FINALIST – Health Care
Richard L. Sanchez
president and CEO
Advantica
Richard L. Sanchez takes a “people first” approach when it comes to how he runs his business.
As president and CEO of Advantica, Sanchez recognizes that the company would never be one of the largest vision health care providers if it wasn’t letting its employees and its customers know they’re valued.
As a result, Sanchez led Advantica’s growth from a company with seven employees and one location to more than 85 employees in six offices.
This is even more impressive, considering that he acquired the business by taking out loans against his own home and refusing to take a salary for the first two years. Today, the company serves approximately 3 million members in more than eight states.
Sanchez knows that treating his employees with respect and rewarding them for a job well done is the key to ensuring the company’s customers always come first.
So he empowers his more than 85 employees to handle any customer issue on the spot, trusting them to remove the stress or concern expressed by the customer successfully and professionally.
Whether it’s recognizing their hard work by rewarding them with tickets to Advantica’s box at Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay Rays games, offering Tuesday afternoon chair massages or giving employees days off when they’ve put in extra hours, he lets them know that the company doesn’t take their efforts for granted.
To ensure that the company takes care of its customers, Sanchez also studies the market constantly, looking at how health plans manage their eye care services and vision benefits offered by Advantica’s competitors.
This has helped him lead strategies that expand its services for customers, including the company’s acquisition by Delta Dental in 2010.
HOW TO REACH: Advantica, www.advanticabenefits.com
