is this isan example of that.
Maybe not in the best way, butthis is definitely an example of
pure gold.

SPEAKER_01 (48:16):
Pure gold.
Well done.
Well done, Florida man.
Well, that brings us to the endof another episode of the
Veterinary Culture Lab.
Thank you all out there forlistening to this episode.
Um, please be sure to like, tosubscribe, share these episodes
with your colleagues andfriends, uh, and we will look
forward to being with you on thenext episode.

(48:36):
Take care and be well.

SPEAKER_02 (48:38):
See y'all next time.
Thanks for hanging out with usin the Veterinary Culture Lab,
powered by the science ofworkplace well-being, and
brought to you by FlourishVeterinary Consulting.
If today's episode sparked anidea, made you smile, or got you
thinking, hey, I should totallytry that.

(48:59):
Let us know.
What do you think?
Be sure to subscribe, share, andremember a thriving veterinary
culture is possible, and youdon't have to build it alone.

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.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Hey Jonas!

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018: Work Life Balance in Vet Med: What Are We Missing?"

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