• Written by VETport

The staffing conversation in veterinary practice has changed. Recruiting veterinarians is easier than it was at the worst of the shortage. Credentialed technicians and experienced support staff are not, and the people leaving are frequently leaving the profession rather than moving to the practice down the road.

That distinction matters, because it means the veterinary technician shortage is not a competitive problem and cannot be solved by outbidding the practice down the road. It is a retention problem, and retention problems are mostly management problems.

Under-utilisation is the main cause

The most common reason a credentialed technician leaves is that they are not doing the work they qualified for. Someone who trained to place catheters, run anaesthesia and manage inpatients, and who spends their day on reception and restraint, is watching their skills decay while their qualification goes unused.

It is also poor economics. The practice is paying a clinical wage for administrative output, and simultaneously the veterinarians are doing tasks a technician could do, which is the same waste one level up. Fixing utilisation usually improves throughput and retention at the same time, which is rare.

The diagnostic is simple. Ask each technician what proportion of last week they spent on work requiring their credential. The answers are often uncomfortable.

Workload without recovery

Busy is not the problem. Busy without recovery is. A day with no gaps, lunch taken standing up, and notes finished after close is survivable for a week and corrosive over a year.

The practical fixes are unglamorous: protected breaks that are actually protected, appointment schedules with genuine slack rather than theoretical slack, and administrative work that has time allocated rather than absorbed. Documentation is often the biggest single block of absorbed work, which is one reason an AI scribe shows up in retention conversations rather than only efficiency ones.

Nowhere to go

Most veterinary practices have no career ladder for technicians. There is technician, and there is head technician if the head technician leaves. For someone five years in and good at the job, that is a reason to look elsewhere even when everything else is fine.

Progression does not have to mean management, and it usually should not, since promoting a good clinical technician into administration removes the thing they were good at. Areas of responsibility work better: anaesthesia lead, inventory lead, the person who owns nurse clinics. Each carries recognition, a bit more pay and something to be known for.

Client aggression is a retention issue

Abuse from clients has become a significant reason people leave, and it lands disproportionately on the front desk and on technicians rather than on veterinarians.

What helps is unambiguous backing. A written position that abuse ends the appointment, a manager who enforces it without the team having to ask, and a practice willing to lose a client over it. Teams notice which of those exist within about a week of joining.

What should I do first?

Ask, then act on one thing. A conversation with each member of the team asking what they would change, followed by visibly changing one of the answers, is worth more than a survey that produces a report.

If you want a starting hypothesis, look at utilisation first, because it is measurable, it is usually wrong, and fixing it helps the practice as well as the person. Our piece on reducing employee turnover covers the wider set of levers, and mental health in veterinary teams covers the part that pay and process cannot reach.

The number worth tracking

Cost of replacement, per departure. Recruitment, the vacancy, the training period and the productivity dip while the new person learns your practice. Most owners have never calculated it, and the figure tends to end the debate about whether retention spending is worth it.