Cutting Turnover in Entry-Level Roles

AAHA's 2023 "Stay, Please" survey is the source behind this: an online survey fielded March 10–30, 2023, sent to 133,259 people across the veterinary community, with 14,414 completed responses — a 10.8% response rate AAHA itself describes as roughly double the typical 5%.

More than 12,000 respondents were currently working in clinical practice at the time.

AAHA sorts respondents into three personas by role, and the contrast matters for how you plan retention. "Vet Med for Life" — associate veterinarians and credentialed technicians — has 24% planning to change jobs, but AAHA notes they're more likely to stay in veterinary medicine when they go. "Open to Options" — uncredentialed technicians, veterinary assistants, and CSRs — is twice as likely to leave veterinary medicine entirely.

AAHA's own framing is direct about why: this group is more likely to have transferable skills and real earning potential outside the field, without the accredited schooling or state license that anchors the other two personas to it.

The federal data on this occupation backs that framing up structurally.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the entry requirement for veterinary assistants as a high school diploma, prior work experience "None," and short-term on-the-job training — and separately projects 9% employment growth and roughly 23,200 openings a year through 2035 for the occupation.

There's nowhere near the sunk cost a credentialed hire has, and there's steady demand for the same skill set elsewhere.

Both of those cut against you when you're trying to keep someone.

The asymmetry AAHA found across the whole veterinary workforce is worth knowing before you reach for a raise as the fix.

Fair compensation ranks only fourth among reasons people give for staying in their current job — 30.2% named it in their top three, behind staff working as a team (40.8%), practicing good medicine (34.3%), and doing meaningful work (32.2%).

But among people already planning to leave, fair compensation is by far the strongest factor that would change their mind — 52.5% named it.

A raise tends to work on someone who's already decided to go.

It does less to build the loyalty that keeps someone from getting there.

AAHA's 2024 Phase 2 follow-up (a separate survey, spring 2024, 2,713 respondents) measured something more specific: expectation versus reality on a 1–5 scale, where 3 means "about as expected" and anything below it means the job paid worse than the candidate expected going in. Veterinary assistants scored 1.41 on fair compensation — the worst score of any role or factor AAHA published in that study, well below credentialed technicians' own below-expectation score of 2.08.

Read plainly: assistants aren't just underpaid relative to other roles, they're the most likely to feel actively misled by what they were told to expect.

Reorder the retention conversation around what AAHA's respondents actually said works, not what's easiest to authorize as a line item.

In descending order among people who stayed: staff functioning as a team (40.8%), practicing modern and/or sound medicine (34.3%), meaningful work (32.2%), fair compensation (30.2%), flexibility (27.6%), and feeling appreciated for the work (25.0%).

Among people already planning to leave, what would change their mind ranks: fair compensation (52.5%), feeling appreciated (29.0%), career development (25.6%), teamwork (24.2%), and caring leadership (24.1%).

Teamwork and appreciation cost less to build than a raise and rank close behind compensation on both sides of that list.

Neither shows up in a job posting.

Both show up — or don't — in whether a new assistant's first weeks feel like they've joined something, or just been assigned a shift.

Entry-level turnover has a physical-reality component that's easy to under-state at the offer stage.

BLS's injury and illness data for the veterinary services industry recorded 10.6 nonfatal cases per 100 full-time workers in 2023, against 2.4 for all private industry — roughly 4.4 times the rate, per a BLS release published in December 2025.

Most of that (71%) was classified as "other recordable" rather than a day away from work, but the exposure is real either way, and a candidate who signed up expecting a quiet front-of-house job and got restraint work instead is a candidate who leaves inside the first month.

Set the expectation once, in writing, before day one — not just verbally at the interview, which is easy to underweight in the moment.

A candidate who reads it and still shows up is self-selecting in a way that helps your retention numbers before you've spent a dollar on it.

Career development is the third-biggest lever AAHA found among people already planning to leave (25.6%) — and for a role with no built-in ladder, that's the one most practices skip entirely.

Two concrete things to point a new assistant toward, honestly and without overpromising: NAVTA's Approved Veterinary Assistant designation, a structured (not required) training credential built on at least 150 didactic hours plus a 100-hour clinical externship and a proctored exam; and, in a handful of states, a defined on-the-job pathway toward a credentialed technician license. The state-by-state detail on which states run that pathway is worth reading before you promise a candidate that time at your practice will count toward it — confirmed for California, Alaska, Montana and Wisconsin, and Texas explicitly does not accept an on-the-job route at all.

Naming a real next step, even a modest one, is what separates a job posting from a career conversation — and it's a lever this persona responds to more than most, precisely because AAHA's own data says this group hasn't already made a schooling or licensing investment that answers the "where does this go" question for them.

None of the above works as a one-time fix — retention here is a practice, not a policy.

Four moves translate the data above into something a practice can actually run.

Have the pay conversation honestly, at the offer, not after. Given that assistants report the widest expectation-versus-reality gap AAHA measured for any role, the fix isn't necessarily a higher number — it's making sure the number and the path to a higher one are both said out loud before the first shift, not discovered gradually.

Watch for the moment this turns into an exit, not just a resignation. By the time someone resigns, you're negotiating against the 52.5% compensation figure — the number that moves people who've already decided to go.

A short, low-stakes check-in in the first 90 days catches the quietly-resented stage AAHA's data describes, while it's still a conversation.

Build the team-cohesion piece deliberately. Teamwork is the single strongest stay factor AAHA found (40.8%), ahead of compensation — and the easiest one to let erode without noticing, because nothing forces you to measure it the way a paycheck forces you to measure pay.

Say what this role could lead to, and mean it. Whether that's the NAVTA AVA designation, a state on-the-job pathway toward a technician license, or simply more responsibility inside the assistant role itself — naming it costs nothing and directly answers the career-development factor AAHA's leavers ranked third.