Open Communication Holds the Key to Making a Zoo’s Workers Feel Valued

Organization: Saint Louis Zoo

Number of employees: 305 full time, 180 part time, and up to 700 seasonal workers

The group’s approach: The zoo, which is managed by a nonprofit organization, works to keep everyone well informed and to promote discussion between management and lower-level employees. The chief executive provides updates at quarterly “state of the zoo” meetings, where employees have an opportunity to ask questions, and he attends at least one meeting of each department annually. All top managers must have an open-door policy that allows any worker, regardless of rank, to make an appointment to talk with them.

Why: “People want to know that they matter,” says Wyndel E. Hill, the zoo’s vice president for internal relations. He says that leaders demonstrate that they care by listening to employees and their opinions and responding to what they say. “Yes, people will grumble when they don’t get what they want,” he says. “But they grumble less loudly when you’ve responded to their concerns.”

Results: Mr. Hill says the group’s efforts have created an environment where employees feel comfortable taking their concerns to zoo executives, which in turn helps managers deal early with potential problems. Recently, he says, an employee talked to him about what staff members saw as the zoo’s desire to hire outsiders for top positions rather than promoting from within. Mr. Hill doubts the worker would have been so candid without the zoo’s emphasis on communication: “Employees would have talked among themselves, and that issue would have grown, and it would have gotten bigger and bigger.”