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In most veterinary clinics, leave isn’t the problem. On paper, teams have annual leave, personal leave and flexibility. Policies exist. Entitlements are clear. And yet many team members don’t feel like they can actually take time off.
They delay holidays. They work through exhaustion. They hesitate to request leave because they know what it will do to the team around them. Not because they don’t care about their wellbeing, but because they care too much about their colleagues. This isn’t a people problem. It’s a systems problem.
Rest isn’t a “nice to have” in veterinary practice, it’s directly linked to:
When teams can’t take leave, the impact isn’t immediate; rather, it builds quietly. And burnout doesn’t always show up as someone resigning overnight. It shows up as disengagement fatigue, frustration and mistakes. And eventually, it does show up as turnover – often at the worst possible time.
Clinics that can’t support leave aren’t just busy – they’re structurally under-resourced.
When you look closely, the issue is rarely attitude or willingness – it’s planning. Or more specifically, it’s a lack of forecasting.
If you don’t understand your workflow, revenue patterns, and staffing requirements, there is never a “good time” for someone to be away. So leave gets pushed, delayed or declined. Or worse, approved but absorbed painfully by the rest of the team.
Every Practice Manager and clinic leader should have a working understanding of revenue patterns, labour cost ratios and the daily and weekly workflow demand.
This isn’t a finance exercise, it’s an operational one because your ability to safely release your team to take leave depends entirely on how well you understand the business behind the roster.
Without this visibility, rostering becomes reactive – and reactive rosters don’t create sustainable teams. There are plenty of online courses and resources available from free introductory modules through to more structured programs like those offered by Harvard Business School Online.
Because once you understand your numbers, you stop reacting to problems and start preventing them.
Veterinary professionals aren’t always taught these skills, and many leaders step into management roles without formal training in forecasting or workforce planning – and that’s okay – but it does need to be addressed.
The goal isn’t to become a data scientist, it’s to understand enough to spot patterns early, question assumptions and make better, more informed rostering decisions
Whether that looks like:
…the goal is the same: to move from guessing to knowing.
Most clinics are sitting on valuable data, they’re just not using it. Looking at the same period last year gives you a strong baseline:
You’ll often find that the challenges you’re facing now aren’t new – they’re repeating. The difference is whether you choose to plan for them this time.
Compare your revenue per day with vet hours worked and nurse/support staff hours worked, as this is where staffing patterns and inefficiencies are much easier to identify.
Then review it side by side, day by day, because this is where patterns become impossible to ignore.
Many clinic owners are genuinely shocked when they see that on some days, the same (or very similar) revenue is generated with one-third to half the team. This isn’t a performance issue, it’s a rostering and structure opportunity and highlights:
When you start looking at your clinic through this lens, rostering stops being reactive and becomes strategic.
Good forecasting isn’t just about looking backwards, it’s also about recognising predictable patterns. For example, school holidays, public holidays and seasonal trends all influence demand and staffing.
School holidays often drive fluctuations in bookings and team availability, public holidays bring penalty rates and reduced staffing pools, and seasonal trends (parasites, emergencies, breeding cycles) can shift workload significantly.
When these factors are mapped into your planning, your roster becomes more than a schedule, it becomes a strategy.
Historical data is important, but it’s only part of the picture.
Your most recent 2–3 months show current growth or decline, changes in client behaviour, and your team’s true capacity right now. And when you combine historical patterns with recent trends, your forecasting becomes far more accurate and far more useful.
Before building any roster, there’s a critical step many clinics skip, and that involves understanding the true structure and reliability of your team.
How many of your team are permanent full-time or part-time, and how many are casual or flexible staff? And, more importantly, who are you relying on to keep the clinic running day-to-day?
Because here’s the reality – casuals don’t “request” leave, they take it.
Your casual staff are not obligated to provide ongoing availability, and flexibility works both ways. This means that the same people you rely on to fill gaps may not be there when you need them most.
This reality creates a hidden risk across many rosters, leading to an overestimation of workforce availability and an underestimation of exposure during peak periods. It means you’re building schedules based on assumptions, not certainty.
With recent changes to workplace law, long-term casuals working regular, predictable patterns may fall into “regular and systematic” employment. If someone is effectively working the same shifts each week, they may be entitled to convert to permanent and failing to recognise this can expose clinics to compliance issues, backpay risks, and employee disputes.
A quarterly (at minimum) workforce stocktake with your leadership team is critical to determine:
Because once you truly understand your workforce, you can stop guessing and start rostering with intent.
If your roster relies heavily on people who aren’t obligated to show up, it’s not a stable roster – it’s a hopeful one. And hopeful rosters are where leave problems begin.
One of the most common mistakes in veterinary rostering is building schedules around people, not demand.
Effective rostering starts with mapping the expected workload and understanding where pressure points will be, then allocating the right mix of skills and people to meet that demand.
This approach creates more consistent coverage, a fairer distribution of workload and clearer visibility of gaps before they become problems. It also allows leave to be planned and not feared.
No roster is perfect – people get sick, life happens, and circumstances change. But the difference between a clinic that manages this well and one that struggles isn’t luck, it’s structure.
Clinics that rely solely on their internal team will always feel the strain when gaps appear. Whereas clinics that intentionally build in flexibility create space for their teams to rest without everything else falling apart.
This is where flexible staffing becomes part of a sustainable workforce model, not just a last-minute solution.
If your team can’t take leave, it’s not about commitment, it’s about the systems behind them. With the right approach to forecasting, workforce planning and roster design, clinics can create predictable workflows that reduce pressure on individuals and allow teams to take leave without guilt or disruption.
Gaps will happen (they always do), but the difference is whether they create stress or are already planned for, and that’s where flexible staffing can change the game. Having access to pre-vetted professionals who are ready to step in when you need them turns last-minute chaos into controlled coverage.
Sometimes, a small shift in how you plan your workforce can completely change how your team experiences work.
If your clinic is feeling the strain of rostering gaps, leave pressure or unpredictable workflows, then it’s time to rethink how you staff. Unlock Veterinary Consulting can help you build the structure, and Shift & Paws gives you the safety net.
Lauren Chalwell is a veterinary operations leader, consultant, and founder dedicated to strengthening independent clinics across Australia and New Zealand. With a career spanning clinical nursing, multi-site operations leadership, and large-scale system and workflow implementation, she brings practical, in-clinic insight to every project. Lauren is the founder of Unlock Veterinary Consulting, supporting clinics with people-first, commercially smart business strategy, and Shift & Paws, a modern locum and staffing platform connecting good clinics with good people. She is passionate about building sustainable, psychologically safe workplaces and helping veterinary teams balance clinical excellence with strong business performance.
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