Best Buy commits $44m+ to diversity & inclusion efforts

Best Buy has announced plans to commit more than $44m to diversity, inclusion and community efforts.  

The retailer’s five-year plan focuses on hiring Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) and women employees, along with creating more opportunities and post-secondary support for youth and emerging talent. Best Buy said it wants to better address underrepresentation, technology inequities and educational and career opportunities for those who need it most.

Back in June, Best Buy’s CEO Corie Barry stated “we will do better”. This week’s announcement reveals its commitment to making systemic, permanent changes that address social injustices to improve its company and communities. “We know it’s incredibly important to our employees, customers and communities to show that we are committed to doing all we can to further economic and social justice,” Barry said. “In many ways, we have engaged in these issues for years – but now we’re being bold about our commitments to hold ourselves accountable for this work we’ve promised to do.”

BOLD DIVERSITY & INCLUSION COMMITMENTS

Best Buy revealed some of the goals it aims to achieve by 2025. They include:

• Fill one out of three new non-hourly corporate positions with BIPOC –mainly Black, Latinx and Indigenous – employees. Additionally, one out of three new, non-hourly field roles will be filled by women.
• Foster inclusion among all employee groups to create parity in retention rates, including transforming our senior leadership ranks to be more in line with our board of directors.
• Reach 30,000 teens annually from disinvested communities across the nation, including building a network of at least 100 Best Buy Teen Tech Centers to teach skills and build a talent pipeline for a modern economy. Teen Tech Centers are places where teens can develop critical skills through hands-on activities that explore their interests in programming, filmmaking, music production and design.
• Provide $44 million to expand college prep and career opportunities for BIPOC students, including adding 16 scholarships for HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) students and increasing scholarship funding for Teen Tech Center youth.
• Expand opportunity for BIPOC teens in our home market of the Twin Cities by investing in more local Teen Tech Centers, creating a scholarship fund specifically for Twin Cities-based teens, committing to hosting 400 high school interns from Teen Tech Centers and other program partners, and offering 340 jobs across the company to teens.

INCREASING REPRESENTATION

To expand representation throughout the company, it is providing leadership-in-training roles to BIPOC and women employees. It also plans to invest in mentorship opportunities and match all BIPOC directors and officers with sponsors and coaches to enhance the employee experience, increase retention, and help our current and future leaders create meaningful connections.

It also plans to intensify its focus on disinvested populations and communities by partnering with BIPOC-serving organisations for new Teen Tech Centers across the country so youth can learn new skills, nurture positive adult and peer relationships, and discover future careers, within the communities it serves. This includes piloting a rural Teen Tech Center model to address the unique needs of geographically isolated communities. Additionally, it plans to support youth after their high school careers, by increasing post-secondary support at its Teen Tech Centers, which includes trained guidance counsellors and financial aid navigators. And because not everyone’s career path looks the same, the retailer said will also partner with community colleges, credential programmes and tech bootcamps to create opportunities for teens to explore all types of post-secondary options that will prepare them for future success.

ENRICHING LIVES THROUGH TECH

Best Buy’s purpose “is to enrich lives through technology”, said the company. “We know we can’t do that without our employees. Our goal is to foster an inclusive company culture that embraces our differences and fosters an environment where employees can bring their whole selves to work.”

One way that it’s fostering an inclusive culture for its employees is through investing in learning opportunities and personal development programsme to support their career journeys. Best Buy has created a network of Inclusion and Diversity Steering Committees (IDSCs), cross-functional groups of leaders that focus on attracting and investing in top talent and fostering an inclusive workplace. It also has Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that bring employees with shared life experiences or characteristics together to focus on recruitment and advancement of underrepresented employee populations.

Additionally, the company is continuing to move forward with its Task Force for Racial Equity, which it formed in June with the intent to drive constructive enterprise-wide change. That task force, made up of 19 employees from across the company, is bringing forward even more actions for Best Buy to take. This includes addressing issues, such as the career development and advancement of BIPOC employees and how the company is supporting BIPOC tech businesses.

ADDITIONAL DE&I ACTIONS

Other recent DE&I commitments include:

• Committing to hire 1,000 new employees to its technology team, with 30% of them being diverse, specifically Black, Latinx, Indigenous and women.
• Signing the ParityPledge in Support of People of Colour and the ParityPledge in Support of Women.
• Making Juneteenth an official company holiday
• Holding a Day of Unity for employees to come together to show that we are one and support social justice.

During the pandemic, Best Buy took action to ensure teens from disinvested communities across the country had the technology they needed to participate in distance learning. One of its very first moves included outfitting 2,500 teens from its 35 Teen Tech Centers with a home computer and internet to attend school virtually. Many of its Teen Tech Centers, which were launched almost a decade ago, opened to provide safe centres for local students to complete schoolwork, get meals, access mental health counselling, and stay connected to caring adults.

It also co-founded Partnership for ConnectedMN, a public-private initiative that brought together local businesses, community leaders and the State of Minnesota to provide internet and technology devices to an estimated 68,000 students and families to date across the state who didn’t have access.

Click here to see how companies like, Danone, Diageo, Boeing, Southwest and Google and American Express are investing in diversity, equity, inclusion and employee/community wellbeing.