ALE VALERIANO - STAFF WRITER

Best Buy is partnering with The Mom Project to help more women — especially working moms — find great jobs across our company.

The Mom Project is a platform that connects job-seeking women at all stages of their careers with top employers. That’s especially important now because the COVID-19 pandemic has led 2.4 million women to leave the workforce amid challenges such as access to childcare and a lack of flexible work schedules.

Through this partnership, we plan to hire at least 100 new employees across a variety of roles and locations. There will be a particular emphasis on identifying women in technology.

We also joined The Mom Project at its recent Back to Progress Summit, where Jennie Weber, senior vice president of experience design and insights at Best Buy, was a keynote speaker. Drawing from personal experience, her talk focused on balancing being a working mom while growing a career.

“Own it, embrace the choices that you made because they have been the best for you and the best for your family,” Jennie told the audience during a 30-minute moderated conversation. “I would not shy away from that, because if there is a company that is going to hold being a mom against me, that’s probably not a place that I want to work. Be proud of the choices that you have made and what you have learned from that experience.”

Making progress, together

Best Buy is dedicated to building a diverse workforce across the entire company, from our stores to our boardroom. We’re proud to have women represented at the highest levels of leadership, including CEO Corie Barry and 45% of our board of directors.

In 2021 we set a variety of inclusion and diversity goals, including filling one out of three new, non-hourly field roles with women and one out of three new non-hourly corporate positions with Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) employees. We also signed Parity.org’s ParityPledge in 2017, committing to interview a least one qualified female candidate for every open position at the vice president level and above.

Additionally, we empower women across the company through mentoring programs, leadership training and a growing number of employee resource groups.

Other ways we are supporting parents and families include:

• Adoption, surrogacy and fertility benefits for employees who want to grow their families.
• A Caregiver Pay benefit, which provides four weeks of full pay for those who need to care for a spouse/domestic partner, parent or child under the age of 18. Up to two weeks is available to care for extended family members such as siblings, in-laws, grandchildren, grandparents and adult children.
• Backup Child Care through Care.com that provides employees with 10 days of in-home or in-center child care for only $10 per day while the parent is at work. Employees can also use a preferred caregiver or center from their personal network and get reimbursed for a portion of the costs that exceed their copay.
• Flexible work options for corporate employees, which include a reduced schedule at 80% or 60% (with a corresponding reduction in pay); or a job share, where two employees share one full-time position.
• Tutoring reimbursement of up to $100 a month for school-aged dependents.
• A variety of mental health benefits, including up to eight no-cost virtual or in-person counseling sessions per event per year.

Click here to learn more about careers at Best Buy.

For the full article, please access the Best Buy Corporate site.