EP26 - How Unplanned Absences Are Quietly Destroying Your Vet Practice (And What to Do About It)

Every veterinary practice owner knows the feeling... it's a packed Thursday, and Tommy just called in. Again. Absenteeism is one of the most frustrating, financially draining, and culturally corrosive challenges in veterinary medicine, and yet most clinics are trying to manage it without a real policy in place.

In this episode of The VetPractice Playbook, we dig into the full absenteeism conversation; from understanding the difference between planned and unplanned absences, to why veterinary medicine's high-pressure environment makes this problem uniquely complicated, to what it actually looks like to build and enforce a policy that sticks.

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Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:38 Absenteeism in the Clinic
03:50 Planned vs Unplanned Absences
05:28 Defining "Excessive" Absenteeism
07:29 What are the driving forces of Absenteeism?
12:07 HR Perspective
14:00 Skills vs Reliability
17:54 Step-by-Step Attendance Policy
20:33 Managing Single Offenders & Launching a Policy Reset
25:32 Summary/Outro

Transcript

0:10

Welcome to the vet practice playbook brought to you by Vet Practice Pro, where we talk all things veterinary leadership, management, clinic ownership, and more. I'm Dr. Emily King, joined by John and Caleb Biddles. And um, yeah, make sure you check out vetpracticepro.com. I just have to say that because Harrison gets mad at me every time I say when you don't say dot com. No, when I say it, he's like, of course it's dot com. It's www. Where we bring you tools, conversations, and frameworks that help clinics move forward out of survival mode because we all live there and into intentional leadership. So yeah. Yeah. Also make sure you're on our email list. If you're not, um, we send out lots of emails through the week to help you guys. Um, then also, do um, do you want to describe circle? Sure. Our circle group is awesome. We got hundreds of veterinary professionals tuned into Circle at a place where you can get your questions answered, get your questions asked. And people from the VPP team may jump in and help out, but like minds sharing a like space. Yeah, exactly. Because all the people out there know better. So, like, help each other. Yes, that's it. It's a great place to do that. All right. So today we're talking about absenteeism. That's right. I said it was the four-letter word. Yeah. Spelled with however many letters that is. Yes, yes. Um, so with that, do you guys want to talk about kind of your experience with all that and why we're talking about it today? I, you know, it makes me grizzle when I think about absenteeism because it is such a thorn in the side of I think a lot of employers. And it's not just a normal call off every now and then. I think that it's, you know, like what determines excessive? Yeah. Like, what is the definition of excessive absenteeism? And then you get into our profession, and you know, um, it really messes with everybody's day when people call in because it flows downhill. It's not like you can't keep providing patient care, you know, like you have to be providing patient care. It's not like you can stop. So then what do you do? How do you keep people from doing this? I think in medical and veterinary worlds, we struggle with this as leaders so much because we're rooted in science, and science is very black and white. Yes. And health is science. However, absenteeism is not black and white. Where do you draw the line between somebody's sick and you don't want them to come in and get the whole clinic sick or immune-compromised animals or anything like that, versus okay, we know Thursdays are busy, and Tommy calls in every Thursday because he gets stressed out and overwhelmed. Where's the line? Where's the line? Yeah, it's absenteeism, is the gray area that we do not like. Mm-hmm. I think that um in veterinary medicine we have a really high pressure environment. And so I think it takes its toll on people in the form of compassion fatigue or, you know, um just you know, being tired emotionally a lot of the time. Um you have end-of-life care with euthanasia, you have clients being aggressive, you have people thinking that you're just trying to charge, upcharge them all the time. You have all of these things that are just like adding gasoline to a fire. But I think too those last-minute call-ins. How it affects the whole team too, because they're already burnout and now they're short. And so now that's even more crazy. It's just a whole trickle down. And I think it affects you financially, which people don't necessarily appreciate, I don't think, as well, from a business perspective. It is going to affect the business at some point. So let's break it down. What are we talking about when we're talking about absenteeism? We're not necessarily talking about there are two different branches. You can have your planned absences where somebody requests paid time off, where they have a medical leave of absence, where they've planned a surgery or they have something going on. These you can proactively find coverage for, you can fill gaps, you can adapt, and your ability to do so reflects your ability to manage your resources well and your schedule well. We are talking a little bit more in depth about these unplanned absences, these six o'clock in the morning. I got a flat tire, they send you a picture of a flat tire on a Chevy wheel, but you know they drive a Dodge. Um, you know, like they got stock photos or flat excuses uh not to show