KSS July Edition eKourier 2025

FEATURE

STEADY STEPS MAKING SPACE FOR CHANGE You’ll remember that big planning event in September 2024? Momentum 24. We wanted to keep you apprised of what has been happening in the background as it has and will continue to be the launchpad for initiatives aimed at making us The Favourite Name in Space.

T he Champions, standing up for their Pillar have been leading the charge, from Cyber Security and Customer Experience to Branding and Innovation. The most exciting of the developments is the progress we are now making toward the launch of Hummingbird. It’s been built with the help of the Tenant team, designed to support you in many, much better ways. Wayne, Winstan, Deepa and the whole Hummingbird team have now moved beyond the software development itself. The team is now actively planning out and scheduling the training. We’ll be starting with the parallel pilot. This is the part where we do a 'dry run’ across a small number of centres to test it is all working correctly. This will run in the latter part of this calendar year, most likely starting at Macquarie Park and selected other test centres. With that the team have also been developing the bigger training package. Designing how the roll out will work for all of our centres. Getting it launched and supporting Hummingbird across 113 centres will take at least two months. The new website will need to be integrated before that happens. And let’s not forget we may have even more centres built, bought or opened by that time too... We’ve started consulting with the HUBS and looking closely at what you each will need to learn. It’s vital we help you get to know the new system and have confidence in how to use it before we start trying to serve any customers. As you know, Hummingbird isn’t the whole story of Momentum though. The Champions meet regularly and share progress on their other initiatives. Here’s a small taste of what has been

these customer sentiments shared on Viva (Yammer). Congratulations goes to everyone who submitted one. More details are included later in this Kourier edition. The external sales training being done by the Queensland team (Freedman Group training) is now also mostly complete, so the team plan here is to review its success and make some decisions on how this extra level of training can help. IDEATION & INNOVATION The Ideas Box demo sparked enthusiasm. We are now developing this for use on Viva (Yammer) and Atlas. BRAND & MARKETING A more organised and scheduled Brand Marketing calendar is now in place with more internal initiatives to come. These are giving the Marketing Team more guidance and structure and clearer results on their campaigns. market and communicate the KSS Brand within our company. With so many long-serving Team Members, we have a fantastic opportunity to learn what the KSS Brand means to them. Once again, more details are included later in this edition. The Momentum update on Fireside Chat in June, with Fiona, Wayne and I, gave us a chance to go into a little more detail about these updates, celebrating the Cleveland team’s win in the Paint the Town Blue campaign and highlighting the power of customer connection. As we move forward, let’s stay engaged, share ideas, and celebrate our wins. Momentum 24 is more than a plan, it’s a movement powered by all of us. Another initiative in Brand & Marketing was the chance to explore how we

happening behind the scenes.

CYBER SECURITY Awareness is expanding beyond operations to stores, with new content on Compass and targeted phishing campaigns. Company-wide reporting will share some intel on the real captured attacks. Those that were defended. We are very sure you’ll be surprised how often ‘bad actors’ try and target us. We will be sharing this information with the aim of reinforcing how important our shared responsi- bility is. PAYROLL & FINANCE SYSTEMS Many of our tech systems are getting older and they’re also each unique, separate and talk with each other. Modern systems will vastly simplify and integrate all their functions under one or two banners. The teams work on this continues, researching the market for the best systems, with the aim to replace the many and modernise KSS. ATLAS Improvements in data visibility and search functionality are underway, with Atlas Docs getting a keyword boost and Search being upgraded to what is called 'V4 – Spring Release'. The Atlas 'Birthday' update is still on the horizon for FY26. PEOPLE & CULTURE The Future Leaders program is close to being launched. Migration, sharing and backing up key information in the business is progressing, centralising information and preparing for future programs. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE The “Paint The Town Blue” campaign continues to be a great success with some stunning customer testimonials this time. It has been amazing to see

Darryl Hodgson Head of People & Engagement

6 Kennards Kourier July 2025