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In a busy veterinary practice, it’s easy for staff to go above and beyond, staying late to help a patient in need or finishing up a day’s worth of tasks. While that kind of dedication is admirable and often necessary, it can also drain your practice’s bottom line. Uncontrolled staff overtime can significantly inflate payroll costs, eat away at profit margins, and even impact team morale over time.

Veterinary practices are labor-intensive businesses, and payroll is often the single largest operating expense. Overtime pay, typically 1.5x the employee’s regular hourly rate, can quickly increase those costs. For example, if a veterinary technician earning $20/hour logs just five hours of overtime per week, that’s an additional $150 per week, or nearly $8,000 per year for just one employee. Multiply that across several team members, and the financial impact becomes hard to ignore.

Beyond direct payroll costs, frequent overtime can also contribute to burnout and turnover. Employees who consistently work long hours may feel overwhelmed, leading to reduced job satisfaction, decreased productivity, and higher recruitment and training costs when those employees move on.

Before practice can rein in overtime, it’s important to understand why it’s happening.

Some common reasons employees stay late include inefficient scheduling, such as understaffed shifts or a lack of planning, leading to delays in completing end-of-day tasks. Last-minute appointments or emergencies are also a factor, while inevitable in veterinary medicine, many can be better managed with improved planning. Task overload also contributes; technicians or assistants are assigned duties outside their typical scope, which can slow the overall workflow. Additionally, a lack of delegation or cross-training can cause bottlenecks, especially when only one or two team members are qualified to perform certain tasks, leaving others unable to step in during busy times. By pinpointing the root causes, your practice can take mindful steps to reduce overtime in sustainable ways.

Controlling overtime doesn’t mean asking your team to cut corners or skip lunch breaks. Instead, it’s about creating smarter systems, optimizing scheduling, and setting clear expectations.

So what does that look like?

IMPLEMENT SMARTER SCHEDULING: Use your Practice Management System to predict busy times better and align staffing levels with demand. Review data, like appointment volume by day of the week or seasonality, to help make sure the right number of team members are on duty at peak times.

SET CLEAR OVERTIME POLICIES: Include a written policy in your Employee Handbook that defines when overtime is allowed, how it must be approved, and who is responsible for tracking it. Make sure supervisors and staff are all on the same page to avoid surprises on payday.

EMPOWER THE TEAM WITH CROSS-TRAINING: Cross-train team members to handle multiple roles. A client service representative who can assist with basic tech tasks or a technician who can support inventory processes helps distribute the workload more evenly and avoid bottlenecks.

MONITOR AND REVIEW OVERTIME TRENDS: Regularly review payroll reports to track overtime trends. If one team member or shift consistently logs extra hours, dig into the “why” and look for ways to redistribute work.

CREATE TIME AWARENESS: Encourage staff to be mindful of their time. Setting timers for repetitive tasks, wrapping up appointments on schedule, and building in buffer times between procedures can all help prevent unintended overages.

PLAN FOR EMERGENCIES WITHOUT BURNING OUT STAFF: Emergency appointments are part of veterinary life, but they don’t have to wreck the day’s schedule. Consider creating an “on-call” system, designating certain team members for extended hours on a rotating basis, or building flex time into the weekly schedule to cushion unexpected overages.

Reducing overtime isn’t about limiting care; it’s about using resources wisely so your team can continue to provide excellent service while keeping the business financially healthy. By taking a proactive and strategic approach to managing staff hours, practices can control payroll costs, improve team well-being, and increase operational efficiency.

Ultimately, when you respect your team’s time and align staffing with your practice’s financial goals, you create a more sustainable workplace, one that thrives both emotionally and economically.

Want to dig deeper into any of these suggestions? Let’s talk! mbingham@granitepeakcpa.com

Written by Meghan Bingham, CVPM