Women's Foodservice Forum (WFF) Recognizes Sodexo for Supporting and Advancing Women Leaders
By Suzanne Thompson, Senior Recruiter and
Tracie Hoffman, Senior Recruiter

Sodexo was recently honored for its leadership role in leveraging the strength of its diversity by advancing women in the workplace by the Women's Foodservice Forum (WFF) with the prestigious Jackie B. Trujillo SOAR Award. This award recognizes and measures the efforts made by companies like Sodexo to elevate women leaders in the foodservice industry. The SOAR Award is the highest honor an organization can receive from the WFF.

"Sodexo has demonstrated exceptional success in providing opportunities for the advancement of women leaders," said Mary Bentley, WFF president. "We congratulate Sodexo for supporting the industry-wide mission of elevating women leaders and creating a culture in which female employees are supported and encouraged to seek and achieve their highest potential."

Sodexo's success in leveraging the strength of its diverse workforce is clearly demonstrated throughout the organization. The WFF recognized many of Sodexo's key achievements in the area of diversity including:

• Ranked 12th on DiversityInc's Top 50 Companies for Diversity.
• 57% of U.S.-based full-time employees are female; 18% of “C” level positions are women.
• Ranked third on DiversityInc's Top 10 Companies for Recruitment and Retention.
• Sodexo ties 25% of executive and 10-15% of managerial bonuses to a Diversity Scorecard Index, as well as states that diversity bonuses are paid out regardless of company financial performance based on long-term gains associated with “staying the course.”
• The Women's Network Group (one of the Sodexo's six Employee Network Groups) hosts 650 members, 9 regional chapters and 8 local chapters. Chapters provide their members with professional development/relationship opportunities annually.
• Sodexo's Spirit of Mentoring program is cross-divisional and cross-functional in nature and has grown to more than 100 partnerships per year. Approximately 50% of the participants are women, and 70% of the partners are in a cross-cultural relationship. More than half of Sodexo's executive team serve as mentors in the program.

Sodexo Employee networks are organized by employees who, based on shared experiences, join together to provide a positive forum for professional development, input and ideas that support the success of the company's diversity efforts. Networks are organized around a common dimension of diversity and are created by employees who want to raise awareness in Sodexo of one of the identity groups.

At Sodexo, we currently have the following Network Groups:

• African-American Leadership Forum
• Pan Asian Network Group
• People Respecting Individuality, Diversity, and Equality
• Sodexo Organization of Latinos
• Sodexo Organization for disAbilities Resources
• Women's Network Group