If you work as an employee at Eye Centers of Tennessee, you’ll enjoy an attractive salary and a range of benefits, including one that perhaps few other practices offer: a trip to Hawaii.

More specifically, every 5 years, employees at our practice, including front desk staff, technicians and nurses, have the chance to go on a week-long trip to Hawaii, fully paid for by our practice.

Is it expensive to provide this benefit? Sure. Does it pay off in the long run? Without question.

This is just one of the ways that we take care of our employees. Caring for our employees is a major value at our practice. In fact, we regard staff not just as employees, but as family. We foster a strong personal connection between the doctors and staff. And we reap rewards in dedication, loyalty, positive regard for our practice — and staff retention.

Our mission is to provide world-class eye care to every person in the rural regions of the Upper Cumberland, many of whom are underserved. And to do that, we provide a world-class employee experience.

This philosophy appears to pay off, as we have experienced significant growth. Eye Centers of Tennessee will open its ninth location next month. In the last two and a half years, through COVID, we have built four separate buildings and hired new physicians as well as more than 25 staff members. Today, we have roughly 150 employees and about 14 doctors. And that growth helps us reinvest in our people.

STARTING AT THE TOP

This philosophy of employees as family begins with practice leadership. For instance, at the start of the COVID pandemic, the executive team decided to provide for our employees even if the leadership did not take a salary. We encouraged employees to take their vacations as normal.

Even through COVID, we dedicated ourselves to increasing staff pay. On average, payroll has increased close to 10% since before COVID. We are sending the message that nothing will separate us from our desire to provide for our employees.

Also, we provide individual health insurance free of charge, and we don’t start pay lower because we provide health insurance. We pay aggressively.

EXPERIENCE NOT NEEDED

For many positions, we don’t require extensive qualifications. In fact, we are pleased to hire people who have no experience. This allows us to train employees in the way we run our practice, from how we operate our front desk to how we handle surgery.

Also, we pay for staff to become certified — for instance, to become a certified ophthalmic assistant. If a technician has been on staff for a year, we will pay for their certification test. What’s more, we hang a plaque with their credentials in our office to recognize their achievement, just as we hang plaques to recognize physician credentials.

We send staff to national conferences, such as those held by the International Joint Commission on Allied Health Personnel in Ophthalmology. We pay the expenses for the trip, including travel, hotel and meals, and pay the employees their normal salary as if they were working in the office.

This provides not only free education but also a chance for employees to bond with their coworkers, which oftentimes they don’t have time to do outside of work hours.

OPEN COMMUNICATION

As part of our philosophy, we emphasize open communication among managers and staff. That starts with each manager supervising no more than 10 to 12 employees, so managers can truly understand their staff.

We stress that employees should seek out their manager if something upsets them — if perhaps something was said that the employee felt was inappropriate. With an open dialogue, we can take actions to address issues.

TIME OFF

Taking care of employees as family includes providing time off. After 3 years with our practice, employees earn 15 days of paid vacation per year; after 5 years, employees earn 20 days; and that can increase up to 25 days off for employees with more experience. In our region, this counts as a significant benefit. If the employees can’t take all their vacation, we will purchase back the unused days from them.

As for the Hawaii trip, every 5 years, we pay for an employee to go to Hawaii, along with their spouse or significant other. We also reimburse them for any tax they may have to pay for the gift of the trip. If an employee doesn’t want to go to Hawaii, we will provide them a check instead, but we encourage employees to get away and go on the trip.

The trip is not restricted to certain roles — every employee who stays with the practice for 5 years can take a Hawaiian vacation on us. They can also go to Hawaii at every additional 5-year mark; some employees have taken the trip five times.

While an expensive proposition, the executive leadership feels that providing this reward for longevity is more important than bringing cash to the owners. This engenders a buy-in — even a love — for the company.

LUNCH IS ON US

Besides these benefits, we provide others during the normal work routine. For instance, we pay for every employee’s lunch every day. We purchase uniforms for all employees to wear and replace the uniforms every few years.

We refuse to keep employees in the office beyond normal working hours. Employees start between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. and leave at 4:30 p.m. to go home to their families. Our philosophy is that we need to get better, stronger and faster within the normal time constraints of the workday, not extend the workday.

PATIENTS AS FAMILY

At our practice, we also feel we should treat patients as family members. For instance, we send every cataract surgery patient a bouquet of flowers to thank them for using our practice. The more dependable we are to our patients, the better our employees feel and buy into our system of care. Like us, our employees want to help people.

THE PAYOFF

At the end of the day, our practice invests more than $100,000 in supporting these benefits. And this investment pays off in multiple ways. For instance, as one proof of that payoff, we have more than 20 staff members who have worked for our practice for more than 20 years.

In fact, we have some staff who are in their early 30s who have already worked for us for over 12 years.

But more than that, investing in our people in these ways is simply the right thing to do. And some employees will carry with them the happy memories of an exotic island vacation, supported by a practice that treated them as family. OM

Michael Patterson, DO, is a board-certified ophthalmologist specializing in cataract surgery, laser vision correction, surgical and medical treatment of glaucoma, ocular surface disease and cosmetic and functional procedures of the eyelids. In addition to his role as managing partner at Eye Centers of Tennessee, Dr. Patterson serves as a consulting physician at Cumberland Medical Center and Cookeville Regional Medical Center. He is a captain in the United States Army Reserves.