About Sodexo
Sodexo is a global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, including On-site Food and Facilities Management Services, Benefits & Rewards Services, and Personal & Home Services. Founded in 1966 in Marseille, France, Sodexo employs 30,000 employees across the UK and Ireland and is an organisation that cares about the wellbeing of their employees, and recognises the impact of work-related stress, personal issues and pressures, and mental health problems on their performance, engagement, and satisfaction. They also understand the importance of providing timely and effective support to their employees when they face these challenges, and how this can benefit not only their individual wellbeing, but also the overall productivity, culture, and reputation of their organisation.
The Challenge
Sodexo, like many other businesses, faced a number of challenges both within their organisation and external pressures that were impacting both the wellbeing of their employees and the performance of the organisation. These challenges spanned across personal and professional challenges and mental health struggles, which left some employees feeling isolated, overwhelmed and unsupported, which in turn impacted engagement.
This also had an impact on the organisation’s performance, affecting productivity, alongside increasing rates of absenteeism and employee turnover. These were key items the organisation wanted to address when considering the wellbeing supports they had available for their staff.
The Solution
Sodexo recognised that they had a duty of care to their employees, and wanted to provide them with the support and resources they needed to help them cope with their challenges and improve their wellbeing. Spectrum.Life understood Sodexo’s ambition to be more proactive in how they support their employees, empowering them to take their mental health and wellbeing into their own hands through education across their entire employee-base.
Sodexo employs 30,000 staff across the UK and Ireland, with huge variation in functions across the business. Some in offices with 100s of other people around them or some working from home on their own. Others working in non-desk jobs and in quite physical and demanding roles in high pressure environments. Sodexo wanted to help in making employees feel supported at work, at home and with family life, so that they didn’t feel alone. The 24/7 in-the-moment support was invaluable to the organisation. It is available for employees to use in the middle of the night, outside their working hours, during the day, or whenever they feel they need to speak to someone.
The Digital Platform and App’s wide range of content from digital resources and calendars of content, to online workouts and live and on-demand seminars and webinars, helped managers in supporting their employees across a range of different topics often used to inform ‘safety moments’ which are used to open all meetings across the organisation. These ‘safety moments’ may include areas of focus on mental health or wellbeing that become the key focus for the day. Combined with wellbeing awareness days around topics such as supporting people with loneliness at Christmastime, to supporting parents with children on their summer holidays. The managers may also utilise materials from the Spectrum.Life Platform and App for the safety moments to educate employees.
The account management support that Sodexo receive is instrumental in reaching hard-to-reach employees who are often disconnected, not working on computers all day etc. The Sodexo and Spectrum.Life teams work together in coming up with solutions to help reach all employees, no matter what their day-to-day looked like, through content for TV screens, posters for toilet stalls, newsletters and team huddles. This was another critical item for Sodexo as they look to support their entire population.
The Impact
In the past, like many other organisations, the team at Sodexo believed that they had been quite reactive in supporting employees through the numerous challenges they face in their personal and professional lives, with their main focus being on those in crisis. Employing Spectrum.Life’s EAP and Wellbeing Platform and App enhanced their wellbeing function and it enables them to use it as a one-stop-shop for wellbeing initiatives, as it helps employees cope with various personal and professional issues, such as stress, anxiety, depression, grief, relationship problems, work-life balance, career development, and more.
The Sodexo team proactively focus on promoting the service to employees to ensure they are educated about what they have access to, how they can access it, how to use the services and what the service covers. On top of this, employees are educated on how they can educate themselves through the range of self-guided content on the digital platform.
The feedback employees have candidly provided around service provision has been positive, with a large majority of employees satisfied with the service they received, commenting on the counsellors as “true professionals”. Sodexo have found the Spectrum.Life offering to be easy to reach with a digital and proactive support, with all interactions with the EAP being with a qualified and registered/accredited counsellor from the moment an employee dials the EAP line as a standout service that other providers in the market don’t always provide.
We are delighted with our partnership Spectrum.Life which offers all colleagues access to a comprehensive suite of market-leading health, wellness, legal and financial support. The wellbeing of our people is critical to us and an integral part of our culture, and we understand balancing everyday life with the requirements of work, and personal life can create pressures for all. We have a laser focus on enhancing our colleagues’ health and wellbeing and one of the ways we do this is through partnerships with industry experts such as Spectrum.Life, and we see this as a positive step in our journey to make Sodexo a great place to work.
Ryan Candy – Senior Performance & Future of Work Manager
