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Staff Surveys - Clients and Staff
Information You can Use

Chances are you use surveys in your practice to get feedback from your clients about your doctors and staff, your client service procedures, and your practice overall.  You probably observed that some clients are more than willing to be surveyed, while others never seem to respond or do so very infrequently.  You may be getting feedback from the same group of clients, and still don't know what the non-respondents are thinking. 

One of the cardinal rules of surveys is that those who participate are entitled to feedback about the results.  (Hint: do your clients get any feedback about what you learn or what you do with the surveys they complete?)  Providing follow up significantly increases the likelihood that participants see the survey as useful and worth their time to complete, and they'll remember whether or not they saw results the next time you ask for their feedback.  Put some comments on your website or in your next newsletter and explain what you are doing differently as a result. 

Why do a staff survey?  The obvious answer is to find out what the staff thinks about the hospital as a place to work and to identify management/communication issues before they become problems.  But there's an equally important reason as it concerns your clients.  Overall, your team spends more time with the clients, including phone time, than the doctors (and the practice owners) do.  That puts them in a unique position to get feedback from clients about areas of the practice that management and owners may rarely experience. 

Some practice cultures encourage sharing that information at staff meetings, but in reality not all practices even have staff meetings.  We find that many team members believe they've never been asked to share their perspectives on client service and bottlenecks in a way that confirms that management values their experience and observations.  Surveys can help accomplish that.

Information from your staff about clients and client satisfaction

A client's satisfaction or discontent is based on their entire experience while at, or communicating with, your hospital, not just the time spent, or discussion, with the doctors.  Clients are more likely to be candid with staff than with doctors, as many are intimidated by veterinarians and all their credentials.  In addition, the client's focus when with the doctor is on veterinary care, not feedback about the practice, unless something has gone terribly wrong already.

Keep in mind that team members likely observe clients' reaction to what is actually happening as they interact with those clients, while doctors, owners, and management tend to focus on what is supposed to happen.  These can be significant differences that a practice can only fix if made aware of the issues.

Information from the staff about the staff

Of course, a staff survey should also ask for your team's feedback about the practice, in addition to what the clients are communicating to them. 

A good staff survey should give team members a chance to express both what they like about their jobs as well as areas that create problems or concerns for them.  For this reason, a good staff survey should require the team members to return the survey to an outside party, not to someone within the practice.  Each person's name should be on his/her response, but only to ensure feedback from all employees.  The actual surveys are never given to the practice, nor are any responses or comments attributed to specific employees.  Otherwise, all comments will automatically be watered down and shaded toward the positive as a job protection technique.  An outside party, however, can summarize the comments, find the common themes, and share those with the entire practice team without violating anyone's confidentiality.  Survey results or comments that are outliers can be ignored for purposes of the group feedback, though they may merit additional follow up by the outside consultant.

After administering many of these surveys, we can confidently say that the number one issue among teams in large and small practices, whether general or referral hospitals, is that staff suffers from lack of communication from owners and management.  We regularly hear this from technicians/nurses, front office staff, kennel workers and sometimes from doctors as well.  Digging further, we may find that there are no (or few) official policies in writing, that the employee manual doesn't exist or is inaccurate and out-of-date, and that different employees have different understandings about what the policies actually are. 

Even more commonly, employees have little or no idea where the practice is heading or what the owner(s)' long term plans are for the practice.  Face it:  if the owner is at or near retirement age, long-term job security looks less likely for the staff, regardless of the owner's real intentions.  Also instructive are questions about ways to improve patient care, remove bottlenecks in the hospital, and increase client satisfaction. 

One final question that measures the depth of the staff's concerns is to ask if they would bring their own pet to this practice.  The expected answer is, "Of course!"  So if more than one person answers "no", further investigation must be done.  Generally, the team members answering "no" will elaborate within the survey itself, which sets the stage for further analysis.  This question has uncovered problems with individual doctors, differences in the standards of care practiced by different team members, and communication issues that leave clients and staff unsure about the quality of medicine being provided. 

Conclusion

If your practice hasn't done so, consider a staff survey in the next few months.  For many of you, the winter months will be less hectic than the spring and summer, so there may be time to develop and administer a staff survey.  There is a wealth of information just waiting to be discovered that can provide kudos where you are doing well and a roadmap for areas to improve.