up and how that these how these harm your business, how to follow up with these folks, have the hard conversations and press on and redo some. I think that's what we're going for, fair. Yes. Yes. Um, so I think from a cost perspective to the clinic, you are either paying overtime because you have people filling in and you might have to ask them to stay late, or then you're paying maybe like a relief person to be in or whatnot. Or then you also have the the emotional burn on people. So you're paying that way as well. And then you have lost revenue because maybe you now you're like, okay, well, I can't see tech appointments in the afternoon because there's I have no coverage in the afternoon because this person typically is working with this person without two people. We can't offer that service. And so it is just so frustrating as a business owner. What do you guys consider um excessive absenteeism? This is that gray area. I think it benchmarks in comparison to what other employees are doing, what the culture of the place is. If you have several employees that are calling in all the time, it could be a reflection of your culture. And if it's not an immediate reflection, it will soon become one because it will drive division between your high performers and the ones that are calling in and leaving them short, like Kayla was just talking about. But I think that most places what you'll see is in a general line for a year's time, you they usually give six as your last warning, five or six is your last warning, seven, you're terminated, or six or seven, you're terminated. Six, seven for all you know, middle schoolers that tune into our podcast. But um, usually it's that six or seventh call in you're we're letting you go at that point. If you again, if you're not in a protected, we'll talk about it, but if you're not in a protected absence, such as FMLA or some sort of um American Disability Act type of absence, I I think that you're looking six a year is getting very pretty excessive. Yeah, six a year. That's every other month. The one every other month. I mean, like I think that there are things happening in a lot of clinics where it's like weekly, it's at least monthly. Oh yeah. I would say it's probably the same person monthly doing it. And I know this isn't our, you know, necessarily our topic realm to talk about, but you have to really look at tardyism too. Um if these people are showing up 20, 30 minutes late to work and putting your whole productivity to bot behind, your whole team behind, and you're starting off the day trying to play catch up. I think that really does take as much of a toll, at least on culture and productivity almost as an absenteeism. So you have to take those two in hand. Are they late and absent all the time? How engaged are they into being on time and ready to work? Yeah. So what do we think are the main driving forces of absenteeism? Burnout, right? I mean, that's obvious one. I mean, underappreciated, probably like feeling underappreciated or undervalued, or like it doesn't matter if I'm there or not. Right. You mentioned it in the pre-podcast conversation, but I really think that the challenge that we're facing today is more people and more people are calling in, not because of physical health issues, physical illness. We're up against the society that everybody leans on mental health. And while VPP puts out all sorts of information on burnout, how to properly manage it, manage it in a healthy way. Um, if you're not getting that down to your employees and your staff, you could result in some of this absenteeism issue because, well, their only answer is if work stresses me out, I'm not gonna go to work. Right. Right. And then as a leader, we're left to decide how you manage that and still show that mental health is important in our staff, but also you being here is important. Right. So where's this balance? Right. I think I was gonna say there's a balance between we know veterinary medicine is very busy, very stressful, stressful, but again, how is leadership handling it? What's your culture like? Are you taking time to appreciate your employees so they're not getting to that point where like, I had a busy day, I can't do it tomorrow. I can't do this again tomorrow. So, like, how are you leading your clinic and your culture? So they think back even when it was you know, a really touchy area is you have a lot of practice owners who are genuinely trying to make it a good place to work, you know, creating, you know, um good schedules so they're working four out of seven days a week, you know, um, you know, supporting when the times are busy, you know. I mean, like you have people like that are genuinely trying to make work environments as healthy as possible, and then you still have people who are calling in. And I'm starting and I don't know what it is, and I don't know the right way to necessarily talk about it because I certainly don't want it to sound like I don't think mental health is important. I do. But at the same time, I think that there are so many things outside of the clinic's control in terms of how folks live their lives outside of the practice. What are they doing on their times off? What are they doing when they have a full weekend? You know, are they recovering? Are they allowing themselves an opportunity, you know, to be able to mentally recover? Or are they positioning themselves for being tired, stressed out? You know, how how is all that happening? What is happening outside of the clinic doors? Because there's a lot of stuff the clinics can't, they're not in control of. Right. You