Sodexo UK & Ireland has become the first company in the UK’s hospitality and facilities management (FM) industry to voluntarily publish its ethnicity pay gap data for 2020.
The company publicly pledged to publish its ethnicity pay gap through Business in the Community’s Race to Work charter and through the INvolve/EMpower ethnicity pay gap mandate framework in 2019. Then in July 2020 Sodexo joined a number of business leaders in signing an open letter, spearheaded by Audeliss & INvolve, pledging to take action and report on its progress annually.
Sodexo recently published pay gap report, which includes its ethnicity pay gap data, shows that its mean ethnicity pay gap is 5%. Its report includes pay gap data for three different ethnic groups: Black, Asian and mixed ethnic backgrounds; as it recognises that publishing the combined pay data for these groups may hide disparities between the different groups.
GENDER PAY GAP RESULTS
It has also published its gender pay gap data. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Sodexo’s business and requirement from government to exclude furloughed colleagues receiving less than their regular full pay from the data has resulted in a slight increase in Sodexo’s 2020 mean gender pay gap from 14.12% in 2019 to 14.36% in 2020.
Sodexo has an established gender balance strategy and throughout the pandemic maintained its strong focus on gender balance. In fact, it was also one of the first organisations to publish its gender pay gap data in 2016; ahead of government legislation introduced the following year requiring companies with over 250 employees to do just this. It will use its latest gender and ethnicity pay data to focus its strategy on where and how these gaps need to be reduced. The annual publication of its gender and ethnicity pay gap findings will become a standard practice for Sodexo, confirmed the company.
SODEXO’S D&I ACTION PLAN
“There is a lot of work to do to improve parity in both gender and ethnicity; but only with this level of clarity and the impetus to have more open conversations, can we put measures in place to move our organisation in the right direction and to do better by our colleagues and the communities in which we operate,” admitted Sean Haley, Region Chair of Sodexo UK & Ireland. “We feel strongly that the first steps towards achieving our diversity and inclusion goals are transparency and holding ourselves publicly accountable.”
Sodexo’s diversity and inclusion action plan for the UK & Ireland includes:
- Establishing targets to increase ethnicity representation in senior leadership positions.
- Achieving 43% (currently 37%) representation of women in senior leadership by 2025.
- Reducing mean gender pay gap across all legal entities combined to 10% or less by 2025.
- Continuing to monitor pay practices.
- Creating more sponsorship and development programmes for females and unrepresented ethnic groups.
- Undertaking a diagnostic review into attraction and progression strategies.
- Conducting an employee census to increase our ethnicity data; and improve the quality of the held data.
TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY
“It’s hugely encouraging to see Sodexo publishing their ethnicity pay gap figures,” commented Suki Sandhu OBE, Founder and CEO, INvolve – The Inclusion People. “Businesses need to function as agents of change by paving the way for inclusivity; and policies and practices which entrench inclusion must be implemented across all levels of an organisation. Examining and reporting on the ethnicity pay gap is an essential step in this process and allows businesses who choose to report to better understand the challenges, cement sustainable long-term goals and take responsibility for driving change.”
Adding to his comments, WiHTL’s Founder and Chair Tea Colaianni stated: “More companies than ever before are collecting data on ethnicity and calculating their ethnicity pay gap across the hospitality, travel and leisure industry. Disclosing the data is an important sign of leaders being committed to transparency and accountability. Even more crucial is taking action on what the data tells you. Sodexo needs to be congratulated on being one of the first companies to disclose their ethnicity pay gap and drive change in the ethnic diversity of their workforce.”
The events of 2020 have encouraged Sodexo to do more; and over the last year it has created a strategic task force made up of senior leaders from Black and other ethnic backgrounds to lead on company-wide change programmes. This includes its Be Heard series of listening groups. Developed specifically for Black colleagues to share their lived experiences of working at Sodexo, the first series has resulted in action plans developed for each of its business segments.
Food and facilities management company Sodexo has been recognised as ‘one of the Best Companies for Multicultural Women’ for 11 consecutive years, as reported.
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