Why the metrics you're ignoring are costing you the most

We’re very good at measuring how a clinic is performing financially. We’re not always as good at measuring what’s happening with the people behind those numbers.

Ask a clinic owner how things are going and you'll usually get "yeah, good, busy, we're doing well." And most of the time they mean it. The schedule's full, revenue's up, nobody's resigned this month. By the measure most of us reach for first, which is money, the clinic looks healthy.

But money is only one aspect of the business you're running, and it's the loudest. The others; people, compliance, systems, culture- sit quietly in the background not causing any trouble, right up until the day they cause all of it at once. So, when I hear "we're doing good," my next question is always "good at what, exactly?"

The numbers that don’t show up on your P&L

Every practice has layers. There's the financial layer, which most owners watch closely. Then there's the people layer: retention, wellbeing, leadership. The compliance layer, covering safety, controlled drugs and psychosocial risk. The systems layer, facilitating how work gets done and how the clinic runs. And the culture layer, often invisible but underpinning everything else.

These layers don't fall over at the same speed. Finances tell you they're in trouble quickly. The other aspects build pressure quietly, then land all at once, usually when you can least afford it. Let me show you what I mean.

Good, until it isn't

Your lead vet has asked a couple of times about finishing early on a Thursday. You keep meaning to sort it out, but there's always something more urgent- reports or spreadsheets. Then they stop asking, and hand in their notice instead. That half-hour conversation has quietly become a $100K+ hole in your capacity and budget by the time you add up locum cover, recruitment fees, and weeks of empty appointments. The money was fine, right up until the people weren't.

Or your team genuinely gets on, good banter, they cover for each other. Then one day something's said the way it's always been, and the new staff member hears it differently. Without clear behaviour policies, training, and an expectation that 'how it's always been' doesn't make it acceptable, you're now holding a sexual harassment complaint you can't defend. Not because your team is bad, but because a friendly culture and good intentions aren't a defense in the eyes of the law. 'How it's always been' isn't the same as 'okay,' and there are reasons these laws exist. They protect your team, your clients, and your business. And before it got to a complaint, someone was carrying something they had nowhere to take, in a culture that made 'normal' more important than 'right.'

Or I spend an afternoon in clinic and spot a new starter who never received a WHS induction. A drug process that wouldn’t pass an audit. A first aid kit that’s missing basic stock.

Small gaps on the surface, but ones that can carry serious safety, compliance and financial consequences when something goes wrong, both for businesses and now owners as individuals.

Then there’s the ongoing friction because no one has clear job descriptions. People are working to competing priorities, duplicating work or assuming someone else is responsible. That’s not just frustrating. It can become a psychosocial risk under the new WHS laws.

And yet, on paper, the business looks good.

You can’t build on a house of cards

Revenue is up. The diary is full. There’s cash to invest.

So naturally, the exciting projects start taking shape: an expansion or renovation, a new piece of equipment, another consult room, a fresh marketing push, a new booking or communications platform. Maybe you’re ready to bring another vet or nurse into the team, step a promising junior manager up, introduce a new service or finally tackle that long-awaited systems upgrade.

They’re exactly the kinds of projects a growing clinic should be thinking about.

But then you look underneath the financials.

Your senior vet resigned after going more than 12 months without a meaningful performance review. Your managers aren’t clear on who owns what. Inductions have become inconsistent. Compliance tasks are being missed. The people and operational systems underneath the business haven’t kept pace with its growth.

Suddenly, those exciting projects can’t be the first priority.

Because strong financials can make a clinic look ready to grow.

Your HR metrics tell you whether the rest of the business is ready to grow with it.

You can’t keep stacking more onto a house of cards.

Look beyond the P&L

None of this is a reason to walk around your clinic in dread. It's a reason to change what you look at. The clinics that don't get blindsided measure all these aspects routinely, looking at the human and operational numbers right alongside the financials:

·         Sick days and leave liabilities. Pull these from your rostering or payroll system and watch the trend over time. When they start creeping up, it’s rarely just a blip. It may be an early sign of a team running on empty, disengagement or cultural issues simmering underneath.

·         Overtime hours- Yes, it’s a financial metric. But it’s also a measure of how often your team is staying late, missing family dinners, cancelling plans and absorbing the pressure of a roster that no longer fits the workload. Persistent overtime is more than a wage cost. It can be a warning sign for burnout, or your team looking elsewhere.

·         Empty shifts on the roster- Every persistent gap is a promise of pressure to come, whether that means frantic shuffling, increased overtime or simply running short and ‘making it work’ when you can’t find cover. Track them, trend them and treat them as the warning sign they are.

The point isn’t to create another dashboard full of numbers for the sake of it. It’s to build a fuller picture of your clinic. Your financials tell you how the business is performing today. Your people metrics can tell you whether that performance is sustainable.

But it’s not only about the numbers you can pull from a system. Some of the most useful indicators come from what your team is telling you, and what happens next.

·         Issues raised, and what changed because of them. A formal, actioned feedback process is one of your best early warning systems for retention. If no one is raising anything, don’t automatically assume that means everything is fine. Sometimes silence means people have stopped believing anything will change.

·         WHS incidents, and how quickly they’re closed out. More reports aren’t necessarily a bad thing. They can mean people trust the system enough to use it. The bigger red flag is an incident that sits open with no action, quietly telling the team that safety is something you talk about rather than something you act on.

·         Clarity of roles and responsibilities. When people aren’t clear on who owns what, friction builds quickly. Tasks get duplicated, things get missed and priorities compete. Clear, current position descriptions are good management practice and can be an important part of managing psychosocial risks around role clarity, workload and competing demands.

You don't need to hire anyone to start tracking these- the data is already there in the systems you use every day. You just need to decide they belong on the agenda, right next to revenue. What gets talked about in the room is what gets fixed.

And if you want an experienced set of eyes to help you look across all areas, pick up the small conversations that matter before they become big issues, and map out exactly what needs to change to get your foundation solid? That's where I come in.

Because the clinics I'd call ‘good’ aren't the ones with the flashiest numbers. In an industry losing people faster than we can replace them, the ones still standing will be building teams that want to stay, cultures worth staying for, and businesses performing well across multiple aspects, not just financially.

Great numbers for a quarter don’t make a good clinic. It’s time we said that out loud, redefined what a good clinic actually looks like, and rethought the numbers we use to measure one.

Retention isn’t a soft outcome anymore.

It’s one of the most important KPIs in your business.