Officeworks

Our annual Back to School Appeal is on! From now until Sunday 9 February, you can donate whilst shopping in store or online to help change a student’s life through the incredible work of The Smith Family. The Smith Family is a national children’s education charity with a vision of a world where every child has the opportunity to change their future, no matter what their circumstances. It helps children and young people impacted by poverty with long-term support for their education. Our Appeal began 12 years ago. In that time, together with our customers, we have raised more than $9.3m, which is enough to support the education of more than 14,000 students on The Smith Family’s core Learning for Life program for an entire year. Every donation helps young Australians impacted by poverty to start another school year with the essentials they need for their education: 📖 $2 can provide a notebook for their favourite subject at school ✏️ $5 can provide a pack of coloured pencils to nurture their creativity 🎧 $10 can provide headphones to engage in online learning from home 📘 $20 can provide a new book to develop their literacy skills We’d love your support to help young people in need change their futures!

As 2024 draws to a close, we would like to recognise those that have made our 30th birthday year one we won’t forget. A heart-felt thank you goes to: 💙 our customers who have allowed us to support you to work, learn, create and connect and for donating so generously during our fundraising Appeals 💙 our team members who are the heart and soul of Officeworks and have helped make bigger things happen for customers and local communities each and every day; and 💙 our partners and suppliers for your continued commitment and contribution, we are so grateful for your support. From our Officeworks family to yours, we wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and a wonderful new year.

This year more than 80 team members from across the business each celebrated between 20-40 years of service at Officeworks or across Wesfarmers. This includes five team members who we share our 30-year anniversary with - Peter Devereaux, Al Price, Lee Meadows, Dee Brun and Daron Ruse. Peter Deveraux, pictured, was the most recent to celebrate his milestone. He's a valued team member at our Yennora and North Rocks customer fulfilment centres in NSW and has worked in picking and receiving, and also as a forklift operator. Peter is a man of very few words but loves to get in and get the job done. He has been a great mentor and teacher to our new team members and takes great pride in his work. Peter’s reflection on his milestone was short and sweet: “This is the place to be.” Our Head of Supply Chain Operations, Rob Zigmann, said: "We are so lucky to have had a gentleman like Peter be a part of our team for three decades." Congratulations and thank you to Peter and all our other passionate and dedicated long-standing team members for your contribution over so many years. #Officeworks 💙

We were delighted to welcome two new team members to our senior leaders group last month – Head of Store Operations, Michelle White, and Head of Loss Prevention Facilities & Assets, Jason Koenitz, reporting into our General Manager Store Operations & CSC, Brett Kelly.   Both leaders have built strong retail operations careers, Michelle working at Tesco in the UK for 17 years before joining Woolworths in Australia for nearly a decade, and Jason has been part of the Wesfarmers retail family on and off for 30 years.   Both Michelle and Jason were excited to join Officeworks. The feeling is mutual, welcome to the family Michelle and Jason!   #Officeworks 💙

With Black Friday kicking-off our peak trade period, things are getting pretty busy in our stores and fulfilment centres around the country. To help ensure that the safety, health and wellbeing of our team remain a priority over this period, we launched a '12 Days of Safety’ initiative last week. Each day in the lead up to Christmas, we're highlighting key safety focuses to help our team members stay safe and reflect on the reasons why being safe is important to each of them. Paul Kilminster from our Gawler Place store in Adelaide summed it up nicely: “As a Coordinator there's at least 35 reasons why I put safety at the front of my mind and coincidently they all wear blue shirts. I think the best gift we can give each other is a safe Christmas!” Love your work Paul, and we love the work of all our team members working hard to help make bigger things happen for our customers in the lead up to Christmas and every other day. #Officeworks 💙

We have just reached an exciting milestone on our climate action journey, with 50 stores now having solar 🌟 This means that 50 stores are being powered by up to 30% solar energy from their own roof, producing 32% less carbon than those that don't have solar. Our long-term ambition is to have as many stores as possible with solar, including another 20 by the end of this financial year. Well done to our energy and carbon team, Patrick Heagney and Hayley Harkin, for driving our solar PV install program, as well as all those in our Property Team for your support, especially our Property Lease Solar Project Consultant, Nicole McCann (Bone). #Officeworks #PeoplePlanetPositive 💚

