Sodexo’s Brand Ambassador Programme won the Brand Impact Award at the 2015 British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) Awards last night.

Launched in early 2014, the Brand Ambassador Programme was created to increase understanding among Sodexo’s 34,000 UK and Ireland employees of the scale of the business and its values.

With four out of five employees not having a company email address or intranet access, Sodexo needed to ensure that the programme could be delivered face-to-face, helping to drive engagement amongst customer-facing employees. Brand Ambassador was designed as three 30-40 minute modules to allow managers the opportunity to run them separately as part of team meetings or run them all as one session.

Brand Ambassador packs were sent to all managers, consisting of a manager’s guide, employee workbooks, posters, feedback cards and all video content supplied on a USB stick with inspirational videos of our people. All materials were also put on a specially created site on Sodexo’s corporate intranet.

The initiative was rolled out to 95% of Sodexo’s employees with around 90% of managers saying their team found the programme useful and would be able to apply the learning to their job.

Angela Williams, Group HR director, Sodexo Global HR Services, said: “Winning such a prestigious award is testament to the success of our Brand Ambassador Programme. It is vital with such a large workforce that everyone understands the role they can play in delivering services that improve the quality of life for our customers and clients. I would like to pay tribute to those who created the programme and those who rolled it out to their teams up and down the country who really deliver the difference in the services they provide.”

Award winners were crowned at a ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel on 12 October.

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