'HR needs to be at the forefront of determining exactly what is needed,' says Chris Taylor, as company doubles its footprint, reduces turnover by breaking down silos
Cross-functional collaboration has become the driving force behind Best Buy Canada’s transformation, according to Chris Taylor, SVP communications and CHRO. Over the past three years, the company has relied on integrated teams across logistics, technology, retail and inventory to reinvent how products move and how customers interact with the brand.
One of the clearest examples came through logistics. Competing on speed, availability and customer experience demanded reinvention of its infrastructure.
“We are a brick-and-mortar business, but we also have to be as good as the leading web-only retailer. So, we’ve had to prioritize how we move product, both from our distribution centers and our stores, and more importantly, how the customer engages with us in any way that they want to engage with us, which required coordination across multiple functions,” he says.
That coordination turned into a living system rather than a project team.
“Typically, we always have collaborative groups across a project, but they tend not to live beyond that project. This collaborative group, however, lives on as part of how we progress in this space as an organization,” he says.
Collaboration delivers measurable impact
The real test of collaboration, however, shows up in results. Taylor points to hard numbers on turnover and engagement.
“Our turnover at the senior leadership level is virtually zero,” he says. “Our turnover has dropped dramatically in the last two years across all of our channels, particularly in professional jobs.”
Beyond retention, he sees collaboration building leadership muscle. Recent engagement survey results back this up, with belonging showing strong results, Taylor says.
“Being on these cross-functional teams that drive a particular value for the organization allows individuals and leaders to come together and grow their skill set."
Breaking silos through structural change
But collaboration is not without resistance, and breaking that required structural changes at Best Buy.
“At times, there can be amongst any organization and with leaders, there can be a bit of territorialism,” Taylor says. “We started to adjust our compensation programs; we've moved a lot of our compensation and incentive programs to a ‘one Best Buy’ approach, which over 95% of our people are on.”
That mindset was stress-tested when Bell Canada tapped Best Buy to run its Source stores. The project doubled Best Buy’s footprint, but with only seven months to reface stores, integrate POS systems, and merge cultures, the margin for error was zero.
“That's really unprecedented,” Taylor says. “We needed to figure out: 'How do we make sure they have all the tools to succeed and sell consumer electronics in the Best Buy Express stores while providing Bell services, devices and activations?' It's a very unique business model that really was no blueprint for.”
The success, he notes, came down to values and agile, cross-functional execution. HR was critical in translating collaboration into permanence. This means building permanent teams to sustain momentum rather than letting the original launch group carry the load.
“Sometimes you can have a collaborative team come together, set processes in place, and then they go back to their day jobs, but HR needs to be at the forefront of determining exactly what is needed along with the business and make sure you're supporting those business leaders,” he says.
Collaboration shaping strategy and culture
Looking forward, collaboration is becoming strategy, not execution, and decisions about priorities are no longer made in silos
“We're in the process of building our five-year strategy. And what our President has done well is making sure that the entire executive team is deeply involved in the building of the strategy and the technical priorities,” Taylor says.
That “collaboration at the top” trickles down to blended teams in e-commerce, merchandising and beyond.
For Taylor, though, collaboration’s impact extends past business transformation into community and wellness.
“The magic actually lies in the day to day of store leaders caring about their employees, or department heads caring about their employees,” he explains. “I love that we don't have to have an HR department that does these things because the organization does them, because we care about them.”
