Best Buy Canada's CHRO on how to supercharge your EAPs and embrace telehealth
As much as leaders like to talk about mental health, understanding it in theory and spotting the warning signs are two very different things.
For Chris Taylor, CHRO at Best Buy Canada, he’s coached his managers in the art of noticing and reacting to psychological wellbeing in their teams.
“We've done a lot of training around recognizing the signs of mental health concerns in our teams,” he tells HRD. “We have continuous sessions around mental health and trauma – making it OK to talk about it openly.
“That’s been the biggest culture shift I've seen in the last 24 months — how openly people will talk about the subject and how our leaders crave more skills to help them handle it in their departments too.”
At Best Buy Canada, mental health seems to have taken centre stage. With over 12,000 employees across Canada, Taylor understands the importance of having a solid wellness program in place – from the corporate office to the frontline staff. For this, Taylor brought in a bevy of new ideas.
“We offer cognitive behavioural therapy,” he says. “We know not everybody is comfortable going somewhere and talking to someone one-on-one – so this allows people to really get to the bottom of what’s impacting their health directly. This is counselor-led, however you can also do it on your own – and this is available for our employees’ families too.”
Flexibility and accessibility are the cornerstones of a good wellbeing strategy – but this can only be properly executed with empathetic leadership.
A 2022 study from MetLife found that 76% of employees who have supportive managers are more likely to have the flexibility to manage both their personal and their professional lives, compared to 31% that don’t have that senior support. And this support is essential when it comes to introducing a comprehensive wellbeing plan.
For Taylor, he’s looking at Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) as a means of furthering resource accessibility.
“I believe it's an underutilized resource that we have,” he tells HRD. “That's why we continue to market it more than ever. I’m also looking at telehealth – there’s a lot of great providers out there that’re figuring out not just the physical side but now adding additional mental health resources and therapists too.
“We don’t have that as of yet, but we do offer a strong EAP that has some of the same resources.”
MetLife’s report found that 34% of employees are more likely to say their mental health has improved if their company offers an EAP, with 79% of employees calling for more “technological support” in their mental health strategy.
“Next for us is looking for a telehealth partner with accessibility for people to get the help they need in real time – and quickly,” says Taylor. “That’s next on my big agenda, to figure out who's the right partner.”
This focus on supercharging mental health is something that’s taken off post-pandemic. One of the main requests from Best Buy employees has been flexible working and hybrid models, says Taylor.
“We actually built a brand new office in Vancouver across five floors, completely state-of-the-art,” he says. “And people can go there whenever they want for get-togethers and collaboration. But what we’re seeing, generally speaking, is that people prefer to work at home.
“I think there’s a lot of good in that – building your ecosystem around life and fitting work in there in an effective way.”
However, there are some shadow effects that Taylor is watching. One revolves around working hours and preventing burnout – something that is easier said than done for HR leaders in remote work.
“We can’t quite see people’s hours as we did before in a more traditional environment,” says Taylor. “Are they burning the midnight oil?
“It’s really up to leaders to set the tone on expectations to balance remote work. At the moment, we’re trying to figure out how to build what I call ‘voluntary hybrid.’”
When it comes to managing overwork, leadership teams are somewhat stumped. Data from Accountemps found that 96% of senior managers are convinced their team members are burning out – despite the fact they don’t really know how to properly address the issue.
“I think it's healthy for people to come together and collaborate in-person,” says Taylor. “So we're trying to experiment with some things at the office, whether it be speakers or organizations running their events in our office that people are welcome to come and join.
“We're asking leaders to have at least one meeting a month with their team so they can come together and celebrate.
“It’s less about business content and more about togetherness.”
