Staff welfare

The reasons for leaving have included retirement, cost of living, change of career, relocation, and personal reasons.   

Whilst it is always sad to lose valued and long-serving employees, many of them stay in touch and become part of our wider network of professionals whose knowledge we can draw on.   

We are proud to have retained a huge number of our 350 staff, including colleagues that worked alongside Gerald Durrell over 40 years ago. Attracting new talent is an important part of the growth and evolution of any organisation and as such Durrell benefits from different experiences and perspectives.   

The statistic being used by others that “staff with animal management and conservation experience cumulatively totalling more than 250 years have left the zoo” implies incorrectly that all departures in the past two years are a result of disagreement with the actions of our Board of Trustees or Senior Management Team.  

Confidentiality prevents us from discussing individual cases, however we conduct voluntary exit interviews whenever a staff member leaves Durrell. These are reviewed for any themes and reported to the Board of Trustees at quarterly meetings. 

As an organisation, we have a zero tolerance to bullying and harassment and take all complaints seriously. These situations are confidential to the respective parties and therefore we cannot comment on specific circumstances or outcomes.    

However, what we can say is that we have robust policies and procedures in place. We always follow due process and act based on evidence rather than perception. We have fully investigated all matters raised to us and in some circumstances, have used independent third parties to conduct investigations to ensure impartiality.    

Transparency and clarity are key, so earlier this year, we reviewed and reissued these procedures. We are also scheduling training for managers to raise awareness of the forms of bullying and how to deal with matters appropriately.  

In relation to volunteers, as with employed staff, we take our duty of care extremely seriously. Over the past few months there have been some difficult circumstances to navigate due to conflicting views amongst some of our staff and volunteers. This has meant at times we may need to adjust the programmes of volunteers or staff to ensure the safeguarding of all those involved. Just like with our staff, we are unable to comment on specific circumstances relating to individual volunteers.