Embracing flexibility in a small animal practice

How do you work flexibly?

I work compressed, staggered hours combined with working from home. My working days are Tuesday to Thursday in Swindon, and Friday working from home. I work 40 hours across these four days, eight hours on a Tuesday, twelve hours on a Wednesday, ten hours on a Thursday and eight hours on a Friday.

Why do you work flexibly?

I live in Lincolnshire and work in Wiltshire, I have two young children and my husband works shifts. We agreed as a family that my husband would work part time, but I didn’t want to be away for five days of the week, which is why it was organised for me to work compressed shifts. I work three days a week in practice in Swindon, and one day a week from home.

How has this benefitted you and the business?

It gives me a much clearer work life balance. I can be a present parent, as I’ve found in the past that working five days a week when you have children did lead to me not having enough time to be able to spend with them. I felt a pressure from myself to go back to work, and I do feel I missed out on quality time when they were younger. My son will start school in September, and I am looking forward to having a life admin day on the Monday so that my weekends will be free for family time. I may even have the time to take up a new hobby or undertake another qualification that I have been putting off until the children were older!

This has worked for us as a company, especially since the start of the pandemic. My fellow Directors all took more of a clinical role, and still continue to do so. This has allowed for me to be able to pick up more of the non-clinical work of a company director. I feel more fulfilled in my role, as I feel that I am able to contribute to our team and hopefully relieve some of the more clinical Directors of the burden of the non-clinical tasks.

How did you get to work flexibly?

At the time that it was agreed for me to work flexibly, I was the operations manager of the company. So, I had a conversation with one of the Directors about how it could work for me after we had relocated there from Wiltshire. This was then discussed with the other Directors and authorised. I have since put together a flexible working request form, so that it is documented officially for both parties.

What have been the challenges, and how did you overcome them?

The biggest hurdle I had was my own guilt to be honest, I felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight and that others might think it unfair and that I was letting the team down. No one has ever made me feel like that, it’s my own perception, but interestingly I don’t think that of anyone else that has a flexible working pattern.

We have looked at the work life balance of our clinical teams and as such we had the opportunity to become a host practice for an out-of-hours provider. This was not an easy decision to make, but has meant that we have been able to allow more flexible working. We have also recently looked at our length of evening consults, our weekend rotas and this has given us more opportunities to alter working days. We have one main hospital and 5 branches; it is more difficult for us to manage flexible working at the hospital as the nature of the work makes it difficult to shorten the shift length, but we can reduce the days worked instead. We are fortunate to have more felxibilty at our branch practices, so can accommodate team members who need to work altered shift lengths for any reason here.

What is your advice for anyone wanting to work flexibly?

Consider your request from an employer’s perspective. It’s very easy for us to have tunnel vision when looking at what we want, but we need to be prepared to meet in the middle and compromise.

I think it is still important to highlight your preferred working arrangement but be mindful that this could be declined if may have a negative effect on the business. Will your request mean that there could be loss of earnings for the company? Is it fair on other colleagues? What suggestions could you come up with to counteract the negative impact? This isn’t solely your responsibility to find these solutions, but if you are willing to have a prepared plan B that compromises and could meet the needs of the business better then you need to bear this in mind.

I would also recommend not expecting an immediate change, so where possible don’t leave your request until the last minute. Sometimes this can’t be helped, however if you are able to give your employer that chance to review the request, speak to anyone else that this may affect, alter rotas etc then your request maybe looked upon more favourably.

More information

Lyndsay’s case study is included in our resource, Flexible working: Embracing flexibility in the veterinary profession. This includes facts, figures and many more examples of how vets across a range of sectors are working flexibly, and offers tips and advice on tackling some of the challenges that can arise when introducing increased flexibility into your workplace.

Tell us about your flexible working experience on social media @BritishVets using #GoodWorkplaces and #TimeForChange