Warnbro Veterinary Hospital, a small independent practice south of Perth WA, has been named the 2025 VBG Business of the Year. The award recognises the remarkable transformation the clinic has undergone since Dr Katie Currie and her partner, Angus Currie, took ownership in 2019.
“It’s a huge achievement and one that we’re really proud of,” Dr Currie said.
“I’ve been working at the practice for 10 years, and we took over the business 6 years ago, when it was in receivership.”
Dr Currie admits she had a dream for the practice, but took on the business with no formal experience.
“My vision was just to make it somewhere that everyone wants to come to work.”
“I have staff who say they’ve always been anxious about going to work at previous practices, now tell me they aren’t anxious anymore – which is what we aim for. I wanted, obviously, the standard of care for the patients and the customer care for the clients but making it a great place to work was really important.”
“You have to have all those different components to make it a good place to work, but you also have to have the building blocks of the business as well.”
Warnbro Veterinary Hospital staff at 2024 staff Christmas party
During the early days of ownership, Dr Currie relied on resources from the AVA and Veterinary Business Group (VBG) for support. She spent her first 6 months balancing full-time veterinary work with learning how to run the business.
“To have had the VBG and AVA guide me in the background with their webinars, advice and resources was amazing.”
“On the AVA website, there’s the HR and Advisory services as free member benefits. The VBG has a whole series of lectures on how to do interviews, performance management, dismissals and inductions to get you by.”
“It’s just a fantastic resource to have as a business owner.”
Today, Warnbro Veterinary Hospital is thriving, fully staffed, and offers high-quality veterinary services with a personal touch. Dr Currie attributes their success to a focus on 10 key aspects: meaning and value; health and wellbeing; equity, diversity and inclusion; job design and demands; growth and development; reward and recognition; proactive people processes; collegiality and connection; social and environmental responsibility; and professional standards and ethics.
“It’s vitally important that everyone who works here knows the standards and what’s expected of them. You’re never going to have a team where everyone loves each other, but as long as you can all work really well together. Kindness is the best thing.
Warnbro’s positive workplace culture has enabled the team to avoid burnout and continuously attract staff.
“We have actually got to the point where people are knocking on our door to come to work for us, and that is the reputation we’ve built as a good practice – word of mouth goes a long way.
“However, when we were short of staff, we still made sure not to burn them out. If we were fully booked, we turned clients away if we couldn’t fit them in.
“When you have one busy day a week, you can squeeze a client in over lunch hour, but it often gets to a point where every day is a very busy day and you can’t keep going on like that.”
Winning the VBG Business of the Year Award has provided an opportunity for reflection, pride, and gratitude.
“To go from bottom of the heap, to top is just massive. I’m personally really proud of doing it, but also just so proud of the team that we’ve built up over the time. There’s probably about 3 or 4 colleagues who have continued with us from the previous employment and we’ve gained a lot of others as well, and purposefully, kind of built up the team that we’ve got at the moment and I couldn’t be happier.”