As veterinary practices across the country struggle to recruit veterinarians, Petpack has provided a novel solution that has helped one regional veterinary business buck the trend and successfully attract new staff to their bustling clinics.
With over 150 staff spread across six regional sites, Ballarat Veterinary Practice had been grappling with how best to recruit veterinarians – not only to maintain their services amidst increasingly busy caseloads, but to also grow the business and retain staff into the years ahead.
Managing Director Paul Dempsey had initially only engaged Petpack to assist with general marketing activities (Google Ads, Google My Business and a new practice website), however, it soon became apparent that Petpack’s expertise could also help the practice group with their recruitment woes.
“It’s a well-known fact of the shortage of veterinarians in Australia and the difficulty of attracting them to work in clinics, especially in regional areas. We were at a point where we were really trying to reduce the number of new clients coming to the practice because we were already at capacity,” explained Paul.
“We’d engaged Petpack to assist us with our own marketing generally and we found ourselves in a situation where we were wanting to work on the brand of the business to try and build our brand as an [AVA-accredited] ‘Employer of Choice’ amongst the veterinary community as a good option for someone to set up their career and commit long-term.”
Supported by Petpack, the key to building this brand awareness was to develop a product offering that highlighted Ballarat Veterinary Practice’s work-life balance offerings and potential for professional development and personal growth.
“We made some significant changes within the business to create a great working environment and strong work-life balance such as flexible rostering, genuine four-day work weeks, and innovative ways of handling after-hours requirements, and we really want to showcase these. Petpack was able to help us improve the visibility of that by developing a totally separate website as a bit of a novel approach to showcase our products, if you like, in recruitment,” said Paul.
The result was the Vet Life in Ballarat website which provided a platform for the practice to showcase the benefits of the business to prospective employees, and highlight the benefits of living and working in Ballarat.
For more information about how we can help with your website, don’t hesitate to send us an email to sales@petpack.com.au or call us at (03) 9690 6253.