Get set for our colleague engagement survey

VETPARTNERS is committed to creating a great place to work and our Best Companies b-Heard engagement survey - and the feedback we receive from it - is one of the ways to help achieve this together.

On September 1st, you’ll receive an email invitation from Best Companies to complete the survey. The deadline to respond is September 19^th.

The aim of the survey is to gather anonymous and honest feedback about what it’s like working for your practice or business, as well as VetPartners, whichever country you’re in and whether you’re in a practice, our central team or any of our other businesses.

We’re going to use the feedback to help us to understand what is great about working for VetPartners, and equally, understand where we can make improvements to help make VetPartners an even better place to work for all of you.

In 2024, almost 4,300 of our colleagues took the time to tell us how they feel – that’s 61% of all team members – and VetPartners was ranked as ‘One to Watch’ in the Good Place to Work category, indicating good levels of workplace engagement.

We were also delighted that 25 of our veterinary practices achieved 3 Star ‘World Class’ rating in the survey.

VetPartners Group Director of Culture and People Tim Shearman said: “By organising annual colleague engagement surveys through an external company, we can ensure the results are objective, impartial and credible, and can be benchmarked against other companies.

“It enables us to identify where we stand, spot areas for improvement and celebrate great engagement.”

The core areas you will be asked to provide feedback on are leadership, your manager, personal growth, your team, wellbeing, fair deal, giving something back and the company.

We listen to what you have to say and take action to improve wherever we can.

Here are just a few of the ways we’ve responded to your feedback and ideas on what you wanted us to do, while practices work on feedback they received.

• Enhanced Maternity pay: VetPartners offer maternity pay of eight weeks full pay; 12 weeks half pay followed by 19 weeks Statutory Maternity Pay. This also applies for primary and secondary carers during adoption and surrogacy. A 5% return to work award. Enhanced paternity leave of two weeks full pay.

• Life insurance cover: Having life insurance can help provide peace of mind, as well as ensure your loved ones have a little of the financial worry taken away if the worst happens. Group life insurance will pay out a lump sum to our employees (1 x annual salary).

• While there’s no statutory right to time off for IVF treatment, VetPartners offers compassionate support during this journey, including one week of company sick pay within a 12-month period to recover from treatment, and partners of women receiving IVF treatment are entitled to up to two days of unpaid leave to support them through the process.

• Funding for overseas volunteering: Since launching our overseas volunteering grant scheme, 35 graduate vets, 16 vets and 17 RVNs have been awarded grants to volunteer for charities abroad, with the scheme continuing to make two rounds of awards per year.

• Volunteering day: Every year we give all team members one day’s paid leave to volunteer for a charity or worthy cause close to their heart.

• Giving back: since January 2023 we have raised £692,296 for charity, of which £299,852 was from VetPartners in the form of matched donations and donations for the months of movement. 

• More colleagues participating in the Developing Leaders and the Senior Leaders training courses.

• Increased nurse training through Nurse Evolve and Nurse Thrive.

• Supported practice to achieve Investors in the Environment accreditation as we know giving back and sustainability are important to you.

• Recruitment of a mental health trainer to increase our focus on wellbeing and mental health.

• Relaunched and built on our career pathways to improve transparency of career development – and there is more to come on this.

Article by Amanda Little, VetPartners PR and Communications Director. Email amanda.little@vetpartners.co.uk