Cardinal Services of Bend, a small family-owned business, has been named one of the “100 Best Companies to Work for in Oregon 2020.”
Does your employer pay you to volunteer in the community or give you time off from work to actively participate in your local chamber of commerce? Does your employer give you a yearly clothing allowance, pay for your gym, sponsor a personalized wellness program or supply you with a fitness tracker? When was the last time your company gave you and your family a vacation at a resort? Cardinal Services of Oregon does all of these things!
Generous perks aside, when a respected business magazine delves into your company’s workplace culture or evaluates your company’s business model based on a secret, confidential employee feedback survey — you can bet your company’s profile — warts and all, will be revealed …or not!
Over the past 25 years, and now, for more than ten years in a row — Cardinal Services, a professional employment services firm, has been awarded Oregon Business Magazine’s prestigious 100 Best Places to Work for in Oregon for 2020. The award is generated by worker’s participation in a confidential, anonymous survey that measures the employee’s evaluation of their company’s work environment, staff relations with management, the company’s decision-making processes, employee career development opportunities and staff benefits and compensation. To qualify for the award, a minimum of 10 percent of a company’s workforce must participate in the survey — only full-time and part-time employees are eligible, while senior executives and owners are not. More than 10,000 Oregon employees from a variety of business sectors from around the state participated in this year’s 100 Best Companies survey. Cardinal also had the additional honor of being named to the magazine’s 100 Best Companies’ Hall of Fame in 2018 for receiving this award over ten times in previous years, and for being one of the original winning companies named to the list when the award first began in 1994.
“We are proud to have received Oregon Business Magazine’s award for 2020,” said Brandy Thompson, COO and president of Cardinal Services. “Our company was founded on the values of family first — so everything we do…the way we treat our clients, the way we treat our employees, the way we do business, is predicated on the idea that you are part of the family. When the family thrives, everyone thrives.”
Cardinal, a professional staffing/HR/payroll services firm, has been serving the Deschutes County business community since it first opened a Bend office in 1996. It has grown from a family company founded by husband and wife Bud and Gail Freeman in 1984 in Coos Bay, to its present-day size of 62 employees with offices in five Oregon locations, including a recent expansion into Humboldt County in northern California.
So, just how much do Cardinal employees love to work there? Ms. Thompson is quick to answer, “Cardinal is still owned by the Freeman family, and we feel that the secret to our success is the long-term retention of our own employees. From the longest-serving staff member of 32 years to our newest hire of just two months — that’s an average employee tenure of just over nine years each! We don’t just talk about how to keep good employees — we take our HR expertise and practice it on ourselves. Our internal business model is based on a team approach — we empower our staff to take ownership in every Cardinal business process — their pride shines through in every level of service that we provide to our clients.”
