Getting Personal

Dr. Thomas O. Tiffany (front), CEO of PAML, has led by example in improving the staff’s overall health. Behind him (left to right): Noel Maring, chief marketing officer; Rosalee Allan, chief operating officer; Kim Troyer, human resources director; and Kurt Rogers, chief financial officer.

It's not often that a large company’s CEO hangs with the staff. But at PAML, the top executives walk their talk, especially if that walk happens to be the Spokane Heart Walk. Or the 7.46-mile Bloomsday Run. Led by its CEO, Dr. Thomas O. Tiffany, Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories, or Pac Lab as the locals and employees affectionately call it, has for the second year in a row stabilized its health care benefits premiums for employees. PAML continues to invest in and encourage employees to stay and grow.

One way the company does this is through two tuition reimbursement programs in which it pays back employees 50 percent of their tuition. On top of the tuition reimbursement, the company’s Continuing Education Department pays for onsite training in leadership, process improvement, crucial conversations and supervisory training. For these sessions, PAML will pay employee travel expenses, too.

And if an employee wants to do some volunteer work, PAML will pay the employee to do it.

“PAML is an outstanding company to work for and is continually looking for innovative ways to improve benefits, policies/procedures and creative programs that are beneficial for the employees,” one employee writes. “PAML has significantly reduced dependent premiums in 2010 and has made health insurance affordable for the employees. Exempt and non-exempt salary adjustments were given January 1, 2010.”

There are many ways for employees to be compensated for their time and effort.

But one standout example is the company wellness program. This extensive, multidimensional program is filled with incentives that help keep employees happy and healthy. In initiating the program, which helps the company track and encourage the health of employees, PAML offered $75 to each of its 1,149 employees just to fill out the survey. Any employee who then goes for a biometric screening on campus gets $25. Mammogram? Another $25. Completing an online Health Risk Assessment survey? Another $50.

But if a company is going to do all this, then its leader has to set the example—precisely what Tiffany does. Overweight and diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, Tiffany led the company in its involvement in Spokane’s Bloomsday foot race in which the company contributes 50 percent of the registration cost for each participating employee. PAML even supported two Corporate Cup teams last year.

Tiffany leads the company’s onsite walking program and is this year’s chair of the Spokane Heart Walk, a year-round event featuring more than 144 employees and culminating in a group walk in May. Last year, Tiffany shed more than 60 pounds. Human resources confirms that in 2010, he’s kept the weight off.

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