This announcement rubs me the wrong way. The company just delivered excellent results, and their employees are being rewarded with layoff notices – in an economy that has significant unemployment? I well understand the rationale management is describing, but where does the commitment to employees come into this? I would certainly understand if Best Buy was under financial stress, but that’s not the case. How employers treat employees – in both good times and bad times – says a lot about the company and its true culture. This recent announcement by Best Buy speaks volumes.

Best Buy is responding to the new customer journey where the role of the store is changing. The dramatic shift to online shopping, for Best Buy and most every retail segment, is forcing brands to rethink the store and how service is provided to best meet customer expectations. Customer-facing retails jobs will likely evolve to more consultative roles, especially for complex products such as technology.

There has been a big change in how consumers use Best Buy. More business is being done remotely and while stores are still playing a critical role in fulfillment and some aspects of service, customers are shopping them differently. Best Buy has a responsibility to adapt and has been doing so through testing new store formats. Optimizing staffing levels is another part of the rebalancing equation. Hours reductions and lay-offs are unfortunate, but they are needed if Best Buy is to remain fit and healthy over the longer term.

The timing of the announcement comes as Best Buy closes what has been a very successful fiscal year. That looks jarring. However the company has to look forward and assess its needs in 2021 and beyond.

Thank you for your help, now here’s the door. Big retail is moving from training soft skills to having people manage tasks. As bigger cities empty out and employees feel used turnover will skyrocket, mark my words. And when online isn’t the captive darling of the pandemic, and shoppers return to stores, will those Best Buy stores look more like Sears or Circuit City did as they cut staff thinking no one would notice?

You can put lipstick on it, it’s still a pig. The company has good numbers but in order to keep up those profits, they are trimming some staff and re-assigning others. It’s not a flexibility play or a shift-to-digital play per se, it’s a profit play. More digital often means fewer associates.

Expecting a smaller workforce to take on multiple roles requires the retailer to do a very good job of training. Training its employees is not something for which the retail industry as a whole is known. Those who do it very well turn out to be the leaders. If Best Buy can pull that off, they have a chance at success with the new approach.

The discussion is really about — what does a brick-and-mortar sales employee look like? Of course a proficiency in customer service and sales is needed but a digital acumen could become a critical hiring prerequisite. Will retailers incorporate technology and digitization from their corporate teams and lean on the on-store employees for clienteling and more? The smart ones will.

You still need associates to maintain the increase in digital – curbside pickup, online help, BOPIS, etc. I do not know if the store associates needed to be laid off as many locations are still working on getting up and running on supporting the increased sales in digital.

As part of any digital transformation, there is an accompanying organizational transformation, which shifts and evolves the associates’ role and significance. While there will be some short-term job reductions, considering how successful Best Buy has been before and during the pandemic, there will be an increase in hiring to address the digital-first customer strategies.

As consumer behaviors continue to shift and evolve, Best Buy’s operating model has shifted to a digital-first strategy. Best Buy has been one of the modern success stories of a company on the verge of bankruptcy yet had the courage, discipline, and determination to shift the entire in-store and digital experiences to address a changing consumer landscape.

The expectation is that the store associates will remain a critical component of the Best Buy experience and receive the proper training and support to execute against Best Buy’s value proposition.

We’ve been talking about the future role of stores for years. The shift in lifestyle from COVID-19 has accelerated the prior slow/steady growth of digital sales and stores are adjusting–good or bad. Even if the virus was gone tomorrow, stores are not going to recapture 100 percent of prior business now that COVID-19 has pushed consumers into more comfort online.

How those adjustments are made and what personnel moves where (or not) is another topic. It sounds like Best Buy is creating employee friction by not sharing a vision and not keeping employee welfare front and center in their digital reorg.

Best Buy is responding to market changes that are inevitable. Over time, the new hiring to support their digital business in remote customer support, fulfillment of online orders, etc. will surely eclipse the loss of jobs they are seeing in the actual stores. Many companies have to re-tool and Best Buy is most likely putting a proactive foot forward. Given the pandemic and difficulty for the families losing jobs, this comes at a bad time, so there could have been a more gradual approach.

That’s funny, I distinctly remember Best Buy saying their blue shirts were their most valuable assets and having human contact separated them from the competition, like Amazon. Guess not. Having just gotten off the phone after a half an hour trying to contact a human being at a certain retailer, I find this move sad and ironic all at once. Ex-Machina, here we come.

All retailers will have to face the changing nature of their business as increases in online sales have accelerated by 10 years during the pandemic. However that does not devalue store staff and retailers must ensure that they are well trained, well motivated and able to serve the customer in a way that will bring shoppers back, whatever channel they are in. Yes, staff will have to be more flexible and understand the various channels and how to work across the retail offering. But retail will now more than ever need to be customer-centric, delivering theater and great customer satisfaction if they are to thrive. Staff are absolutely key to that.

My ongoing criticism of the retail industry (and all industries) has been the propensity to cut costs by cutting labor. Over the years it has been a signal that the company is or soon will be in deep trouble. The companies cut at the bottom, not at the top, yet the productivity is generally at the bottom.

This is probably not the case with Best Buy. Surely they do not have a profit issue. Their decision is strategic, operational and forward looking. Companies are not charities. If the demand for labor’s services no longer exists, they should be eliminated.

Smart companies, sustainable companies are always looking at the trends of their businesses and balancing their workforce with the needs of the business. Best Buy is moving toward a much more profitable business model, one that most retailers should consider.

I’d have thought that more digital online/chat help would necessitate more associates being available, but I guess the numbers don’t add up. Pursuing customer-facing retail as a career is certainly in a downward spiral.

Best Buy’s move may be a good one financially gives the impression of being coldhearted. The publicity around the move may not sit well with the current and potential customers base, but I doubt that the number who will stop buying from Best Buy will make a significant dent in their sales.