Sodexo

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of trade and business associations, professional organisations and think tanks of which it is a member at both the national and group levels, wherever it operates.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement. Moreover, its stakeholder engagement activities cover nature, nutrition, and social areas.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, it has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has disclosed its target to reduce carbon emissions by 34% by 2025 compared to 2017 levels. This reduction target includes scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions. The company shows leadership by aligning all its emission reduction targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains. It is committed to a 100% deforestation and conversion-free supply chain globally by 2030 for palm oil, soy, beef and paper products.

Food loss and waste
The company discloses its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and provides regular updates on its progress towards those targets. These FLW reduction targets are in line with SDG 12.3, which aims to achieve a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030. The company actively implements various initiatives throughout its value chain to minimize food waste. These initiatives include raising awareness through events like WasteLESS Week campaigns and collaborating with organizations such as the French anti-waste startup Phenix, among others.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment through policies and activities related to reducing plastic use and transitioning to sustainable packaging. It prioritizes alternatives to plastic for single-use items, enforces strict cleaning processes, and adopts sustainable packaging solutions.

Protein diversification
The company discloses quantitative evidence of increasing alternative proteins within its portfolio. It reports that it offers 200 new plant-based recipes created in partnership with the Humane Society of the United States and the Better Buying Lab of the World Resources Institute.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

Water withdrawal
The company demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations. It reports a 0.2% reduction in direct water consumption for fiscal year 2022 compared to a year earlier.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses that the Mindful Certification Program designates workplace and school cafés as silver, gold, or platinum to indicate the availability of low-fat options and healthy meal combinations.

Child labour
The company requires suppliers to prohibit child labour and verify the age of recruited workers.

Forced labour
The company discloses a prohibition to use any recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job and to retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement for its operations and supply chain.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company recognises the specific health and safety risks to vulnerable groups such as migrant employees, pregnant women and disabled persons.

Land rights
The company requires its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders, paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Act ethically
The company publicly commits to protecting personal data and outlines a global tax strategy. It also has a formal policy against bribery and corruption, and employs global risk mapping and audits to identify related risks. The company incorporates anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in contracts with direct business relationships and maintains a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to report corruption and bribery concerns. Additionally, the company mandates that third-party lobbyists adhere to its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has public policy statements committing to the health and safety of both its own workers and those within its business relationships. It also outlines its method for monitoring the health and safety performance of these business partnerships.

The company states that 40.9% of its direct operations workforce in 2022 is covered by collective bargaining agreements. It provides a detailed breakdown of its workforce by age group, employee category, and race or ethnicity.

On the gender front, the company openly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It sets specific targets, aiming to maintain a ratio of 40% women in managerial positions and 38% women in the company by August 31, 2023. Additionally, the company has met its goal of having at least 40% women among its senior executives by 2025, and reports that 50% of its board members are women.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly accessible policy committing to human rights and another specifically endorsing the ILO’s core labor rights. It also has a public statement requiring its suppliers to adhere to these ILO core labor rights. The company outlines its procedures for identifying human rights risks and impacts in specific areas of its own operations. It offers a grievance mechanism for all workers to report human rights issues, and extends this mechanism to external stakeholders who may be negatively affected by the company’s activities.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company discloses a remuneration policy related to sustainability performance but can further link this policy to enhancements in nature-related objectives and social issues. Furthermore, there is an opportunity for the company to disclose whether its highest governance body has specific expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it can report any potential misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised during its regular and ongoing stakeholder engagement activities as well as the engagement channels and frequencies, for each stakeholder group.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company disclosed a 24% reduction in its scope 1 and scope 2 emissions from 2017 to 2022, with an increase in emissions from 2021 to 2022. There is an opportunity to further reduce scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions and potential for reducing scope 3 emissions.

Antibiotic use and growth promoting substances
While the company states that an antibiotic reduction plan should be implemented, it has an opportunity to disclose a policy on reducing the prophylactic use of antibiotics and growth promoting substances. It could also disclose targets to phase out the prophylactic use of antibiotics across all species, geographies and products, and report against them.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has an opportunity to disclose activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence regarding plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging.

Protein diversification
The company has expressed its commitment to engage in protein diversification activities. To further this goal, it could consider setting a sales-based target to promote the use of alternative proteins throughout its portfolio. The company also has an opportunity to regularly report on its progress towards achieving this target.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and report progress against it.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to shift its focus from philanthropic to commercial activities to improve the accessibility of nutritious foods, especially for vulnerable groups. It can also implement commercial activities to improve the affordability of nutritious foods. Moreover, the company can set targets to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods, especially for vulnerable groups through its commercial activities.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company provides information on the percentage of consumers offered healthy lifestyle options daily. Additionally, it discloses its ’10 Golden Rules of Nutrition, Health, and Wellness,’ which serve as a guide for Sodexo’s Mindful nutrition and wellness approach. These rules include recommendations for moderate salt, sugar, and fat consumption. However, there is room for improvement in reporting its overall efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, and to increase the presence of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains in its food offerings. Furthermore, the company has an opportunity to adopt a nutrient profiling system and set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products, aligning with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of menus for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that 100% of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme/certification programme or other widely-recognised industry-specific certification. Additionally, it can disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to prohibit child labour in its supply chain and establish an age-verification system for its value chain. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts.

Forced labour
The company has the opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain. Specifically, it could prohibit the payment of recruitment fees, the retention of workers’ personal documents, and the restriction of workers’ freedom of movement. Furthermore, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company has an opportunity to identify vulnerable groups in relation to health and safety.

Land rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Furthermore, it could describe a process at its operations and supply chain level to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company discusses its stance on lobbying and political engagement in its Public Affairs Guidelines, but could formalise this in a dedicated public policy document. While stating in the same guidelines that it refrains from making political contributions, the company could strengthen this commitment by incorporating it into a formal public policy. The company shares some details about its lobbying expenditures but could expand this disclosure to include all regions where it engages in lobbying, or specify if the activity is limited to particular countries or regions.

Provide and promote decent work
The company pays its employees the minimum wage but could strengthen its commitment by setting a time-bound target for paying a living wage. It has an opportunity to disclose its methodology for determining a living wage in different operating regions. Although the company has wage expectations for its suppliers, it could require them to pay a living wage and outline how it supports this effort. It could also report data on the salary and remuneration ratio between men and women across different employee categories and significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company has a process for identifying human rights risks, but it’s unclear if this includes all suppliers. It could also better describe its methodology for assessing and identifying what it deems to be its most salient human rights concerns. Additionally, it has the opportunity to unveil a global system designed to act on, prevent, or mitigate these salient human rights issues.