- Summary of asset management team
Sodexo’s focus on diversity, as part of its Better Tomorrow 2025 corporate responsibility roadmap, encompasses those who are diverse in gender, sexual orientation, culture, generation, disability and origins. The BM Technical Services Leadership continue to focus on growth in all diversity categories within the team.
Ten months ago, Sodexo’s Technical Service Team consisted of 18 team members of whom 10 were men and 8 women. This constituted a 55/45 per cent male/female ratio in the overall workplace. However, in the leadership team, 66 per cent were women.
In the past year, the team has grown by 8 employees.
Sodexo has maintained a 66 per cent women leadership representation while improving the overall female representation form 44 percent to 51 percent.
- Demonstration of Organisational Leadership
- Sodexo’s asset management team
Facility Management is an industry that historically lacked in diversity, particularly in the asset management and engineering space. As part of the Sodexo Better Tomorrow 2025 program, this variety in team thinking and problem solving demonstrates the true value of diversity.
Under the program, the goal is to close the diversity gap from 12.9 per cent to 50 per cent by 2025.
In the past 12 months, not only have we improved gender representation, we have increased diversity through race, religion, age, and ethnicity.
Members of Sodexo’s asset management team consist of those aged between their 20s and 60s and represent 11 nationalities.
- How does our leadership team invest and build talent to create an inclusive workplace and diverse management team
Diversity is the cornerstone of Sodexo’s culture and a fundamental component of the company’s overall growth strategy by introducing people from various backgrounds and their different perspectives.
Sodexo relies on individual leadership to see the achievement of this on a team and departmental level.
- How do we attract talent and retain asset management talent
A strong focus remains on career development and creating opportunities in leadership positions within the team.
Development plans are in place for all team members and are being managed by the leadership team to ensure support for individuals achieving their development plans on a professional and personal level. Sodexo supports its teams with additional training and mentoring programs to achieve their goals and career growth.
The leadership team regularly meets with the overall team to review development plans and offer support. The leadership team revised its approach to resourcing which placed an equal focus on attitude and personal attributes as qualifications and experience during the interviewing phase. This remains the focus during the onboarding process. But, the company understands inclusive strategies can’t stop after the recruiting process.
Deploying more flexible work conditions makes it easier to attract and retain employees. Offering the flexibility to work from home allows employees the opportunity to do school drop off or pickup and adjust working time to give them a work/life balance.
Sodexo’s employee referral program is ideal for attracting new talent from already high achievers within the business. The company’s strong social media coverage focusses on the company’s image and that we are a people-focused organisation which attracts and values talent.
Understanding people as individuals and what creates an inclusive environment has supported the team’s transition and identifies the team as an appealing work culture for a diverse job applicant. Fostering collaboration among team members gave the leadership team opportunities to facilitate open discussions with positive conflict resolution and constructive feedback within the team.
Sodexo Anti-Discrimination and Diversity Policies help protect the rights of employees and provides them with a safe space based on gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and gender.
The company also encourage the use of inclusive language.
In the past twelve months, Sodexo has only received one resignation due to the employees’ partner being offered a position in another state.
- Demonstration of Innovation
Sodexo offers ongoing culture awareness opportunities to interact and learn from our peers about their cultures.
This gives employees a new perspective on with people for different backgrounds.
Encouraging collaboration within our diverse team helps us unlock the potential within the group not by always agreeing, but also disagreement when difference of opinion leads us to better solutions and ideas.
Generational diversity assists the Technical Services Team by collaboration between older, more experienced team members and the younger more enthusiastic generation who often come up with new ideas.
- Diversity Benefits
The Technical Services Team has witnessed copious benefits from attracting new talent from across all categories of diversity which help with retaining and developing our talent pool.
Among these are better collaboration and innovation across teams.
Our flexible work environment retains and motivates our current talent.
By retaining and developing our employees, it reduces time to upskill new employees and that spend on onboarding new employees.
This allows us more time to focus on our current employees and results in a reduced turnover cost.
Age diversity helps us learn from each other with new ideas from the younger generation working together with the more experienced generation, resulting in a more creative ideas and solutions.
We have experienced fewer internal disputes and grievances from our team due to its diversity and respect within the team.
In the past twelve months we have received zero grievances among staff.
Our internal diversity has resulted in external benefits to our stakeholders as well.
By enabling a culture which promotes innovative ideas and creative problem solving, Sodexo has been able to deliver on world-class projects such as indoor air quality, IoT initiatives and maintenance servicing program, to name a few.
- General Comments
Following a successful 2020 diversity program with clear measurable diversity improvement we will continue to promote diversity in all categories.
We aim to create a healthy working environment which supports all employees in an industry which has historically struggled to achieve diversity.