This is where the form will come LVS!
Gang of four: People, pets, profit, planet
People, pets, profit seems to be the mantra for most practices in our industry – and understandably so. The order might change, but they’re the core three.
The fourth pillar that is becoming more and more important is planet, or sustainability. It’s one that for years we’ve been quietly looking into. How can we reduce our carbon footprint and be as responsible as we can be? We’ve looked into how we source medication and supplies, our energy suppliers, how we do our laundry – whatever we can do to make a difference. This ties into how we interact with our communities and the importance we place on social responsibility, transparency and accountability.
And now that we can proudly call ourselves a B Corp practice, this is all enshrined. This is something we’re incredibly excited about, not just because we achieved it the first time we applied – which is very rare – but because we got double the score that most businesses get on their first application. We also discovered that we’re the very first veterinary practice in Europe to be recognised as B Corp, and only the fourth in the world. This is something we’d really encourage our colleagues in other practices to look at, as a mechanism to improve.
It doesn’t have to be through B Corp. But by placing sustainability at the heart of what we do we’ve also found that we’ve driven our standards even higher. And now we’re looking at where we can improve next.
The Pennard values
Values are what we recruit on.
We recruit for team fit and character first, and competency and skills second. Why? You can teach skills, but it’s very hard to mould character. The values that are important to us have really evolved from the work we’ve done with our team. And they’re really simple.
The first is continuous improvement – you’re either growing or dying, and we like to keep growing! I love what I do with people now because every time I have a conversation with someone, I learn something. The moment you think “I know this already” you switch off the ability to have new insights.
Compassion. It should go without saying in our industry, but it still needs to be said. We champion conscious and unconscious focus on being compassionate, and not just to our patients, but to our clients and to our colleagues too.
We’re always client focused, whether that’s our lovely pet owners coming into practice, or, again, the work we put into making sure our colleagues are supported – internal clients – with our focus on things like personal development plans and check ins. Unlimited CPD is one of the benefits we offer, and we link that to our personal development plans – showing how our values are tied to behaviour.
Being clear and honest in conversations, listening when people talk to us and pushing at all times for clarity. Because not every conversation is going to be comfortable. And that goes both ways – we need to be okay with hearing things which make us feel uncomfortable as well. This then dictates how we deal with challenges. We’re proud to think that over the years, we’ve been dealing with challenges pretty efficiently, and you can tell that by the quality of our service.