Working Environment

Communications Vehicles

The Electronic Advantage

Based on the 2006 success of the associate-focused print publication, Advantage Magazine, OfficeMax launched the next generation of communications vehicles under the Advantage banner in 2007: Advantage TV, an online version of Advantage Magazine, and the Advantage News e-mail bulletin. Together these vehicles replaced the print-based magazine. This shift to an electronic communications platform provides cost savings and distribution advantages, along with enhanced opportunities for immediacy and frequency.

Advantage TV is produced at the state-of-the-art television production studio located at OfficeMax corporate headquarters, enabling us to provide news in a timely and professional manner, complete with graphics and special effects. News items are typically broadcast monthly to call centers, biweekly to Retail operations, and weekly and as needed to our distribution centers and headquarter associates via closed circuit television. It is also available to all associates via the OfficeMax Intranet. Advantage TV is used to communicate compelling business issues and often features on-camera appearances by company executives. Some of the topics covered in 2007 included our A Day Made Better initiative and OfficeMax environmental stewardship efforts.

The advent of Advantage TV has also broadened the instant reach of the “Town Hall Meetings” that began at our corporate headquarters in 2006, featuring Chairman and CEO, Sam Duncan, sharing information and taking questions from associates.

Advantage News is an e-mail based publication distributed nationally every Monday, with a special corporate headquarters edition distributed every Thursday. Advantage News communicates key company news and events throughout our U.S. Operations, Managers are asked to post printouts of the publication in their break rooms. The e-mail platform gives readers a quick overview of company developments and is supplemented with links to more information or to facilitate specific online actions, such as registering for an event or signing up for voluntary training.

Associates are encouraged to contribute to and comment on Advantage News. At the end of each issue is an invitation to comment via e-mail, as well as a link to an associate news submission form.

Advantage Magazine Online is an associate-focused Web-based publication that provides coverage of companywide initiatives and issues, and gives associates an inside view of what’s happening in areas of the company other than their own. During 2007, as the print version underwent the transformation to online publication, one edition was issued. Plans are to publish two online stories per month.

Expanded "Town Hall" Meetings

Among the most well received avenues of communication introduced by OfficeMax in recent years is our own variation on the old “town hall” meeting. Introduced in 2006, the OfficeMax Town Hall meetings featured Chairman and CEO Sam Duncan standing in the atrium lobby at our corporate headquarters at the center of some 1,300 associates staggered five stories high, sharing quarterly performance and other company information and soliciting feedback and questions.

In April 2007, the Town Hall Meetings took on a decidedly modern twist: Advantage TV began broadcasting messages from Sam Duncan discussing the same information from the morning’s town hall meetings. Archives of these broadcasts are made available to associates on the OfficeMax Intranet site.

Secure Associate-Feedback Measures

In addition to proactively encouraging associate feedback in a variety of ways, OfficeMax also strives to ensure that associates feel secure in voicing concerns or sharing ideas, whether input has been specifically solicited or not. The two primary avenues for achieving this include the following:

• The OfficeMax Open Door Policy, which provides a safe environment for associates to approach their supervisors or other members of management – including various Human Resources personnel – with concerns or ideas. Supervisors are obligated to honor and encourage the Policy.
• The Associate Tip Line, which provides associates with an anonymous, toll-free way of reporting issues that they simply may not be comfortable reporting any other way. Such issues may be among the most sensitive. In fact, the Tip Line is among the channels through which associates can fulfill their affirmative responsibility to report violations of the OfficeMax Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.