New receptionist career pathway launched in CVS practices
Pathway offers lifelong career opportunities to group’s support staff
CVS has developed a new receptionist career pathway, which has this week been launched to its 1,100 frontline receptionists in its companion animal and referrals practices UK-wide.
Developed by a team of 15 – including eight receptionists, three practice managers, and learning partners - the pathway aims to offer the company’s receptionists clear career progression, and show how they can have a lifelong career within the group.
The pathway highlights how receptionists can progress through five stages of seniority - from starting their career as a receptionist to becoming a head receptionist, then beyond into practice and regional leadership roles. It also highlights how receptionists can branch out laterally into other roles within the group’s other divisions.
Behind each individual level within the pathway sits a detailed outline of the necessary skills and capabilities for each role, along with a curriculum of learning. This starts when a new receptionist is onboarded in a ‘developing’ stage, moves from levels one to three, finally ending in a Head Receptionist stage.
The Developing stage, for example, would see receptionists gaining an understanding of the key elements of the clinical care provided by the practice, along with acquiring an understanding of key elements of the client experience - including the client journey and communicating with clients.
The Head Receptionist stage would see colleagues taking responsibility for strong communication and collaboration between non-clinical and clinical teams, along with taking responsibility for improving and maintaining client Net Promoter Score and monitoring and acting upon client feedback via a KPI dashboard.
In addition to giving structure to CVS’ receptionist careers, the pathway also outlines the opportunity to progress into practice and regional practice management. It also highlights the wide and varied opportunities to join CVS Group central support office teams – in such areas as administration, finance, marketing, procurement and recruitment, plus divisions such as CVS’ laboratories and crematoria.
In addition to supporting the receptionists themselves, the pathway will support practice leaders who are having one-to-one conversations with receptionist colleagues about their development.
Philip Webb, Learning Partner at CVS who has led the development of the pathway, said:
“Receptionists are one of the most important roles in practice. They are the first and oftentimes key point of contact for our clients and play an instrumental role in how the workload of a practice is managed.
We hope that the structured information and learning within our pathway will build the skills of each of our front-line colleagues, enhance the role of the receptionist in our practices, and give clear guidance on how to progress.
The objective of our new pathway is to show the opportunity of a lifelong career with CVS and where it could lead. It should give each-and-every receptionist the ability to take the direction in their career that they want to take. We have a large number of teams and there are so many roles and opportunities within our group.”
To launch the new Receptionist Career Pathway, briefings have been held with CVS leaders and dedicated packs have been distributed to all practice leaders for cascade to receptionists in all practices.
CVS has practices of varying sizes and structures and not all the roles will be available everywhere, but opportunities will exist throughout the group.
CVS Group operates across small animal, farm animal, equine, laboratories and crematoria, with over 500 veterinary practices, referral centres and sites in the UK and Australia. In the last five years the company has invested nearly £80 million in its sites, facilities and equipment, in addition to industry leading training and support, to give the best possible care to animals.