Zoro Earns a Spot on Crain’s Top 100 Best Places to Work in Chicago
Zoro is honored to be recognized as one of Crain’s Top 100 Best Places to Work In Chicago. This award is especially near and dear to our hearts because Crain’s Chicago Business is such an important resource for the business community in our hometown of Chicago. In honor of this latest win, Zoro’s President, Sandy Mattinson, gave Crain’s an insider’s look into what makes Zoro’s workplace culture so phenomenal. Enjoy!
Q&A
Crain’s: Recently Zoro has increased its focus on employee mental health. What prompted this change? How has the company supported employees’ wellbeing in this way? What has been the net effect of this shift in focus?
Sandy Mattinson: While we’ve always been mindful of our team members’ health and wellbeing, the pandemic challenged all of us in unique ways. Recognizing this and continuing our commitment to ensure our team members can thrive in an ever-changing world, we’ve made sure our approach to wellbeing is holistic—social, emotional, financial, and physical. We made a concerted effort to continue and expand programs like behavioral and mental health care and Zoro’s “Commit to Fit” challenge, which encourages physical movement and healthy habits. We also expanded training for our leaders to help them better support their teams. We’ve even had team members share about their own mental health challenges on our neurodiversity panel. The net effect of all of these programs together gives our team members confidence that we really mean it when we say we want our team members to prioritize their well-being, and we can provide the support needed to help them thrive.
Crain's: What is the culture like at Zoro? How does the company foster morale?
Sandy Mattinson: Our culture is hands-down one of the most engaging and rewarding aspects of working at Zoro. From our early days as a startup we’ve preserved our empowering culture, where every team member feels they can have a high impact on the things we are building and creating for our customers. As a growing team of nearly 700 team members with big aspirations, there’s no shortage of opportunities for our team members to contribute to our growth and success. Empowerment is woven into our fabric, and it’s embodied in our value of Taking Ownership.
Another one of our values is Winning & Learning Together, and this one speaks to our agility as well as our camaraderie to work together and be willing to make mistakes and learn. At the most fundamental level, I think our team members just genuinely like each other. Enjoying the people you work with, and knowing that they are there to support you, goes a long way.
Crain's: What does Zoro do to encourage work-life balance for its staff?
Sandy Mattinson: One of the most compelling aspects about Zoro that I have heard from our team members is how important our flexibility is so that they can prioritize the things that are most important to them outside of Zoro. For many, it’s the ability to flex hours during the week to lead a holistic life as a parent, guardian, or caretaker, and to make time for personal health.
Flexibility and fun have always been a part of Zoro’s culture, and the various activities that our team members organize to spend time together outside of the office reflect the culture of fostering a healthy work-life balance. Zoro’s softball team has been going strong for many years, while informal activities, like wall climbing, are always starting up as well.
Crain's: You mentioned that many staff work remotely at least part of the time. How do you foster camaraderie and a sense of team cohesion?
Sandy Mattinson: Our values have always been a strong part of our culture, and it’s especially important that we continue to Win & Learn Together, Be Customer Obsessed, Take Ownership and Be Transparent with our hybrid and remote work environment.
One of the rituals that formalized coming out of the pandemic is hosting “Collaboration Days” for each office. On these days, our team members know that if they are going to put in the extra effort to commute and spend the day in the office, there will be a buzz from knowing that lots of other team members will also come in on those days to connect, collaborate and enjoy a delicious lunch together.
We also host an all company meeting every one to two weeks to share the latest updates and introduce new team members. Our meeting host picks out their favorite song to kick off the meeting and help shepherd everyone through the content with an upbeat tone. Everyone follows along on Slack in our #company-meeting channel, and it’s always fun to see the live comments. Slack plays a huge role in strengthening cohesion across all of our team members across so many different locations.
We hope you enjoyed learning about how Zoro creates a rewarding culture for its team members. If you’d like to learn more, we invite you to visit our About Us page or check out more awards we’ve won this year by visiting our Resource Hub.
