Banfield Pet Hospital Reviews

Pros

good systems/standards, ability to learn about business aspect/management, great production based compensation, medical support

Cons

tedious software, high percentage prev care may become monotonous, long evening/weekend hours

Advice to Senior Management

Increase wages for paraprofessionals to attract higher quality candidates

Pros

The best reasons to work at Banfield Pet Hospital are as follows: Benefits are pretty good (Medical, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, free Wellness Plans for your pets), Work With Pets (doing what you love), Compensation (reasonable pay, although, after gaining several years experience, pay doesn't seem to grow with your knowledge).

Cons

The reasons to avoid working at Banfield Pet Hospital are as follows: You have very little to NO say in what happens within your hospital, Working with mainly women (hormones!), High Rate of Turn-over (people don't tend to say with Banfield very long), Feeling like you are selling someone a used car (Some doctors add things that aren't needed to client bills just to get paid more).

Advice to Senior Management

Compensation should be more fair to experience, length of time with hospital, and work ethic. Employees should get a say in the hospital they work in. Make it less daunting when corporate people come in. Keep better track of bad attitudes, they can RUIN the "team" aspect of a hospital.

Pros

Working with pets and people on a daily basis

Cons

Long hours, evenings and weekends.

Pros

Meeting new people.
Meeting some great pets.
Getting to know the people over at PetSmart.
Having a weekday or 2 off.
Some of my co workers were awesome.

Cons

The hours are long.
Having to rely on PetSmart to open the door at 640am, when they are in the back and can't hear the buzzer.
Having unnecessary weekly meetings.
Lots of backstabbing and negativity.
Absolutely no balance of family and work.
Constantly harrassing clients by phone to remind them of appointments missed,past due,scheduled(24 hours and 3 and 5 days in advance) and following up on them if they came in for simple things like vaccines the next day.
The insurance has a 2500 deductible in addition to being extremely high.
Constantly having to upsell unnecessary products and the Wellness Plans.
Being the only person in front expected to make calls,answer phones,schedule appts, check in and check out appts and walk ins, in addition to answering questions from various people walking up to you, and making sure estimates are done. If all of this is not done you are supposed to stay late,even if you have a family to take care of.
Unnecessary field training.
Constant criticisms if you are unable to get all of your work done.
The list goes on but this is what was at the top of my head.
The computer software is outdated, you have to retype stuff too many times while a line builds in the lobby.

Advice to Senior Management

Have 2 CSC's for at least part of the day, pay more, show appreciation, have the CEO go on Undercover Boss along with Field Leadership, and lighten up, jobs should not be that stressful especially for the pay. Maybe have a call center make the calls and update the software so that information autopopulates from the scale and not having to type the same things over and over. Having a surgical suite for dental cleanings instead of them being out in the open.

Pros

The benefits packages is fairly good (and inexpensive) and the other vet techs and CSCs I worked with were amazing. If you're looking to become a vet tech and don't have experience they'll teach you from the ground up. You will never be bored and there's always something new to learn, which more experience co-workers are almost always willing to teach.

Despite all the cons you'll see below, it is a great place to work if you want to learn about the veterinary field and meet some legitimately awesome people.

Cons

-Company pays much less than industry standard for vet techs.
-Very long and inconsistent hours. Open 7 days a week, 7am-9pm weekdays.
-Clients expect unreasonably speedy service. Even though the doctor saw 4 patients per hour, our average wait time (to see the doctor, vet techs are in the room within minutes) was about 20-30 minutes. Clients rarely had to sit in the waiting area; unless there was an emergency anyone with an appt (or even sometimes walk-ins) would be put in an exam room within 5 minutes. Average wait time to pick up a pet that has been dropped off was 15-20 minutes. And all I heard all day was clients complaining about how long they had to wait!
-The doctor was verbally abusive and demanding towards the vet techs, which would cause them to act the same was to the CSCs, who would pass their frustration onto difficult customers.

I have to say the worst part about the job (even moreso than the hectic work environment) was the client base. They complained about everything! Wait time, prices, the doctor's attitude, etc. The thing that was crazy was how many times certain customers would yell out "This is ridiculous! I'm never coming here again!" and storm out, then we'd see them for their follow up appointment the next week and they'd act like nothing had happened! Banfield's prices are VERY competitive (I've never been to a less expensive vet anyway), our wait times were reasonable and probably around 70% of the people that came in still had something to complain about.

Advice to Senior Management

Close the practice on holidays, or Sundays. It's a simple gesture that would make every employee much happier.

Pros

Some nice pets and owners.

Many locations to choose.

Opportunity to receive training

Employee discounts for pets

Cons

Lack of training

Poor management --the "tenured" employees trained "new" employees=no standards.

Just very poor -quality place to work

Advice to Senior Management

Try offering a real traininig program.
Improve hiring practices.
Set a regular work schedule.
Positive feedback would be helpful

Pros

I feel that working at banfield provides an easy pathway to management, as well as nursing skills. Since right off the bat they throw you into triage, lab work, radiology, and surgical process. But within a short amount of time you gain wonderful skills, and usually a pretty a good pay too. The last really good thing about Banfield is the ample amount of Paid Time Off you get!!

Cons

The only CON that I have with Banfield is the weekly schedule, instead of having a set schedule. And the fact that only management is guaranteed 40 hours a week. All other employees get between 25 and 40 hours depending upon the APC and REVENUE of the previous week.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to change their policies and realize that working class citizens need 40 hours a week. 25 or 32 hours does not pay the rent!! And they definitely need to focus alot more on patient care, and less on reaching market goals. As an employee I can definitely say that Banfield is a little too money hungry.

Pros

Co-Workers that are not management get along well. (CSC, PN, PNA)
Basic Free Wellness Plans for team members
Discount at PetSmart

Cons

open 7 days a week, long hours, only closed on thanksgiving day and christmas day
Field Leadership only cares about money. They hire incompentant people instead of promoting from within people who have worked hard for years.
All we hear about is APC, Goals and Production. No praise for saving pets lives.

Advice to Senior Management

If people several people complaine about something...Their is some truth to it!!! Listen to you workers!

Pros

Get to work with animals and learn veterinary medicine. It is very hard I hear to get into a private practice vet without experience, so taking good people and giving them the chance to learn is great.

Cons

-Very backstabbing, will smile in your face and tell you you are doing well then send you into a room and write you up. I have been written up twice and I only been there 5 months. I was at my previous job for 7 years and got written up maybe 3 or 4 times.

-No team work between the CSC's and the PetNurse's. The CSC think it only takes 5 minutes to do something with a pet when in reality PetNurses work on PET time, not human time, it is just like pediatrics if you think about it.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage your staff more and quit trying to shove all the responsibility on the nurses.

Pros

nice employees, gain new experiences

Cons

no advancement, tedious work, hard clients

Advice to Senior Management

work/life balance