We Engage

Stakeholder engagement is central to Sodexo's approach to doing business in the right way. In fact, it is captured in the third pillar (“We engage”) of our sustainability strategy to 2020, the Better Tomorrow Plan. This means that we are committed to listen and discuss with our stakeholders in order to best deliver our services and meet every day their expectations.

We define as our stakeholders any person, group or organization that affect or can be affected by our company's actions and impacts. Given Sodexo's diversity of activities, we engage on a daily basis with wide array of stakeholders, for example:

• Employees
• Clients and customers
• Public sector: political representatives, civil servants 
• NGOs and associations: think tanks, unions, accreditation bodies, campaigning organisations, leading thinkers, academics, trade bodies etc

Stakeholder engagement strategy
We are committed to making this engagement a reality by building effective relationships with our stakeholders. Our activity is guided by an overarching stakeholder engagement strategy launched in 2009. This complements our well-established channels of communication with key stakeholder groups.

We regularly review our key stakeholders we need and wish to engage with against priority issues in the public and the industry. An independent audit is carried out on a bi-annual basis to monitor stakeholders' perception of Sodexo.

Stakeholder Engagement Initiatives 
We aim to be open and transparent with our stakeholders. We are conscious that there is no monopoly of good ideas and wish to create with the community of our stakeholders trusted relationships that can promote honest and constructive dialogue.

We have an ongoing programme of high level stakeholder consultation in place, principally using the Better Tomorrow Plan as a platform. This is led by our chief executive, Aidan Connolly, with support from other senior executive, the aim being to ensure that our stakeholders are well informed on Sodexo's commitments to sustainability.

"I would really encourage consultation at each step along the journey, especially as the big commitments are set out. That is because no matter how right you are, there will always be someone who says you are wrong, and at least you are aware of that before you do it."
David Gregory, chairman, Assured Food Standards