Best Buy Debuts New Internal Employee Experience Platform

The Unily platform offers up-to-date company communications and a social hub for Best Buy Canada employees.

Need to Know 

  • Best Buy Canada is launching a new internal platform to support its 12,000 employees.
  • The new tool from Unily offers a one-stop location for company communications, a social hub for employees, and even supports onboarding and employee feedback.
  • Best Buy has leaned into tech to survive the uncertainty of the past year, resulting in its second-best sales quarter ever and over $11 billion in revenue.

Analysis 

Best Buy Canada is stepping up its internal communications with a new intranet offering from Unily. The new tool will serve as a digital hub for Best Buy employees to collaborate. 

The digital, cloud-based intranet system provides an interactive one-stop location for Best Buy Canada employees to get information, company news, and collaborate. 

Unily is a UK-based tech company that promises to improve workplace culture through connection. The platform supports the employee experience with a “multichannel communications platform”, a social hub, and internal publishing tools to create custom sites. The platform is also available on mobile for employees on the go. 

The platform can also be utilized for onboarding, employee recognition, and custom surveys can be created for employee feedback.  

Best Buy Canada employees over 12,000 people nationwide, and with all of the uncertainty the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the retail space, communication is more important than ever. The new platform will bring employees together and streamline all company communications to one destination. 

“As a digital-first organization, we want to provide employees with a solution that meets the current times in terms of how people communicate with each other,” said Scott Parker, Best Buy Canada’s communications specialist. “Ultimately, we wanted a place for everyone to go for all their communications needs, and Unily’s intranet will help us to achieve this. Unily fit our vision and met our strict security protocols on the backend. We’re very excited to be working with Unily to design an intranet that will enable our employees to feel more connected.”

Since the onset of the pandemic, Best Buy has tapped into technology to maintain the in-store experience it is known for. 

The tech goods retailer pivoted to bring the same in-store customer experience from the retail store to the online world by launching Blue Shirt Chat, a tool that connects online shoppers directly to in-store associates for free, as well as a Check-In tool that allows them to skip the line when picking up an online order. 

“Best Buy invested a lot in the knowledge that our Blue Shirts have,” explained Thierry Hay-Sabourin, SVP of e-commerce for Best Buy Canada.

The popular chain also redesigned its retail stores to optimize digital fulfillment and curbside pickup. 

And in late 2020, Best Buy announced a five-year partnership with Accenture, which will help to “advance Best Buy’s data science capacities, information security, product development, technology risk management, and user experience design.” 

Best Buy’s quick pivots are paying off: the retailer’s revenue hit $11.85 billion last year and online sales jumped 174%.