Best Buy offers opportunity ‘pipelines’ – and fun

When Natasha Nikic says she grew up with Best Buy Canada, it’s not an exaggeration. After all, her 17-year career with the Vancouver-based electronics retailer started when she was 16 and got a part-time job in one of its stores.

Over the course of her career Nikic has worked in multiple Best Buy stores as a department manager and a store leader, moved into a district operations role that oversaw labour and inventory for all of the company’s B.C. stores, and is now running a team of more than 100 Geek Squad agents across western Canada.

Nikic says the company has more than earned her loyalty. While she was in university for a degree in political science and sociology, her leaders helped her to fit her work schedule around her classes and were “so supportive” of her education. In her early 20s, one of her managers tapped her for a leadership job that put her on the management track. And as she grew into progressively more senior roles, Nikic says she was given the “autonomy and trust” to lead in a way that felt authentic to her.

“Whatever phase I was at in my life, the company’s always done right by me,” she says. “I give but I also get back, and that’s something you don’t always get in an employer.”

One of Best Buy’s four core values is to unleash the power of its people and their diverse talents. Nilesh Bhagat, director of rewards and human resources information systems, says the company has been dedicating focus in recent years to helping employees understand how they can build their skills and grow within the organization.

Best Buy has three business units – its store network, distribution centres and corporate – and Bhagat says the company wants to create “pipelines” for people to move across units, by identifying roles in each unit that require transferrable skills that employees from other units might have. Those roles put them in the position to learn and be successful in a new department, he says.

“We’ve had a few folks who started in our stores, did really well and became specialists in their areas, and found a path into HR through the shared services department. They made a splash and will have many more opportunities to make an impact on their careers and on Best Buy,” he says. “There are established pipelines that folks tend to follow into different business units, so we’re trying to make those more visible and prominent.”

Bhagat, who has been with the company for just over 12 years, says the company also has formal training opportunities across all three business units, as well as voluntary opportunities for employees to learn more about their roles – such as education on Best Buy products for retail employees and training on changing technology within the distribution centres.

Nikic has been able to take advantage of the company’s comprehensive leadership training while she was advancing in her career, and has been a part of Best Buy’s mentorship program for women, called LIFT.

But she says work has been about more than just advancement: it’s been plenty of fun, too. From employee game and movie nights using one of the new 90-inch screens on the store floor to summer barbecues; from the company’s annual softball charity tournaments to the holiday toy drive, “we have a really good time.

“Some of my best friends now are people I met inside the organization, and they became like family to me,” she says. “The soccer tournaments and the get-togethers with other stores and the summer barbecues, it’s just formed these friendships that have lasted me into my 30s.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's BC’s Top Employers winners, published February 13, 2024 in the Vancouver Sun. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.