Zoro Company Culture & Values

What are some of the growth opportunities available to you and your colleagues? 

I’ve been lucky enough to experience several different types of growth at Zoro, including upward promotions within the customer service and customer fulfillment teams and a complete career shift to project management within the technology organization. 

Zoro does a wide variety of things to help create growth opportunities. There are formal trainings for leaders, informational sessions hosted regularly by different teams, other teams that host open office hours regularly and councils you can volunteer to work on. Recorded weekly company meetings offer a chance to see highlights of work being done across the company. Some of these things are planned by HR and leadership; some have just evolved over time. 

There are also a lot of cross-functional teams that work on initiatives together. For me, being a stakeholder in a bigger Zoro initiative — and having a few trusted people encouraging me to take the time to dig in and learn — gave me the courage to try something new.

How does a focus on growth boost morale? 

Growing and learning keeps engagement going. Being encouraged to learn is equivalent to being encouraged to find exciting new ways to make a difference. It doesn’t have to be anything big and expensive. Recently, at a project management team meeting, we spent 20 minutes discussing an article that we read together. We left the meeting with a shared experience and new perspectives. Another thing I have seen more of recently is when people who attend bigger conferences or events share what they learnedwith the rest of their team. 
 

When thinking of the smaller things, it’s important to note that focusing on a growth mindset doesn’t always have to mean reaching for a new role. It can mean just continuing to learn new ideas and perspectives that will help you do your job better and keep you engaged. Most people want to feel that they can try new things to make an impact. Learning new concepts fuels that ability.

From an employee perspective, what advice would you give to employers interested in bolstering their growth opportunities?

It’s hard to talk just about the opportunities without mentioning the culture. There are three things about Zoro that help with creating growth opportunities: our core value of transparency, a mindset of experimentation and leadership that openly demonstrates that taking time to learn is a good thing. 

My career path would have been much different if I hadn’t had leaders and respected coworkers who encouraged me to take learning time. In January, my current leader made it a priority for us to talk through personal goals for the year in a thoughtful way. It continues to mean a lot that he is invested in my growth and learning. 

My favorite thing about a growth culture is that it’s contagious. People want to help each other succeed. I’ve had all kinds of people play a role in my journey and I’m always thankful when I have been able to play a small part in the career journeys of others. I have never run into one person working here who wouldn’t be excited to make time to share more of what they do with someone who was interested to learn more about it.