Highly skilled veterinary technicians are in short supply. Practices lucky enough to have one or more typically do whatever they can to retain them for as long as possible. But what if the technician is toxic? It’s not a new phenomenon. We’ve dealt with the problem for years, and many of us have processes to address the toxic culture and reestablish harmony.
Your employees’ unique personalities and behaviors contribute to your practice’s overall culture. When you have even one venomous employee, the toxicity can harm your entire organization. Negativity manifests in many ways and is not always overt.
Signs of a Toxic Technician
Identifying toxic technicians is easy if you’re objective and look for their controlling behaviors. Many of them are in lead positions because they are generally highly skilled and competent, but a pattern of poor behavior emerges. For example, they:
- Make themselves seemingly indispensable by withholding information about equipment, maintenance, procedures and protocols from other team members.
- Find fault with and reasons not to hire qualified job candidates.
- Are unwilling to train or mentor new hires.
- Haze new employees.
- Resist change.
- Insist on being the go-to person.
- Hoard knowledge.
Knowledge is power. Toxic technicians believe that the practice cannot function without them. Such a desire for job security can be dangerous, especially when they withhold pertinent information from other employees. Successful veterinary hospitals require the flow of communication, shared knowledge and collaboration. Knowledge hoarders aren’t just detrimental to your team’s morale; they’re also a liability to your company’s success. What happens if they leave? Where does all that hoarded information go?
Toxic technicians typically bring a lot to the table as far as skills and abilities, which is a contributing factor in the whole power play. They know they’re good at their job technically, and they frequently use their adeptness to align themselves with management or, most often, a key doctor who believes that functioning without a particular technician is impossible. We want to keep our doctors happy since they are typically harder to replace than technicians, but such an alliance perpetuates the toxicity.
Unfortunately, toxic behaviors frequently cause tension with other members of the technical team, leading to less job satisfaction, burnout and higher turnover.
How to Deal With a Toxic Technician
Our employees can make or break our business, and one bad apple can inflict significant harm. Therefore, addressing toxic employees as soon as possible is vital to reduce their negative impact on your organization.
Here are some steps you can take to so that controlling personalities have a harder time gaining a foothold:
- Develop written job descriptions for each job in the veterinary practice. The guidelines help communicate expectations and provide a springboard for holding employees accountable.
- Institute phase training for all technicians so that the learning is consistent, timely and measurable. If you do well with hiring, all your technicians will have the same opportunity to learn the skills needed to function at a high level.
- Work with your veterinarians to break the favoritism cycle. The issue usually centers on trust, so when all technicians are equally skilled and trained, your doctors will be comfortable calling on the entire team.
- Create protocol manuals covering equipment and hospital maintenance, procedure preparations, and other information critical to operations. Update the manuals as things change to reduce knowledge hoarding.
Toxic employees can be difficult to deal with, no matter their position. Although the situation can be awkward, ad-dress bad behavior as soon as you identify it. Acting fast will minimize the damage to your team, practice culture and business. Prompt and consistent attention to negative behaviors is necessary to reduce the development of a noxious environment.
It’s always a good idea to address employees with compassion and empathy to find a solution that benefits everyone. When managing toxic technicians, do it nonconfrontationally. People who feel threatened or attacked can become defensive and difficult to talk to.
Here are a few other tips:
- Acknowledge their contributions to the practice. Let them know they are valued team members who must change some things.
- Listen to their side of the story and try to understand their perspectives.
- Be specific and give examples of behaviors that contribute to negativity in the workplace.
- Work with them to create a reasonable and specific performance improvement plan.
- Give direct feedback and explain the consequences.
- Reassess their progress. Follow-up meetings will be necessary.
- Document everything.
The practice team looks to leadership to address problem behaviors. Unfortunately, when divisiveness carries no con-sequences, the toxic culture continues. Your goal should be to work with a problem employee to address undesirable behavior and find a resolution. If all efforts fail and the toxic technician isn’t willing or able to improve poor behavior and embrace the team culture, termination might be the only option.
Allowing toxic behavior within a team is more costly than just having a bad employee. The be-havior affects the entire group and could hurt your ability to hire and retain veterinarians and other employees. The goal is to create a healthy work environment and a positive culture where every employee feels valued.