Pros and Cons of Employment at a Corporate Veterinary Office
What are the pros and cons of a veterinarian working in more of a corporate clinic setting? First, are you working as an employee or 1099 independent contractor? When working for a corporation, there are a lot of pros, starting with the benefits that are typically offered such as health insurance, retirement, disability, life insurance, sometimes travel, and cell phones. The list just kind of goes on from there. There are more benefits that are going to be offered to you in a more corporate clinic. Also, the facilities typically are more standardized. If there’s more than one location that you’re going to be providing services at, normally, they’re standard between the locations. And then also support staff. Normally, you’re fully staffed with the people that you need and the equipment within the facilities.
So, this is great. You’ve got benefits, the facilities are great. Sometimes the pay can be more in a corporate setting, I would say often, you are typically compensated more. Those are just kind of the pros depending on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for benefits (which will be provided with any W2 position), you’re looking for things that are more standardized policies, also with admin, then that’s considered a pro for a corporate clinic. Some cons that you want to kind of think about are you’re normally not able to negotiate quite as much in an employment contract. When you’re initially starting your employment with them, it’s typically offered the same sort of agreement for all the other veterinarians that are similarly situated. Also, you want to think about your compensation.
That is one thing that you can sometimes negotiate in a corporate clinic. Some other cons and probably the biggest one, well, I would say there are probably two. One, there’s normally a lot of expectations for how many clients you’re going to be seeing in their animals per day, there are quotas, there are maximums, there are minimums of expectations that you must meet. And if you’re not meeting those, there are consequences to those. That’s something that you want to consider if that’s something that you feel up to. I would say another con is normally the non-compete clauses. They are extensive. There’s going to probably be multiple locations, large miles from each location that you’re going to be restricted. Also, be careful if you are working as an independent contractor that the agreement does not contain a non compete clause.
And then normally, for an extended period, the biggest con of a corporate clinic is those non-compete clauses. Because those can really come back to bite you. Going back to the pros, I would say another pro would probably be just marketing and advertising. They’re marketing and advertising on your behalf. They’re bringing in tons of clients and their pets, so there’s really no worry that you’re going to have that client base there. It’s easy to build up because you have them supporting you in this sort of setting. If you have any more questions or you’d like to discuss these sorts of situations, you can schedule a consultation with us.
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