Sodexo is confident that its commitment to caring for employees, protecting their health and safety, safeguarding their wellbeing, treating them with respect, making them feel included and valued, will help to both retain talents and attract new talents as the business prepares to recover from the crisis.
Position on vaccines
Vaccination programs were met with huge media coverage and led to debate around effectiveness, safety and human rights. Sodexo took a stance to educate its employees to enable them to make informed decisions based on facts.
A global campaign, featuring videos, posters and Q&A was launched to provide employees with fact-based information on vaccines. In the United States, Sodexo employed celebrity figures to endorse its Get the Facts campaign, which encouraged employees to make an informed choice about getting vaccinated.
Support of our Senior Leaders
In the context of restructuring programs and changes to site operations, Sodexo recognized the importance of equipping managers with the skills to demonstrate inclusive leadership to ensure the business remained true to its values and showcased genuine care for people.
Our Learning and Development team designed training programs and packaged them into the Recharge Hub, which gave managers guidance to support their team in this context. The recharge hub is an online digital toolkit that aims at supporting our senior leaders in the change management.
Caring for healthcare teams
While many client sites are now returning to normal after long periods of closure or reduced operation, our healthcare clients and our teams working at those sites have been at the sharp end of the pandemic, exposed to stress, anxiety and heightened demand.
To support teams working in these environments, for example, Sodexo in the United Kingdom & Ireland established a counselling service, providing emotional and psychological support and helping them to recognize and address mental health issues within the team. The impact of this initiative has been critical for many employees and their families, as well as being recognized by our clients.
Digitalizing personal development
In the context of the pandemic, face-to-face training has been a challenge and, therefore, there has been a shift to a more digitalized approach to learning and development.
This has allowed Sodexo to continue investing in its people, drive performance through commercial capabilities and anchor a sense of belonging, while staying true to its commitments around supporting the career growth of its employees. It has also enabled the Group to equip its teams with the skills and expertise to support clients as they adjust to different challenges in this new normal.
In support of our culture and the engagement of our employees Sodexo has continued deployment of the virtual induction program for all new employees, Sodexo DNA, as well as launching a new virtual Sodexo World induction program for new senior leaders.