The AVA Conference in Brisbane is one of those weeks in the calendar where the Australian veterinary profession comes together in one room, and you get a much clearer picture of what’s actually happening on the ground than you do from any report or LinkedIn post.
Our team spent the week in conversation with vets, practice owners and industry leaders from across the country. Here’s what we kept hearing.
1. Attracting good talent is still the conversation
No surprises that recruitment came up in almost every conversation with practice owners. What was more interesting was the pattern in who is hiring well right now.
The practices having the most success aren’t necessarily the ones offering the biggest packages on paper. They’re offering genuine flexibility: flexible hours, sensible rosters, and a real acknowledgement that the people they’re trying to attract have lives outside the consult room.
It’s a shift we’ve been tracking across our Australian client base for some time, and AVA confirmed it. Flexibility has become one of the deciding factors for experienced vets choosing between roles.
2. Experienced vet pay packages are climbing
The other theme we heard consistently: pay packages for experienced vets are up.
Not just base salary. CPD allowances, additional leave, retention bonuses, support for further qualifications, and in some cases equity or partnership pathways. Practices that want experienced clinicians are having to think more creatively about the full offer, not just the headline number.
For experienced vets, the market is moving in your favour, and the gap between an average package and a strong one has widened noticeably over the last twelve months.
3. A lot of vets are thinking, but not sure what next
Some of the most valuable conversations we had at AVA weren’t with practice owners at all. They were with vets who came up to the stand because something in their current situation wasn’t quite sitting right, but they weren’t sure what the alternative looked like.
A change of practice? A move interstate? Going overseas? Stepping into mixed or back into small animal? Leaving clinical altogether?
In a lot of cases, people hadn’t really had the space to map it out properly. So we sat down and mapped it out with them – the questions worth asking, the options actually available in the current market, and what the trade-offs look like in practice.
What it adds up to
Demand for experienced clinicians is high, packages are climbing, and flexibility is reshaping what a strong offer looks like. For practice owners, the bar for attracting good people has shifted. And for vets, there’s genuine optionality, but the right move isn’t always the obvious one.
If any of the above lands with where you’re at (whether you’re hiring, thinking about your next role, or just want to understand what the market looks like right now) our team is always happy to have the conversation.
