At Sodexo we are committed to the importance of promoting equal opportunities, valuing diversity and creating an inclusive working environment for all our employees. We operate in increasingly diverse environments, both in Sodexo UK and Ireland and internationally, and this is evident in our workforce, clients, customers, suppliers, communities and partners.

Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the core of our values and strategy as a large employer as the performance and engagement of our employees is central to business success.

We are committed to creating an environment in which each employee is able to fulfil their potential and maximise their contribution as outlined in our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) policy for UK and Ireland.

ED&I are championed at the highest level in the organisation by the Chief Executive and Executive Committee. We have a diversity and inclusion council which is chaired by a member of the Executive Committee and its membership includes senior leaders and operators from across the organisation. The council provides direction for ED&I programmes, promotes an inclusive workplace culture and facilitates the sharing of best practice across the organisation.

Our equality, diversity and inclusion commitments:

We implement our commitment to ED&I through a number of initiatives, for example:

• Spirit of Inclusion – in 2009 we launched Spirit of Inclusion, a company-wide diversity and inclusion training programme mandatory for all UK and Ireland managers that aims to increase awareness of the moral, legal and business cases for diversity, and help managers to interact with diverse teams, clients and customers.  A team of 30 internal facilitators, drawn from operations and central functions, learning and development and human resources teams, has been trained to deliver the programme.

• SWIFT- the global Soexo Women's International Forum for talent. The group has been established to focus on the development of women in our business and is spearheaded by 20 of the company's senior female executives, representing 12 nationalities, who work together to propose specific actions to promote gender diversity and drive change across the whole organisation. Sodexo UK & Ireland is represented in SWIFT by Debbie White, CEO, and Jane Bristow, managing director for Sodexo Education .

• Women Work – our first employee network that aims to tackle barriers to women’s career development through training, networking and mentoring.

• GenERAtions network – our employee network that aims to champion generational diversity and harness the benefits and opportunities this brings.

Read more in our corporate citizenship report.

We have won numerous awards in recognition of our efforts.

Breaking down barriers to work in Ireland

Sodexo is dedicated to making the workplace accessible to all. We believe in breaking down barriers to build a more diverse working environment. We take a look at some inspiring stories from Ireland. Find out more.