You may be familiar with Best Buy because you have purchased a computer, smartphone, or a television online or from one of their stores. Best Buy, with headquarters outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, has operations in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada employing 125,000 full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees. Best Buy's purpose is to enrich lives through technology. The company's Building the New Blue strategy is designed to deliver on that purpose through using technology and touch to meet everyday human needs and add new customers while strengthening relationships with current ones. Best Buy's business strategy is supported by four values: Having Fun While Being the Best, Learning from Challenge and Change, Showing Respect, Humility and Integrity, and Unleashing the Power of Our People. Pandemic or no pandemic, offering high-quality services and assistance for its customers requires a highly trained and engaged workforce. Best Buy's Learning and Development (L&D) team created a new virtual learning environment to prepare employees for the holiday sales period, enhanced technology to aid distribution and reinforcement of learning, and focused on recruiting and developing a workforce representative of the diversity in its customers and communities where it operates. The Virtual Holiday Learning Environment (VHLE) replaced two annual meetings that occurred before the holiday season each year. These meetings were held for leaders to communicate with employees, present holiday selling strategies, and give vendors an opportunity to showcase their latest products and their selling features. The VHLE replicates the annual meeting using Best Buy's learning management system. This virtual environment replicated every aspect of an in-person event. Employees were brought into a visually identical replica of the actual conference center in which the annual meeting was usually held. Once inside, they were greeted by a virtual host and provided instructions for the event. The vendor show had 55 booths, each with a two-minute video highlighting popular holiday products. Employees were required to visit 15 to 20 booths depending on their role. They also could activate "missions," which would reorganize the vendor hall for additional learning. Employees were rewarded for their learning activity by earning points and badges that were displayed in the learning management systems. Employees could use the points to purchase electronics products. VHLE was a success from both a learning and business perspective. Employees completed over one million booth visits and missions involving approximately 36,000 training hours. More than 90% of employees completed one training elective. The VHLE resulted in a 19% reduction in travel expenses, extended the number of employees participating in the meeting from 13,000 to 85,000, and helped the company exceed its holiday performance goal by 3%. Best Buy also uses innovative technology to deliver training to its employees. For example, to help employees use the skills they learn in training on the job Best Buy utilizes Bounce Back. As employees complete courses, the decisions they make in response to assignments and scenarios are captured in a database and can be compared to other employees. To help employees use what they learned Bounce Back can schedule follow-up questions and supplemental information to be delivered after the completion of the training. The L&D team also uses Vyond, an online animation software tool, to rapidly and creatively develop and make available training videos on topics including loss prevention, safety, and product and sales training. Using Vyond has given employees more opportunities to learn in a way that captures their attention and helps them retain the content. Best Buy's knowledge management system gives employees the opportunity to self-author content that will help others perform better in their role, as well as share feedback to eliminate information that is incorrect or needs improvement.

 

Questions

1. Is Best Buy's approach to training strategic? Why or why not?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different training tools used at Best Buy?