Circuit City employee view
April 2, 2007
There was a lot of hoo-ha last week about Circuit City laying off 3400 employees. I found a local paper from EMU had a story about it as well, which gives a SE Michigan perspective ($10 is a ‘living wage’ in Ann Arbor, apparently). And this morning driving back from Chicago there was a radio story about it inviting people to call in with similar stories. There wasn’t enough time to call and voice my opinion, so I’ll write it here.
Best Buy needs to hire those people, and make a big PR move about doing so. The cynic in me says they could even lay them off 6 months from now after the PR had died down a bit. Cynicism aside, the move would be a big competitive blow, not just from a PR standpoint, but from a loyalty standpoint of the workers involved. I’m stereotyping, but most of the workers there seem to be mid 20s, probably working through college or perhaps have a second job. As they progress through life, they have a choice as to where to shop. Likely many of those 3400, and their friends and family won’t shop at Circuit City. They *may* shop at Best Buy, but there are also many other outlets to buy most items at. Best Buy hiring these employees would buy a huge amount of goodwill that no amount of personalized flyers can (I just got a ‘birthday card’ for 10% off from Best Buy).
Additionally, the comepetive intelligence gained from these employees’ tenures - they were the highest paid which would tend to indicate better skills, likely seniority and leadership to some extent - would have a long lasting impact on how Best Buy competes with Circuit City. They already do a pretty good job, and you wouldn’t want to be taking all CC info and copying it - they’re losing money and laying off people after all! But the insights as to how some of the current staff left behind work/think would be at least a short term valuable asset.
In short, BBY, hire the CC layoffs now!
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