know, um, and I think you you have a lot of people that are also having to manage other people in their lives, whether it be other sick people that they're taking care of, that then those people, you know what I mean? Like, and then it's all this trickle-down effect. Right. They care inside and outside for the comic. Yeah, exactly. Um I would also say too, as like a practice manager or even any staff, getting making sure you have that relationship with them, because it could be somebody who may not even just they just don't care. They don't care about the profession, they don't care about the clinic, they don't care if they're there or not. And so then that comes like should they be a part of the clinic? Like, are they just calling in because they just really don't care? And so I think that's where it's important to know your staff, have that relationship with them because it's gonna be obvious if they just I don't care. Like it's not a mental health thing, it's just I don't care if I'm here or not. Right. And I think when we have talked to mental health experts historically, they're like they can employees can use mental health as a way to take time for themselves. But if it continues to be a pattern and that she's the person was like, that is when that is not, that's not okay. Like it's not okay to continue to use mental health as a reason to call off every week, every other week, once a month, like and then not do anything to make your life better. Like it because I think when I think it diminishes those folks who truly are having an issue, right? Because you start like everybody's crying wolf. So you're like, oh, here we go again, you know. And so, like, I think you know, it and it's such a touchy subject because like, oh, they you don't care about people's mental health and you don't care about their well-being. And you and it's like, no, in actuality, I care. Like we could even be instead of mental health, we could even say they call in because they have migraines. Yes. Or a stomach issue. Like, if it's a weekly, monthly thing, like so from an HR standpoint, like a human resources standpoint on all of this, trying to equip leaders that are tuned in for answers. Um, you have to separate it in two buckets. It is a health issue, mental health issue. Are you an employer for that is required to offer Family Medical Leave Act? And that's uh, I believe the rules for that are 50 employees on employed for at least 20 weeks a year within your business. You have to recognize that. Use that as a tool in your tool belt. If they're calling in because of a the same health issue or the same mental health issue, say, you know, there's a trend here with your absences you might need to seek FMLA to avoid getting into final warnings and termination. You can say that. That's okay, you know, if you want your job protected. Now, the people that it's always a random excuse, it's always something like that. Tune into, you know, more of our SOP type episodes where we talk about having very very clear-cut and dry policies because the problem with managing this type of stuff is you do feel sympathetic for people who are chronically ill or do have mental health issues, and maybe they've lost a family member, or you know that they got a lot going on outside. But at the same time, how can you bring it into yourself to hold them accountable to the same standard as everybody else and be consistent? You have to be fair, firm, and consistent. And your absentee policy will back you, it will completely support you to where, okay, this is the first step. This is absence one and two, this is absence three and four. Now we're five and six, final warning seven. I'm sorry we have to let you go. So, really, if you set yourself up, you only have to deal with this six times and then it's over. Then you're moving on. And and you can sleep well at night knowing that you've had these conversations. It's not surprised to them, and that you've coached them and you've walked them through it. I think that's where people have so much trouble, and this is where it gets out of hand. It goes awry. You let Steve, who's been calling in for months over mental health, have 12 absences, but then you have somebody who never calls in all of a sudden makes it to number four and five, and they're scared they're gonna lose their job when their peer has been gone for the last three months and nobody's done anything about it. This is where you make back yourself in a corner and the policy will keep you from that. And what do you say to those folks who are like, oh man, you know, I know that I should probably let them go. I know they're draining my other employees, but when they're there, they're good. And so isn't it better to have them there, you know, uh 280 days out of the year instead of 300? At least I have them 280 days. I think the answer is, and we've talked about this before as part of our recruiting information, is you can train good people. Like you can train skills to good people. Um you you bring you hire good people that are gonna be consistent and dedicated to you, and you train them to be good 300 days a year. I think that's where it has to be. Rather than hire somebody that's already good, who's not gonna commit to you, who's gonna be calling in, who has a lot of issues, and they are constantly breaking your attendance policy. I think I would take somebody with lesser skills who's not good, coach them and train them up, knowing that you have a sold-out employee that's gonna continue to serve you loyally and not call in unless they need to. Um, because of what you talked