In mid-November, some of our Global Sourcing & Quality and Sustainability team members travelled to Shanghai to host our annual International Partner Meeting. More than 50 of our partners and suppliers based in and around China gathered together, for the first time in person since the pandemic, to hear about our business performance, strategy, future plans and goals, and to celebrate our achievements. Officeworks Head of Global Sourcing & Quality, Marie-Anne Melidonis, said: “It was really special to spend time with some of our key international partners and suppliers, many of which play a crucial role in helping us bring to life our private label ranges and products across stationery, art and craft, furniture and technology accessories. It also gave us the perfect opportunity to recognise those businesses and individuals who went above and beyond to help us make bigger things happen in FY24. Congratulations again to all the winners of our International Partner Awards.” #Officeworks 💙

This International Human Rights Day, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on our People & Planet Positive plan commitments in this space and our most recent progress. A quick recap of our commitments: ✊ To uphold and respect human rights within our own operations and throughout our supply chain, ✊ To work towards eradicating modern slavery; and ✊ Enable positive change to 15,000 workers in our supply chain. What did we do in FY24? ✊ We continued to evolve our Ethical Sourcing Program in line with industry developments and best practice, guided by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. ✊ As part of our Audit Program, 26,849 products were mapped to the manufacturing site, giving us more visibility of our supply chain. ✊ We offered support to remediate 516 non-conformances across 496 sites. ✊ We continued to implement our Worker Survey Program across manufacturing sites to improve worker wellbeing and engagement, enabling positive change for 133 workers in our supply chain, and 7,668 since the launch of our People & Planet Positive Plan in FY20. Wesfarmers has also just released its 2024 Modern Slavery Statement highlighting the Group's efforts in managing modern slavery risks. This year, 3,100 supplier sites were monitored across the Group, with issues identified and remediation strategies implemented. Read the full statement here: https://lnkd.in/gguYQ893 Moving forward, we'll continue to work towards improving worker wellbeing and engagement within our value chain and support our partners in understanding the benefits of taking meaningful action. We will also continue to review and expand our Ethical Sourcing Program to address emerging risks and further increase visibility throughout our supply chain. Read more in our FY24 People & Planet Positive Report here: https://lnkd.in/g-pK9KFd #Officeworks #HumanRightsDay 💙

Last year, some of our NSW stores raised more than $46000 to support Learning Links as part of our annual Make a Difference Appeal, and the positive impact is still being felt to this very day. Learning Links is a NSW-based organisation that provides evidence-based support and programs to children across literacy and numeracy, psychology and speech pathology, including on an outreach basis to children in disadvantaged communities. Learning Links GM of Fundraising, Rachel Brodie-Browne, said: “Thanks to the generous funds from Officeworks, our expert educators, psychologists, and speech therapists have provided tailored support to disadvantaged children supporting 1324 sessions over the last 12 months.” As these children progress in their academic journey, we can see their growth serves as a testament to the transformative power of education and the profound impact of Officeworks' generosity. We extend our deepest gratitude for Officeworks' unwavering commitment to supporting children to reach their full potential.” Right now in Australia, up five children in every classroom have a learning or social difficulty, but only some are actually eligible for financial assistance, so the incredible work Learning Links does in NSW is much needed. #Officeworks #PeoplePlanetPositive 💙

As part of our strategy to accelerate B2B growth and expand our education offer, we’re delighted to announce we’ve acquired one of Australia’s leading digital education companies, Box of Books.   Box of Books provides a digital education platform that enhances student engagement with physical and digital textbook content, providing an enriched, immersive learning experience.   Officeworks Managing Director, Sarah Hunter, said “Box of Books is enabling the digitisation of Australian education, delivering a high-quality service for schools, teachers and students.   Over recent years we have seen how the classroom has evolved, with technology helping to make learning more accessible and personalised. Box of Books is well positioned to expand as schools around Australia continue to digitise.”   We’re pleased we can help even more Australian students access quality resources to improve educational outcomes with Box of Books now officially part of the Officeworks family.   #Officeworks 💙