A major focus for the year was to embed a customer and store-led culture within our team and establish ways of working that deliver on the goal to have customers put us first.
Safety performance
Our commitment to improving physical safety and mental health has been a key focus throughout the year. We have continued to invest in new programs and systems to improve safety governance, address our critical risks and develop a culture of care across the Woolworths Group. We have seen significant improvements in this safety performance over the year. FY17 saw customer claims reduce by 19%, a Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) score of 6.76 and a Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) of 12.97.
Team Engagement
Driving culture change across the Woolworths Group has been assisted BY the establishment of short and long term incentive plans that are aligned to our customer first focus. Team engagement has also improved across the year, with an increase of five points on last year to 82%, measured by our Voice of Team survey. We have seen an uplift in morale across the team, especially in regard to recommending Woolworths as a place to work. As morale and team engagement increases, we have seen team turnover reduce.
Key appointments
An important part of driving the culture change was to also align our senior leadership and operating model so as to leverage the specialised skills and experience from within the team. New appointments in 2017 included Woolworths Supermarkets Managing Director, Claire Peters, and Chief Information Officer, John Hunt. They also join the reinvigorated Woolworths Group Executive Committee that includes key internal appointments that provide an essential balance of representatives between business, service and group functions.
WooliesX
The Woolworths Group is focussed on the importance of digital and what we need to do to better serve our increasingly connected customers to create shopping experiences that are personalised, seamless and convenient. In response to this, we have combined our Digital and Loyalty businesses under the new banner of WooliesX. Bringing these two agile and specialist teams together will allow us to focus on accelerating growth from digital and provide a compelling offer to our customers.
Voice of Team engagement score
82%
Total recordable Injury Frequency rate (TRIFR)
12.97 TRIFR
A key highlight in FY17 was the meaningful improvement in customer scores in Australian Food, which has resulted in positive sales momentum throughout the year.
Food sales momentum
Australian Food sales returned to growth in FY17. Momentum accelerated over the year, with a fourth quarter comparable sales growth of 6.4% (Easter adjusted). Our customers have responded positively to the investment across our business with growth driven primarily by a higher number of customer transactions, and more recently, an increase in the number of items our customers are putting in their baskets.
We also saw improved New Zealand Food sales in the second half as we fully cycled the bulk sales of gift cards in the first half of the prior year, leading to a growth of 2.1%. Initiatives across the stores, including ranging and price, as well as the new Onecard partnership with AA Smartfuel, have resonated with customers. We are committed to continually improving our offer for our customers with further planned investments in price and service in FY18.
Voice of Customer
Voice of Customer (VOC) scores are a key indicator for our team to measure our performance from the people who matter the most. In FY17, customers have reacted positively to our initiatives in Australian Food with our store‑controllable VOC score improving significantly to finish the year at record levels of 81%. Team Attitude continues to be one of our highest scores with Time in Queue showing the biggest improvement as a result of our investment in team hours and service focus. Our New Zealand Countdown team also achieved new highs in their customer satisfaction scores throughout the year.
Store renewal program
Our store Renewal program was a key focus for FY17 with a total of 72 Renewal stores (91 including new stores) launched in the year. June was an especially busy month for our team with 23 Renewal stores launched across the country, including three brand new stores in Wodonga VIC, Eatons Hill QLD and Keysborough South VIC. We also opened six Woolworths Metro stores during the year, with the store’s convenient offer delivering a comparable sales growth of 17%.
Woolworths Own Brand
FY17 also saw significant progress of our own brand strategy, including the continued transition to the Essentials and Woolworths range from Homebrand. Earlier this year we also launched our new online community ‘The Bunch’ which allows our customers to taste Woolworths own brand products for free and provide us, and the community, with unfiltered reviews. Since the pilot launch of the community late last year, we have seen over 7,000 customers provide their honest opinions across a range of own brand products.
- Including new stores.
Australian Food Sales
$36.4B
New Zealand Food Sales
NZ$6.2B
Total number of Renewal stores
911
Endeavour Drinks delivered solid sales growth in FY17, retaining its leading position within a competitive market. The Drinks business had a number of highlights in FY17, including record Voice of Customer scores across both our retail brands reflecting the customer first focus.
BWS Click & Collect
A key highlight for BWS in FY17 was the launch of one-hour Click & Collect which has since been rolled out to over 1,200 BWS stores across the network. To further improve the convenience offer to our customers, BWS is currently trialling fast delivery in 50 stores.
Dan Murphy’s Online
In FY17 Dan Murphy’s delivered strong double digit sales growth from its online business. The My Dan Murphy’s loyalty program has also reached a record 2.4 million members.
BWS “Store CEOs”
BWS’ focus on team engagement in FY17 provided an opportunity to empower and engage store managers to drive the direction of their stores. To embed the culture of autonomy, job titles were amended from "store manager" to "store CEO". As an example, store CEOs have been encouraged to engage smaller craft brewers in each region in order to build on community-centric relationships and local ranging preferences.
Store network
Endeavour Drinks opened a number of new stores in FY17 putting the total nationwide network at over 1,500 stores by the end of the financial year. In BWS we opened 19 net new stores and renewed a number of stores across the network, including Bondi and Moonee Ponds. Dan Murphy’s opened 12 net new stores including its first Tasmanian store, with Launceston opening in November 2016. It also opened its latest concept store in Mosman NSW in May.
Dan Murphy’s celebrates
The Dan Murphy’s team also celebrated two key industry award wins within the year. The launch of the high-end concept cellar at Prahran VIC was awarded the Customer Experience Store Design Award at the Inside Retail’s 2017 Retailer Awards. Dan Murphy’s was also awarded the 2016 Catalogue Retailer of the year title, acknowledging the high standards set by the team.
My Dan murphy's members
2.4M
Endeavour drinks store network
1,500+
Dan Murphy’s newest concept store in Mosman opened in May of this year.
BIG W’s turnaround plan was agreed earlier this year with a number of changes already underway across the business.
BIG W Leadership Team
We have put the customer back at the heart of BIG W and leveraged the learnings from our initiatives in the turnaround of Australian Food. The recently appointed BIG W Executive Team includes the combined skills, experience and structure that we believe is best placed to execute the new strategy. Earlier this year David Walker was appointed Managing Director of BIG W after acting in the role from November 2016 and has since built up the core leadership team.
Hotels performance continues to improve
Our ALH Hotels business continues to perform with a sales increase of 2.7% on the previous year driven by Bars, Food and Accommodation. We completed a number of key refurbishments in FY17 at venues across the network. Our Hotels also form an important part of our Drinks strategy, with a number of BWS and Dan Murphy’s stores attached to Hotel sites.
Hotel sales
2.7 %
increase on 2016
Process improvement and systems excellence was a key focus in FY17 as we continue to deliver greater efficiencies and convenience for both our teams and customers.
1Store launches
Earlier this year we launched our 1Store program to deliver a new suite of systems across our stores. 1Store works to improve current processes for our teams and customers by replacing tools such as our point-of‑sale systems, inventory and ticketing systems. The program focusses on greater end-to-end efficiencies and includes time saving features such as easy print functions, streamlined refunds process and greater access and ability to share nutritional information of our products with our customers.
Supply Chain measures
In FY17 our Supply Chain team delivered more than 1.2 billion cartons to our stores across the nation. To ensure the warehouse and transport operations continue to drive a customer first approach, we introduced a new form of measurement, delivery in full, on time, and error free (DIFOTEF). This new measurement aims to ensure our stores receive the perfect order, resulting in the products being in the right place at the right time for our customers.
Total number of cartons delivered to store in FY17
1.2 B