about, the cost. There is so many unwritten costs with absenteeism, productivity, culture cost, everything that falls into that. Um, again, overtime, hiring an agency or you know, a fill position, all of that cost you money. It's not just losing somebody for the day, it's losing somebody and dollars on top of it. So I think in the long run, you're better to let them go and rehire. Yeah. And I think that one of the ways that we insulated ourselves from that was that we would always have one extra, we had an extra like seat always, because it gave you room to be able to make a decision that then you would have the seat filled. Like so you were always like overstaffed ever so slightly, such that then you weren't not making that decision because it was going to hurt you. Like, meaning, you know, you were gonna have to ask people to work overtime, or you were gonna have to work those shifts yourself, or you were gonna have to like we eliminated all of those things out of the decision making because those are biases that would sway you into you know not firing the person, right? If you don't want, you know, like I'm gonna make it hard now, so I'm not gonna fire them when in actuality that's what needs to happen. You need to terminate them so that you can find somebody better to feel fill the seat. And so making sure that maybe you're ever so slightly overstaffed. Yeah, if you're worried about staffing budget, and to your point, I think it's magnificent, especially in the small business world. Uh, if you have, you know, one or two people extra on your roster, I always found it's a lot easy to send people home early or to give people a day off because the schedule's not that busy. That's a reward to them. And you know, if they don't need the money, they don't need the work that they're willing to stay home or they'll leave at four instead of 6.30. You can save those staffing dollars in there. It prevents them from being in overtime. But at the point you have turnover, unexpected turnover from it, absenteeism or performance, whatever it may be, you have that cushion to say, hey, you're not gonna get to leave early for until we get somebody filled back in. Right. But they're okay with that. You're already like they understand the season. Yep. And I I think that you're really hitting on something hard there when it comes to staffing the planet. Yeah. Okay. What else do we have? So, what do you think a good policy looks like? Well, my two cents, he can probably talk more about the whole policy, but um, I always stress it has to start, whatever the policy is, it has to start at the higher. Yes. Like so it's like what John talked about. Uh it has to be clear and cut expectations um from the time they're hired. Um and if not, it just causes you know, well, Sally can do this, but I can't do that, and she can do this, and I can't do that. So lay it out first day. I think it has to obviously having it on paper is important, but it needs to reflect through your culture. Everybody needs to understand what that policy is, needs to be clear cut and dry. But in in the if you're going to, if I were to sketch one for you in the air, I would say one and two, occurrence one and two, verbal warnings. Just like, hey, just you're at one occurrence, you know, one call in. Uh, okay, this is your second. Three and four become written. Um, at that point, I'm writing down this is your third. Have your dates. One, two, three, four. Just have a form for everybody. Electronic probably would be easier. Record their dates, their reason for calling in, even though in some states they don't have to provide it. That's fine. But at least record their dates and time that they called in. And then when you get to five, that's your final written warning. Six is your final seven, you're terminated. Um, your final warning, your five and six, I would have signed by the employee. So one and two, verbal, three and four, you have written documentation, five and six signed by the employee. Seven is final termination. Get your things, you know, you called in, you're done, and you move on. Okay. I like it. Obviously. Very straightforward. Obviously, you got to make sure that you're in compliance with that's where I was headed. Yeah. Yes. And even in that, you know, three and four documentation when you're writing, that's when if you are uh subject to FMLA, be sure you document that an employee was you know advised to seek uh a medical leave of absence or a protected medical leave of absence if available. Uh, just so that you can, as an employer, you're covered and you did your part to try to refer them. If you're part of a large organization that has an employee assistance program, you know, if there's any sort of you know, large clinic groups out there that offer legal or employee assistance, that you put those referrals in there as well in your documentation. I like it. Yep. Document everything, makes it way easier. Okay, so what do you do when you have one specific person who's who's like calling in? They're they're they're the person doing it all the time. How would you work that up? How would you walk through that? If the rest of your clinic's on board and it's just the one person, I would do exactly what I just said. Fall back on your policy. Um, and then if you the hard part is not managing that employee. If you have a clear-cut policy, you don't have to have the conversations aren't hard. You know, right? They're really driven off of a piece of paper. So what about a clinic doesn't have a policy set in place right now? Then literally get one. That is what you need to do