As any business owner knows, keeping the trust and loyalty of employees is a difficult, long-term project. When the company is as large as Moneytree Inc., the Tukwila-based payday lender with about 1,250 employees in five states, the challenge would seem monumental.

But the company is succeeding.

"The whole company really revolves around the mission statement," says company founder and CEO Dennis Bassford. "We are the best at what we do by exceeding our customers' expectations, having a professional work environment, treating everyone in a professional and courteous way. "We have a tremendous amount of retention as a result of that philosophy," he says.

It's a sentiment shared by the staff, who gave the company universally high marks in every category and whose comments reflect what they see as a dynamic and receptive workplace. These and many other reasons are why Moneytree is among large companies Washington CEO Magazine's Best Company to Work For:

-- "I've never worked for a place that believes so strongly in great customer service and proactively promotes it."

-- "I perceive Moneytree as working hard to fulfill my needs as an employee so I can perform at my highest level possible."

-- "Moneytree is a rare company that truly values their team members. I am fortunate to work for such a well-rounded, familyfriendly successful business. Moneytree is proof that you can have your cake and eat it too."

The range of comments cites the company's education and training programs, tuition reimbursement, profit-sharing retirement programs, health benefits and opportunities for advancement.

"Quite frankly, in some of our markets advancement is really limited by the high level of retention that we have," Bassford says. "A lot of people move from here to Las Vegas, where we have a lot of new stores opening. A fair amount of people move to achieve advancement."

Al Lopus, president of the Best Workplaces Institute and one of Washington CEO's judges for this year's Best Companies to Work For competition, says that the across-the-board high scores, plus the general enthusiasm of employee responses to the survey, made it easy to see why Moneytree is the all-around winner in the large-company category.

"It's clear that Moneytree recognizes how important it is to create a positive work environment for their employees and attractive to their customer base," Lopus says.

"They've created an environment where their customers can come in and feel embraced by people who like being there, who obviously feel like they're doing something that's important, and in their view help their customers."

Scott Ofstead, vice president of human resources at Kibble and Prentice and another Best Companies judge, says he came away from the process with a new view of Moneytree.

"The thing that struck all of us pretty hard is that this is a really tough business to be in," Ofstead says. "They're always dealing with people who are dealing with some kind of problem, and yet those people loved working there. Over and over again, it was people who loved going to work every day."

Citing his own past experience as a human resources manager in a retail environment, he adds, "If I had had people working in my store with that kind of passion, it would have been a completely different company."

An additional factor the judges discovered was that the scores the employees assigned to the company and the scores management assigned to themselves were quite close, revealing that management was relatively in tune with the staff's needs. That was not a common occurrence, Ofstead says.

Bassford and his team have created a company that offers a generous package of benefits to its staff. For starters, health care, dental and vision coverage are 100 percent covered by the company. A profit-sharing program has Moneytree contribute between 8 percent and 15 percent of gross pay to a retirement fund. The company reimburses up to $2,000 per year for tuition. And the company gives its employees two weeks of paid vacation, up to four weeks after 10 years, paid holidays and time off, and a generally flexible approach to scheduling to meet the employees' needs.