CSR Directions
Senior Management Statement
Dear Stakeholder,
Thank you for your interest in OfficeMax's second annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report. This year we’ve expanded our scope a bit to include information about many of our operations around the world, as we continue to articulate the relationship between CSR performance and business value.
This year’s report, aptly entitled, Living Values, reflects our progression from planning to implementation on a number of significant CSR initiatives, recognizing that others continue to evolve. These advances are echoed in the words of OfficeMax associates, who relate their individual CSR efforts to our company’s Core Values.
Along our journey from integrated forest products company to provider of office solutions and services (see Historical Perspective), we have identified five CSR themes on which to focus. In 2007, we made important advances in each.
Community and Education
• Our Community Affairs function performed a strategic analysis of our charitable giving opportunities and identified five impact areas and 17 measurable outcomes.
• Several areas of our company joined forces to plan and implement A Day Made Better, the largest single philanthropic event in our company’s history, aimed at helping educators.
• Our operations in Canada, Mexico and Australasia hosted a variety of community events, many of them aligned with the OfficeMax focus on education.
Natural Environment
• Our U.S. Operations’ energy management initiative contributed greatly to our 43,000 metric ton reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, and earned OfficeMax a prestigious industry award.
• We issued our U.S. Operations Paper Procurement Policy, which will guide associates on paper procurement and paper usage and will notify suppliers of our expectations of them.
• Our Canadian subsidiary, Grand & Toy, released its Sustainability Vision, which includes minimizing environmental impacts.
Diversity and Inclusion
• The OfficeMax Diversity Council developed a strategic direction, which will guide us for years to come.
• OfficeMax became the first office supply company to accept National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce minority-business certifications.
• We began to roll out Diversity and Inclusion education and awareness training within the company.
Working Environment
• We introduced a progressive new Associate Performance Management Process, which stresses goal-setting and associate/supervisor interaction.
• We conducted our first companywide All-Associate Engagement Survey, revealing a high degree of associate engagement.
• We developed organizational practices and program elements that will serve as the foundation of our new U.S. Operations Safety and Health Plan, scheduled for implementation in 2008.
Customer Value
• We expanded our popular MaxPerks programs to include even more benefits for educators and to reward customers for recycling ink and toner cartridges and cell phones.
• We shattered our own records for implementing one of the most successful viral holiday campaigns ever with our next-generation ElfYourself Web site, which logged 193 million visits.
• We engaged in an innovative study, the Multicultural Market Analysis and Retail Store Profile, which compared our point-of-sale information with U.S. Census and other market data.
Overall, we are pleased with the shape that our CSR efforts have taken and the direction in which they continue to move. As I stated in last year’s report, this is a great time to be an OfficeMax associate, with opportunities to grow professionally and contribute to the good of society and the environment.
I hope you enjoy reading this second installment chronicling our CSR journey. Please let us know what you think.
Sincerely,
Sam K. Duncan
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer