In 1966, we were among the first few companies in the world to place a social element at the core of its mission. Why? Because we have always wanted our growth to make sense. To make sense for our employees who show up every day. For our clients and suppliers who seek relationships based on shared values. For our shareholders, who want sustained long-term growth. And for the millions of people we serve who holds us accountable to have a positive impact every day.

Better Tomorrow 2025

Today, growing responsibly is about pursuing and tracking what we can do better, safer, healthier and more environmentally-friendly. It’s about improving the way we care for our employees, the food and services we provide, and the way we behave as a corporate citizen.

In 2009 when the time came to find a name for our corporate responsibility roadmap, one naturally stood out: Better Tomorrow Plan.

Because everything we do should add up to a better tomorrow. Better for the individuals we employ and serve. Better for our communities. Better for the world around us and the resources we all share.

Fast forward to today, Better Tomorrow 2025 now propels our action and frames our progress on the most material issues that are either impacting what we do, or inversely, on which we can have an impact.

As you can see in the below chart -- also known as our materiality matrix, we identified and ranked the issues according to their impacts through interviews with employees, clients and consumers with the support of global nonprofit organization Business for Social Responsibility.

From this assessment, we identified nine commitments and clear objectives for 2025 to guide our roadmap, in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

These nine commitments are our north star for which we hold ourselves responsible.

Measuring our progress

Being committed is one thing, delivering and measuring performance is another. That’s why we take measurement very seriously.

Our reporting system – composed of 58 indicators -- at the site and country level helps to track our actions and progress towards our commitments. Beyond our commitments, we also track our progress on over 20 topics – from employee engagement and working conditions, diversity and gender balance, sustainable and responsible sourcing and our environmental footprint to our impact on communities.

And each year, our Internal Audit team and our Third Party Statutory Auditors review all the data collected to ensure its accuracy.

This process helps us identify risks, weak signals, market trends and client and consumer expectations to better embed sustainability practices in our activities.

Our progress towards 2025

We’re humble in our quest towards sustainability, because we know your expectations regarding what we do are high, but at the same time, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made and we’re realistic about our areas for improvement.

Key 2018 highlights

Want to know more about our progress on other key issues related to our activities? We invite you to consult our Non-Financial Key Figures to see our progress across Sodexo on issues that go beyond our nine commitments.

Living by our commitments

We hold ourselves accountable to behave responsibly in the way each of us does business with our clients, partners and suppliers to diminish adverse impacts that may result from our activities.

This is why we put in place policies and codes to frame our practices and expected behaviors around key issues such as respect for human rights, animal welfare and sourcing policies.

To learn more, we invite you to consult the following documents:

Awards & Recognitions

Doing business in responsible way is part of our mission and at the core of everything we do. We don’t do it for awards and recognition. We’re very humbled and honored when we receive awards and international recognitions for our work, but for us, these are like pats on the back, encouraging us to keep thinking proactively about our long term impact and ensure our operations are more and more sustainable.