question for Ben and Posner

[broadway]

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Two part question
Are you open the day after Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, and Presidents Day?
If not do you pay your staff for those days, and are they included in vacation days.
What days besides National holidays do you pay your staff for?
Thank you for your help these issuses come up for us b/c one of the docs in the office closes and pays his staff.

 

[posner]

Two part question
Are you open the day after Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, and Presidents Day?
If not do you pay your staff for those days, and are they included in vacation days.
What days besides National holidays do you pay your staff for?
Thank you for your help these issuses come up for us b/c one of the docs in the office closes and pays his staff.

We are not open the day after thanksgiving. My partner would like it otherwise, but I am never around and neither are our two associates. We do pay all of our full time staff(those that work more than 32 hours per week) for friday, but otherwise we only pay full time staff on the big National Holidays(I think there are 6 or 7). Also, As far as COlumbus and Presidents day, it is business as usual.

Posner

 

[Ben Chudner]

Two part question
Are you open the day after Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, and Presidents Day?
If not do you pay your staff for those days, and are they included in vacation days.
What days besides National holidays do you pay your staff for?
Thank you for your help these issuses come up for us b/c one of the docs in the office closes and pays his staff.

My office is open the day after Thanksgiving. I have tried to close it, but it is one of the busiest days during this time of year. We are also open on Columbus Day and President's Day. My office pays for six holidays: Christmas Day, New Year's Day, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.

 

[cpw]

My office is open the day after Thanksgiving. I have tried to close it, but it is one of the busiest days during this time of year. We are also open on Columbus Day and President's Day. My office pays for six holidays: Christmas Day, New Year's Day, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.

Black Friday was a decently busy day for us as well. Personally, I'd rather be working that day than having relatives try to drag me out shopping.

 

[Ben Chudner]

Black Friday was a decently busy day for us as well. Personally, I'd rather be working that day than having relatives try to drag me out shopping.

I never said that I work those days 😉 I have my associate work for me instead. Seniority has its perks.

 

[prettygreeneyes]

My office is open the day after Thanksgiving. I have tried to close it, but it is one of the busiest days during this time of year. We are also open on Columbus Day and President's Day. My office pays for six holidays: Christmas Day, New Year's Day, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.

Dr. Chudner,

Do you have the same policy on paid holidays for full time employees only, as Posner does?

Do either one of you (Dr. Chudner or Posner) have many part time employees?

Thanks

 

[Ben Chudner]

Dr. Chudner,

Do you have the same policy on paid holidays for full time employees only, as Posner does?

Do either one of you (Dr. Chudner or Posner) have many part time employees?

Thanks

My policy is the same. Only full time employees are eligible for paid holidays. I recently let my last part time employee go, so I currently only have full time employees.

 

[posner]

I do have a few part time employees(5 to be exact). Again, I inherited these folks when I bought out the senior partner. There are pluses in terms of the flexibility/vacation fill in, not paying benefits, etc but there are also drawbacks. The problem I inherited is that the senior partner allowed several of our employees to work 4 days a week. This makes it necessary to have some part timers since we are open 5 days a week and a 2 half saturdays per month in each office. Also we have a late night in each office every week and so we run into staffing issues when we are opened for more than 10 hours on tuesdays.

The biggest problem in my mind is that more employees=more hassel for staff management. You end up having to do more babysitting the more bodies you have in the office. Also coordinating schedules can be a real chore. Furthermore, I believe you run less efficiently in these instances because it is hard to find part timers that want truly part time work; most of these people want 20-25 hours not the 10-12 that you actually need them. So, you waste payroll which increases workers comp etc, and you have more employees than you need which causes others to become less efficient.

I believe that fewer employees that are better compensated is the best way to go. It can be trouble when someone is ill or takes vacation when you are running lean and mean, but I would rather do it that way. Also the take home point as far as I am concerned, is that you need to tell your employees when YOU need THEM and not try to work around thier schedule to be the nice guy. As I said, I inherited some of these things and have been slowly making changed. I have leaned out my employees over the past 2 years(we actually have 3 less than when I started) and I have found this to be exponentially more manageable.

Posner

 

[broadway]

Ben and Po what are your thoughts on having patients reorder their contacts from your websites? I'm thinking about doing this .

 

[Ben Chudner]

Ben and Po what are your thoughts on having patients reorder their contacts from your websites? I'm thinking about doing this .

I think it is a great idea as long as the patient has a valid prescription.

 

[posner]

I think it is a great idea as long as the patient has a valid prescription.

I like the idea very much. In fact you can set this up through the larger buying groups(like ABB for example). You call their IT guy and they stick a link on your website and patients go to it and order cls. It requires some setup however because it is you(or your staff) that establishes what patients can and cannot order,the parameters, quantity, etc. We just incorporated this about 4 months ago, but to tell you the truth we havent used it yet since we have been switching over to another office software system. It has been less work to just drop ship lenses to the patients. After this week(our other office will be totally up and running on the new software by then) we plan to use this cl reorder system more.

Posner