Tech & Biz

Best Buy Offers Employee Buyouts

by Jordan Yerman | December 17, 2008 at 06:36 am

316 views | 0 Recommendations | 1 comment

Big-box electronics retailer Best Buy is offering a deal to its own corporate staff: buyouts in return for their jobs.

4,000 employees have been offered 7 1/2 months' pay and one year of health insurance in exchange for leaving the company by January 5th.

The top consumer electronics retailer has taken several steps to counter the U.S. recession and fend off increased competition from discounters such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which has expanded its product offering and cut prices in the key holiday shopping season.

Same-store sales of locations open longer than 14 months fell 5.3 percent during the quarter. Total revenue rose to $11.5 billion third quarter, compared to $9.9 billion one year ago, in part because of revenue reports from Best Buy Europe and gains from 181 new stores.

Best Buy’s CEO, Brad Anderson, said the third quarter of this year was the “most challenging environment our company has ever faced,” and warned that dramatically curtailed consumer spending habits could be long-lasting.

The store-opening schedule will depend on how many employees take the deal, and on holiday-season performance of existing stores.

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Former BBY Employee (not verified)

at 09:59 on December 18th, 2008

Hopefully some of the long-time boat anchors that couldn't strategize themselves out of a paper bag will take them up on their offer and finally allow BBY to move beyond the Dick Schultz days and become more competitive in the modern day retail environment. Just because a culture is broken, it shouldn't be the expectation that every new employee with great ideas has to conform in order to survive there. Proof that technology is not just designed to solve a business problem, but is also a tool to provide more opportunities and to make a company more competitive in the digital age....which Best Buy has been unable to do.