Navigating Change in HR: A Strategic Approach to Employee Experience at Sodexo Live!

Anthony Murrell, Head of Employee Experience, Sodexo Live! North America

Having worked for more than two decades in Human Resources, I’ve experienced firsthand how often and how quickly the industry can change and how imperative it is for companies of all sizes to adapt. I began my role in 2016 with Sodexo Live!, a hospitality partner to the world’s most iconic venues, and was immediately drawn to assessing which processes and programs would help us continue providing the best employee experience possible for our 20,000 hospitality team members across more than 150 venues in North America. 

Providing ongoing success in employee experience requires HR leaders to take a strategic yet holistic approach. All employee-facing programs must be frequently assessed for their value and reprioritized for their impact in the ever-changing employment landscape, especially in an industry like ours where our workforce is spread throughout different sites, and much of our work is inherently cyclical and seasonal. We know, for example, that consistent surveying and feedback allows for clearer decision-making across the business.

In fact, in late 2022, Sodexo Live! launched a new initiative that I am most proud of – a brand new Employer Value Proposition to better define who we are and what we stand for. This meant asking ourselves how we needed to adapt to support our current team and engage with potential future employees amid a hospitality hiring landscape that was more competitive than ever before, coming out of the pandemic. We know people have many choices when working in this industry. 

Accordingly, as we dubbed it, our People Ambition has a straightforward goal – to attract, retain, and grow the best possible Experience Makers or those on our team. We conducted surveys of current employees across all roles, from culinary to front-of-house to management, to understand how we could best support them now and in the future. Our biggest takeaways led us to create four key pillars that serve as guides for the Sodexo Live! careers we provide: 

● Belong: Belonging ensures our team members have a sense of purpose rooted in family and teamwork. We bring this to life through the nine Employee Business Resource Groups (EBRGs) we offer, which foster a culture of inclusion and provide networking, learning, and development opportunities through active involvement in unique employee affinity and interest groups. Other offerings to improve our sense of belonging include the recent launch of a next-generation intranet engagement platform, which we call “Sodexo Live! Connects,” where employees can have visibility into coworker milestones, company, and industry news and receive and send personal recognitions for birthdays, anniversaries or simply a job well done.

● Act: Act exemplifies how we value diversity, equity, and inclusion as a key performance driver for all. In 2022, Sodexo received a perfect score on the Disability Equality Index (DEI), was named by Forbes as a Best Employer for Diversity, and was acknowledged as a Best Company for Multicultural Women by Seramount. We increased African-American representation in senior leadership roles by 28% in this same time frame. 

● Thrive: This means providing opportunities to promote personal and career growth and establishing ways for our Experience Makers to succeed and be promoted internally. In 2022-2023, Sodexo Live! promoted 190 employees across the company – 45 percent of which were women. Additional opportunities to thrive at Sodexo Live! are found in our growing Internship and Campus Engagement Program and our Mentorship Program, which leverage new technologies and training modules. 

● Be Live: At Sodexo Live!, our goal is to create exceptional events and memories that last a lifetime – for our clients, guests, and team members. We have served 21 World Series, 15 Super Bowls, 14 College Football Championship Games, 12 Final Fours, 6 of North America's top 10 Meeting Destinations, 15 LEED-Certified Convention Centers, and more. Creating an unforgettable event starts with our team members, who are the fabric of providing guests with memorable moments. 

If there’s one key takeaway, it’s that Sodexo Live! boasts an average tenure of seven years for full-time employees. In contrast, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers in leisure and hospitality have an average of 2.3 years per job overall. We are enormously proud of this statistic but know we cannot rest on our laurels. Engagement and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) measured during our annual engagement survey are consistently above the average for our industry. Still, it’s important to continue to identify areas for improvement, be an active listener, and focus on all aspects of employee well-being to solidify our place as a best-in-class employer.