Enduring values in a changing world

Watch Sophie Bellon's closing remarks here

On October 16 &17, Sodexo held its 2nd Quality of Life Conference in London. I would like to share with you some of the remarks I made during the closing session. I am very proud that the Conference has become a forum for so many fresh ideas and rich debates.

Sodexo was created 50 years ago with a founding vision: the company is the community of all its stakeholders: clients and consumers, employees, shareholders and investors, and in many ways, broader society. To meet the expectations of these stakeholders we decided that Sodexo would be a growth company. Since then, we have honored this vision and grown in the service of each one of our stakeholders.

Our actions have been widely recognized. In 2017, Sodexo was named leader of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the 13th consecutive year. Sodexo was also mentioned by Fortune as one of the 50 companies that change the world.

So we have managed to make our growth meaningful, while staying true to our founding values and mission: improve the Quality of Life of those we serve, while contributing to the development of the communities in which we operate.

We made the commitment that during the next half century and - I hope - much beyond that, we would pursue this vision. Today’s Conference is a powerful demonstration of this commitment, and a testimony of the continued relevance of our culture as it was introduced by Pierre Bellon 50 years ago.

One thing is certain: the world is radically changing and it’s happening extremely fast. Today, being a student, a corporate employee, a senior, or a patient has nothing in common with what it was 50 or even 10 years ago. The possibility to computerize data through powerful algorithms is changing our relationship to the world. At every stage of our lives, the acceleration of time impacts what we expect, what makes us feel good, what we need and hope for.

In the wake of these (r)evolutions which are transforming the lives of individuals, new collective aspirations are emerging based on the desire to build a different world. They are gradually giving rise to new models promoting inclusiveness, solidarity and social progress.

How does this impact Sodexo's vision of the future?

All these initiatives stem from very different motives but show one thing: our fast-changing world is not only generating uncertainty and complexity. It is also bringing excitement, energy and renewed hope… Leaving us with only one solution: to embrace the change, to be the change.

But who can predict the future when everything is accelerating? As a company, how do you ensure the decisions we make today will take us to where we want to be in 10 or 20 years? Should we adopt the precautionary principle, or should we unleash innovation and creativity? Are we ready to accept potential failures that may come with increased agility? How to ensure that we stay true to ourselves?

I have a conviction: holding firm to a fundamental set of values does not contradict the need to adapt to the changes this new world requires. Maintaining our vision should help us make the long-term decisions that will allow space for innovation and creativity. There is no trade-off between pursuing an audacious ambition and keeping high ethical standards. This is true for individuals, as well as it is for companies. There is no doubt that this is the path we, at Sodexo, will follow as we move forward.

Preserve our vision to reinvent ourselves

Since our creation, we’ve considered ourselves as a part of the worldwide community. As we were growing to become the company we are today, employing 425,000 people to serve 100 million individuals in 80 countries, we’ve made sure that we were actively contributing to foster progress and create social value for individuals, communities and society. From the very start, we focused on making choices that would help protect the environment we all share.

In the future, our aim is to continue to grow, because we believe that our impact can be even greater. Our eventual aim is to improve the Quality of Life of more than 1 billion individuals around the world...

Achieving this ambition while tackling the challenges of this changing world will force us to fundamentally reinvent ourselves. It will take considerable collective effort. We won’t change a single piece of Sodexo’s founding vision.

In fact, to ensure we continue to deliver on this promise for decades to come, we are willing to turn things upside down.

For the greater good of our clients and consumers, we will leverage technology to offer more options to the people we serve every day, answer needs in a smoother and more personalized way, and improve our service standards. Technology will help us address both transactional and emotional problems: improve responsiveness, reliability, comfort, interactions…

As we move forward, technology may help us to meet most of our needs. But connected devices, robots, artificial intelligence will not take care of everything. It won’t lead to self-fulfillment.

My conviction is that we will always need humans to take care of other humans.

This is exactly what our employees around the world are doing. In the future, they will be doing it even more: helping people at every stage of their lives, sometimes when they are the most vulnerable, to find meaning by connecting with them, showing respect, sensitivity, empathy.

In turn, our employees will benefit from meaningful jobs where they can make a concrete impact and where they receive consideration, empowerment, recognition and personal fulfillment.

As a corporate citizen, this is how we will contribute to design the model of civilization we want for the future. It will come from our capacity to better open ourselves to all our stakeholders, and involve them in a collective commitment to fight the most flagrant injustices, promote equal opportunities, give our children a right to benefit from the resources of our planet and contribute to our collective betterment.

Our ambition is considerable. But it will guide us into the future.