Best Buy Canada CHRO on how to help ailing employees during times of crisis
With the festive period on the horizon, employers in the retail sector are understandably worried about their people. Shop workers, during extra busy times, often bear the brunt of customer anger, leading to issues such as burnout, stress and anxiety.
Speaking to HRD, Chris Taylor, CHRO at Best Buy Canada, says that in order to help struggling employees, you first need to identify them. Which can be harder than it looks.
“Take the pandemic, for example,” says Taylor. “During that time, we started to bring in our EAP provider to help us spot some of those warning signs that an employee is struggling. We call it our Mental Health First Aid training. We try to recognize when those issues might be present and helping leaders identify if someone's behaviour has changed.”
Has an individual’s behaviour changed? Have they been absent more than usual? Has their productivity dropped off? These are questions that employers should be asking themselves on a regular basis.
Taylor teaches his people to look for tactical warning signs.
“We felt we needed a program that jumped into something a little deeper than just those daily shift check-ins,” he tells HRD. “This was organically created in the field in our stores where we started something that we refer to as fireside chats. And we make sure are leaders participate in this a couple of times a year, sitting down and really talking to our people on a deeper level.”
The importance of leading by example with storytelling and empathy can’t be understated. According to research from McKinsey & Company, storytelling was found to be an intrinsic leadership quality for CEOs, with leaders who share their stories being more likely to motivate their people.
That’s something that Taylor also found at Best Buy Canada.
“Because we do these chats with everyone, we found that it’s really not a threatening conversation for the majority of our folks,” he tells HRD.
“What we tend to see is if people are struggling on the home front, or there are other influences beyond the store, they surface during these trust building sessions. And we’ve trained our managers, who hosted them, how to balance inclusiveness here without overstepping the line or getting too personal.”
And the results have been incredible. Not only have managers gotten closer to their people, better understood their wellbeing needs, they’ve also uncovered deeper issues that needed resolving.
“Somethings we’ve discovered because of these chats has been domestic abuse or other serious issues that people have been hiding,” says Taylor. “From there, we’re able to offer the right resources to really help.”
Resources play an essential role in any comprehensive mental health strategy. It’s all well talking the talk, but employees need access to tangible help – both online and in-person. That’s where Best Buy’s ‘champion community’ comes in.
“It's really the champion community that we’ve set up in our stores that supports the store leaders,” says Nikhil Rattan, senior manager for health, safety, and wellness at Best Buy Canada. “This champion network, which is closest to our people, is really able to identify when those stressors are happening.
“And from there, connect those resources to the people that need them. I would say it’s a combination of that robust network of champions, combined with the training that we give to our leaders, that really helps us see when people are struggling and who needs the help.”
It's a ground level game, according to Rattan. Those boots on the ground, that bridge between senior leadership and retail workers, help mitigate any potential mental health concerns – and help the employees who might be hurting.
“We can pollinate the website internally with a ton of content, but it's that ground level support to the champion network that really brings this to the forefront. And we're really able to support our people in a meaningful way.”