first. Communicating is at staff meeting, and then you have to start at ground zero with everybody. Yeah, you can't pull back in old occurrences and things like that. Say it's gonna be a rolling calendar year, effective this date that this is when this starts, whether that be January 1, a fiscal year, or however you want to do it, you know, October to October, because you got to roll it out as soon as you possibly can. Um, start everybody at blank. Hey, listen, we're gonna erase all of your old absences, they mean nothing. Starting now, this is the policy moving forward. I like that. But you do have to have your ears on, like you said, if it's one person, that can be a culture killer. I do think as a leader, you and your supervisory team, your leader team need to have a conversation about it. Hey, that we're having trouble with this person. We all know. Have ears on because if you're high performance. Performers are buzzing about it. The answer is don't disclose why they're calling in. No, they have a mental health issue or they have a medical issue. Just say we understand that they they have a high level of absences in the leader to leadership team. We're addressing it according to our policy. Right. That's what you say. And oh, what? There's a policy? Yeah, everybody knows it. And if you don't, this is what it is. We are following up according to policy. And and if they know, if your high performers know that you are following up under the same policy they're held accountable to, it'll save your culture. Yeah. I think that's a great idea. I think if you don't have one, take the time, take an afternoon, an evening, write up the policy. It does not need to be difficult. Explain, you know, uh like what they need to the form that they need to fill out or whatever it's gonna be, you know, for for planned absences. And then what is what is the thing going to be the the like what direction do you need to do if you have an unplanned absence? Like you wake up in the morning and your tires flat. Like you're saying, what should you do? Yeah. And you go through these steps, specific steps, you know. I feel like I hogged a lot of mic time on this one being the eighth. No, it's good. Okay, but the last thing I we have to say without mentioning, where you cannot be an empath at call-in number seven when you go to terminate. You can't be a what? You can't be an empath. You cannot have empathy for that person. Oh, and whatever causes that seventh call-in, it doesn't matter if they lost. I mean, I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter if their tire blew up, their motor blew up, their, you know, something crazy happened. The answer is you shouldn't have got yourself to number seven in the first place. Right. And what happens is is people start to beg and plead with this seventh call-in because I wouldn't call in unless it was so severe. You know, it was so bad, I wouldn't call in. Okay, but you had six more opportunities before this. You should have never been in this position to begin with. I'm sorry, I have to let you go. Right. And because there will always be another call-in. There'll always be another one. There will always be another. And people get they start to back out and get cold feet when it comes to letting somebody go. Well, yeah, because if people are saying, I need a mental health day, right? So, and they're saying that over and over and over again every other month. I need a mental health day. I need a mental health day. You know, like you feel like, oh crap, maybe they're right, maybe they need a mental health day. And you can always, when they say that, hey, let's sit down and look at your schedule and your PTO balance and let's figure out how we can schedule you some breaks intermittently. PTO isn't just so you can go on family vacation all the time, that is personal time off. And if you're burning yourself so that you can have three weeks off in a row once a year, like maybe we should talk to you and you can lead them and guide them and spacing this out quarterly. Like every quarter, you have a four or five-day break. I'm not gonna lie, right now I am burnt out. But next weekend I got a five-day weekend. The following weekend, I have planned a five-day weekend because I know my timeline, I know my limits. And sometimes we can coach employees on let's explore your limits and let's schedule your time off around that, or let's change the way we schedule you to where you work the first four days of one week and the last four days of another to allow yourself time to refresh. So there's several tools you can use as leaders, and I think the most important thing is if they come to you or you go to them to have resources. Yeah. Okay. Well, the good news is culture is fixable, the policies are fixable, right? You can implement them. The fact that so many people don't have those things implemented into their cultures is a it's good it should almost be like, oh, this is so good. I don't have this already in place. I just need to get this in place. And then I just need to be willing to enforce it. Yes. And so, um yeah, and then maybe you could bring back stability and retention and all those other good things. I think so. Okay. All right. So is that it for today's episode? I think so. There's enough. All right. Well, we hope you got a few plays to use for yourself or for your clinic. If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with others, leave us a review, and check out vetpracticepro.com for tools and courses that can take your clinic to the next level. We'll see you guys. See you next week. Have a great week.