Our People
At Sodexo we believe that the best people can only be recruited and retained by encouraging, supporting and investing in them to realise their potential. We strive to create a work environment based on mutual respect for all individuals which recognises the unique contribution of each person.
Promoting diversity and inclusion
At its simplest, diversity and inclusion means ensuring everyone, regardless of their differences, is welcomed, included and respected in the workplace. This is a business fundamental that strengthens our offer and brings competitive advantage.
With a 2008 workforce comprising 63% women, 15% Black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) colleagues, over 30% aged under 34 and nearly 20% aged over 55, diversity is already a reality at Sodexo. However, we continue to make progress towards a more practical and strategic approach to diversity and inclusion, not least by establishing a diversity and inclusion council. The council, which consists of 20 senior managers and directors from across the business, meets quarterly to share and develop best practice.
NGO Partnerships
To understand more about different groups' needs, we join forces with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that were set up to support employers. Sodexo now has partnerships with NGOs across the six legally enshrined pillars of diversity: age, disability, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation:
- Employers' Forum on Age
- Employers' Forum on Disability
- Opportunity Now (support for women)
- Race for Opportunity (support for different ethnic groups)
- Employers' Forum on Belief
- Stonewall (support for lesbian, gay and bisexual people)
Learning and development
At a strategic level, our learning and development aims to 2011are to create and communicate a meaningful offer for all staff, develop our central learning and development function, and develop processes that ensure activity is aligned to both business and individual needs.
In the 12 months to May 2008, Sodexo ran more than 8,000 training days across 600 courses, helping employees fulfil their potential through training on legislative health and safety and food safety, IT and business processes, and management skills. Our management toolkit programme aims to help our leaders at all levels by strengthening their personal leadership, their ability to lead a team and work with internal and external clients.
Centrally, we invest close to £3 million annually in training for our people. We have recently launched the Sodexo Learning Centre, our learning management system, which will provide self-service access to course bookings and training history, as well as the opportunity to run e-learning initiatives in the future.
For more information please view our latest Corporate Citizenship Report.
