When Brian Garish was a young man, he dropped out of college and got a job stocking shelves at Walgreens. It was a fine job, he says, but over time he realized that without a college degree he didn’t have a lot of options. “I was dependent on the company,” he says.
Garish was fortunate enough to be able to afford to go back to college and complete his education, but he knew many of his front-line colleagues didn’t have that luxury. “That life lesson impacted who I became as a leader,” he says.
The cost of becoming a vet
Today Garish is president of Banfield Pet Hospital, the largest general veterinary practice in the U.S., with more than 3,600 veterinarians working in 1,000 hospitals. Shortly after he joined the organization in 2015, Garish and his team revamped its organizational strategy, building a new roadmap that included programs to address the health and well-being of employees. From the start, he knew these efforts had to include financial well-being. “Financial health is an issue for everyone,” he says.
Rather than making assumptions about what financial support employees wanted, his team conducted a series of interviews, focus groups and surveys to determine what financial issues employees were facing and what would help them ease those burdens.
The associates consistently said that student debt was one of the biggest financial obstacles in their lives. “This isn’t just the case for Banfield,” Garish says. “Student debt is the center of the Venn diagram for veterinarians, the industry and society.”
Dr. Kirk Breuninger, division vice president of veterinary quality for Banfield, agrees. When he graduated veterinary school in 2010, he had $250,000 in student debt to pay off, which forced him to put his life on hold as he figured out how to pay it down.
“My story is similar to a lot of vets’,” Breuninger says. “You can’t buy a house or a car till you get your financial plan in place.”
And the problem was only getting worse. Their research found that student debt for vets was growing increasingly burdensome as state-based education funding dried up. By 2015, the average debt-to-income ratio for new graduates was more than two-to-one. “We saw this as an opportunity to help support our associates,” Breuninger says.
Three-pronged approach
The team in charge of defining the new program, which included Breuninger, came up with 19 different possible program ideas, then took them back to the associates and asked for their feedback. Initially, the vets were mostly interested in getting a monthly financial stipend to help offset their debt payments. But the team knew they could do more. “We wanted to use our size and scale to do good work on behalf of our people,” Garish says.
The research showed that high interest rates were a big part of the debt repayment burden. So Banfield partnered with a financial institution that agreed to offer an additional 0.25 percent interest rate reduction to all Banfield associates who used them to refinance their student loans.
Banfield then combined the refinancing option with a monthly contribution of $150 toward student loan repayments — covering all taxes associated with that added income. The company also provides $2,500 toward debt repayments to any student who participates in a Banfield externship, summer job or campus volunteer activity. They see it as a way to attract students to Banfield and incentivize them to begin paying down their loans.
The three-pronged program has received rave reviews from Banfield vets and executives.
More than $16 million invested
Dr. Alea Harrison began participating in the program when it launched in 2017, and it had an immediate impact on her quality of life. She was pregnant with her second child, and even though she had graduated from veterinary school 11 years prior, she still had a mountain of debt to pay off.
“When I heard about this program, it gave me so much peace of mind,” she says.
The program set her up with a debt counselor who guided her through the refinancing process. She was able to cut almost $600 from her monthly payment, in addition to the $150 monthly stipend she receives from Banfield. “It was a huge savings,” she says.
And when COVID-19 caused interest rates to drop, her counselor found her even better terms, which further lowered her payments.
Harrison’s not alone. Nearly half of the vets at Banfield Pet Hospital are now participating in the student debt repayment program and achieving similar savings. Since launch, Banfield has contributed more than $16.5 million toward helping its veterinarians pay off their student loans and enabled more than $16.5 million in educational debt refinancing for associates.
Harrison sees the program as a demonstration of Banfield’s commitment to its people. “It shows me that they are listening to the needs of their associates and that they are willing to make changes and investments to meet our needs.”
Building knowledge through retention
Garish and Breuninger see the debt relief program as an extension of Banfield’s commitment to employee education. The company also pays for continuing education events and invests in partnerships with universities to support vet tech training and other industry career programs.
“At the end of the day, we are trying to create an environment where someone can come in, even just out of high school, and build the skills to have a career at Banfield,” Breuninger says.
These investments are paying off. In the past five years, Banfield’s turnover rate has been cut in half. That not only reduces the cost of recruiting and onboarding, but it has created a more knowledgeable and skilled staff, Garish says.
He notes that in the past, senior vets spent much of their time teaching new hires the basics of Banfield’s procedures, operational standards and workflow. “Now our leaders spend more time teaching advanced skills and having more impactful conversations about the state of pet care,” Garish says. “It’s improving workplace dynamics and resulting in stronger, more efficient teams.”
It is also helping them attract great candidates. In a recent survey of new hires, two-thirds of candidates said the student debt relief program played a role in their decision to join the company.
“Student debt is a mental health burden,” Garish says. “When you address that burden, it reduces stress, which has a halo effect on an employee’s overall mental health.”
Join the 8 percent
Student debt is a huge burden in every industry, and as the cost of education rises, students are forced to make difficult choices about whether to pursue their academic dreams. Harrison notes that the cost of a veterinary education can be an insurmountable barrier for many aspiring vets, which results in a lack of diversity in the profession. “It’s why there is still a (racial) discrepancy in the veterinary industry.”
Debt relief programs can lower these barriers and help companies attract candidates long before they graduate. “It is helping us to stay competitive,” Harrison says.
Currently only about eight percent of companies offer student debt relief programs, giving organizations like Banfield an advantage over their peers. However, Breuninger encourages other companies to consider similar programs as part of their broader benefits package and commitment to education.
He also advises talking to employees about how student debt affects their lives before launching a program to address it. “Everyone is in a different financial situation,” he says. “Having these conversations helped us hone in on what we could do to have the most impact.”
