Inter insight

Insight The magazine for Sodexo managers

June/July 2015

Issue: 28

04

Shaping up for growth

05

Survey seeks safety insight

06

Two years of PeopleCentre

07

Why we must be flexible

NEWS 02 Royal recognition 03 Eight awards for

stadium teams

06 Highlights from the Quality of Life conference 14

TeamTalk Information to help you communicate with your team

04

Insight June/July 2015

Solid foundations for future growth As we enter the final quarter of the financial year, how are we doing against our 2015 goals? Ben Edwards caught up with chief executive officer for Sodexo UK & Ireland, Debbie White to find out more and to hear about our plans for 2016 and beyond.

Three years ago, Debbie White and the executive team established five challenging goals for the UK and Ireland business. They were to: • Be recognised as a leading competitor in our segments • Achieve 50% engagement by 2015 • Grow profitable revenues to £1.5bn by 2017 • Improve operating margins by 1.5% by 2015 • Make Sodexo a chosen, well-known and understood brand We’re very much on track with our goals,” says Debbie. “I am delighted with our progress. I’m confident that if we keep up the momentum, we will deliver our commitments and have another great year to celebrate.”

Debbie says that the business has made significant progress being recognised as a leading competitor in our segments by getting closer to clients and really getting to grips with their strategic priorities.

Later in the summer, Sodexo will know if it has hit its employee engagement rate, once the results from the recent pulse survey have been received.

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05

Insight June/July 2015

Survey will provide insight into achieving a world-class culture At Sodexo, we want to achieve a world-class health and safety culture that demonstrates our commitment to improving the Quality of Life for employees, clients and consumers. In reality we have a way to go, but through a health and safety survey, Sodexo plans to gain quality insight to help inform a strategy to achieve that vision. Ben Edwards reports.

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At the beginning of this year, Sodexo set a goal to reduce its lost time incident rate (LTIR) and embed a world-class health and safety culture. Although our LTIR has not declined at the rate we would have liked, we have seen a significant increase in near-miss reporting. This suggests employees are increasingly recognising the importance of safety in the workplace, and reporting incidents and near misses, which may previously have been undetected.

“We should take comfort from the fact that our near-miss reporting is on the up,” says Chris Dark, head of Safegard. “It demonstrates that our culture is beginning to change and employees are thinking more about how they should behave; but we need to up the ante.”

To make the step change necessary to drive a zero harm culture,the business needs to understand what’s working well and what needs improving.

Sodexo’s new health and safety survey is designed to do just that, gaining an insight into the views of the business.

The survey, which was launched on 29 June, has been designed by Sodexo in partnership with an

06

Insight June/July 2015

The PeopleCentre two years on Having just celebrated its second birthday with recognition at the recent Sodexo Service Excellence Awards, the future’s looking bright for the PeopleCentre team. Helen Griffin finds out about the challenges and successes of those past two years from PeopleCentre director, Carmen Drinkwater, and HR services manager, Marc Vincent.

When you walk into the PeopleCentre in Sodexo’s Salford office, the first thing you see is the team’s ‘pride wall’ – an array of positive feedback for their service.

Ten per cent of managers who use the service get a request for feedback and surveys are issued at the close of each case, so the team have no shortage of feedback to help them continue to improve.

Carmen Drinkwater, PeopleCentre director says: “Feedback is essential. We can improve the Quality of Life for our managers by delivering an efficient HR service that in turn helps improve the Quality of Life for their team members, through ensuring any HR issues are dealt with effectively.

“We treat all the people we deal with as our customers. We have service level agreements for our key processes and publish these on a quarterly basis on SodexoNet. That is why we were delighted to be runners-up at the Service Excellence Awards for Helpdesk Team of the Year and Helpdesk Team Leader of the Year. Achieving this within two years of becoming operational really demonstrates our commitment to being a customer service focused team.”

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07

Insight June/July 2015

Flexible working mindset must change Executive board member Jane Bristow tells Nick Turrell why it is so important for Sodexo to embrace a way of working that will benefit the business and employees, and why we all need to think ‘outside of the box’.

Jane Bristow is pushing for progress on offering employees the opportunity to work flexibly.

Flexible working is a key global workstream for Sodexo Women’s International Forum for talent (SWIFt) and Jane is championing the need to embrace it around the world.

She says the perception that it is all about working mums is wrong. “As a services company, people are our only asset, and having a diverse, inclusive and engaged workforce is critical to our success,” she said.

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Sodexo UK & Ireland @SodexoUK-IRE• 34m INSIGHT JULY: Flexible working: Sodexo seeks to embrace a way of working that will benefit the business and employees. http://wp.me/p6rhuA-3

Flexible working our mindset must change