Leeds veterinary provider increases workforce by 20 per cent despite recruitment crisis

A Leeds-based veterinary provider of health professionals has increased its workforce by a fifth despite an industry wide recruitment crisis and has set sights on becoming the world’s leading veterinary public health organisation.

Eville & Jones, recently listed in The Sunday Times top 100 fastest growing private companies, provides veterinary, compliance, and public health solutions to the food industry. The experts have made significant cultural and strategic changes in the past two years to allow for a modernisation of the business and make way for future international growth and a broadening of services.

Overall, a 20 per cent total increase in field staff to over 850 heads, means the business is now made up of 51 different nationalities. A large number of these are vets from Turkey who have come to the UK to work in public health, and meat hygiene inspectors join from Africa to work on the FSA contract who are all qualified vets in their own country.

Furthermore, with Veterinary Export Health Certificates now required for the EU, the business has had a huge growth in export customers post-Brexit, which has led to a 566 per cent increase in vets who work in this area.

The changes made to Eville & Jones’ team and strategy has made it more resilient, facing challenges of Brexit to grow positively and efficiently. The increase comes despite recruitment challenges due to the pandemic and regulatory changes following the UK’s exit from the EU.

Charles Hartwell, chief executive officer of Eville & Jones commented: “Veterinary public health is often overlooked by UK graduates, so we are reliant on overseas recruitment. Brexit presented significant opportunities to grow the business, but also introduced barriers overseas recruitment, especially from the EU.

“We successfully mitigated many of these barriers through quickly expanding our recruitment into new markets including Turkey, Africa, and South America. Expanding our E&J family to 51 nationalities increase the breadth of our expertise and stands us in good stead for continued growth.”

“We are on a journey of cultural change, guided by a clear set of values, and focused on delivering consistent, expert and value adding services to our customers . We are investing in and empowering our people and providing them with opportunities to realise their career ambitions, which is setting the business up for an exciting future.”

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