Focusing on the Abilities of Employees Earns Sodexo Double Recognition

By Autumn Anderson, Sodexo Employment Brand Sourcing Manager

At Sodexo, we talk a lot about diversity and inclusion, why it’s critical for our success as a company and how we’re constantly evolving to create more supportive environments for all employees.

The past couple of months have been especially exciting for me – both as a member of the Talent Acquisition team, but also as the Co-Communications Chair for the Sodexo Organization for disAbilities Resources (SOAR) – as we have been recognized for our efforts to recruit and hire people with disabilities by not one, but two different organizations!

First, DiversityInc ranked Sodexo #6 in their list of Top 9 Companies for People with Disabilities.

Then, Sodexo was named a recipient of the 2016 Leading Disability Employer Seal™, awarded by the National Organization on Disability (NOD) to recognize companies that demonstrate exemplary hiring and employment practices for people with disabilities.

While it may not be obvious to all, Sodexo managers are constantly working behind the scenes to do things like:

• Develop partnerships with local organizations that help them identify and hire employees who may feel it is too challenging or overwhelming to find meaningful work on their own
• Participate in trainings like The Voice, which educates them on how to become an ally for people with disabilities and provides ideas on low or no cost accommodations
• Attend internal events, like the recently launched SOAR “Perspectives on Disabilities” panels, to learn best practices for communicating with and managing employees with all types of disabilities

In addition to hiring frontline and hourly employees with disabilities, our corporate Talent Acquisition team actively works to make our management-level jobs accessible and inviting to everyone.

From making sure the closed captioning is accurate on our career videos to adding alt text to the images on our careers blog for those using a screen-reader, these are just a few examples of how we are making it a priority to be inclusive and accommodative from the get-go – before we even receive an application or schedule an interview.

As with anything, our work in this area is never done. Each year, we aim to progress in our efforts to inspire people of all abilities to consider Sodexo for the next step in their career and to help those who have already joined us be able to grow and thrive with our team.

To learn more about disability employment at Sodexo, visit our careers blog for firsthand stories and more!