Interview  •  Portraits

For us, social impact is the way we do business.”- in conversation with Claire Atkins Morris, sustainability director at Sodexo UK & Ireland.

Sodexo UK & Ireland won the People and Community Award at the 2024 Franco-British Business awards.  We interviewed Claire Atkins Morris, Sustainability Director for Sodexo UK & Ireland about its work to promote social mobility and reducing inequalities.  

Could you tell us more Sodexo and the role of people and communities in its everyday operations.

Sodexo is a purposeful business, built on the principles of creating a better every day for our colleagues, the people we serve, and the communities in which we operate. For us, social impact is the way we do business. Since 2015, we have set out our priority areas and commitments through our social impact pledge, focusing on four impact pathways: people, planet, partners, and places.

At Sodexo, we believe our people should feel they belong to a company where they can act with purpose and thrive in their own way. Our social impact pledge reflects our mission to foster a more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive future. With every one of our 30,000 colleagues supporting the delivery of our varied services, we take collective responsibility for the positive change we can make together every day in the communities in which we operate.

As a large employer, Sodexo acknowledges its role in breaking down barriers to opportunity in our country. One area through which Sodexo prioritises community impact is our comprehensive volunteering policy which enables our employees to receive three paid days to support charities close to their hearts and combat food insecurity.  

Tell us more about your work to combat food insecurity?

The Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation is active in more than 70 countries, tackling food insecurity across the communities where we work and live.

Locally, the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation is a separate UK-registered charity and since its founding 20 years ago, the Foundation has focused on empowering disadvantaged communities across the UK and Ireland to tackle food insecurity and its root causes.

Research shows that women play a pivotal role in achieving lasting food security. Co-jointly with our headquarters in France, Stop Hunger supports women empowerment projects like The Bread and Butter Thing’s (TBBT) Empowering Positive Conversations initiative with a grant of £100,000. The project has already supported 500 women last year in Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire to develop pathways into education, training, volunteering, and work.

In addition to our funding, we want to deliver holistic and meaningful support for our charity partners. In addition to the Empowering Positive Conversations project, we have supported TBBT with HR consultancy support, as well as enabling women beneficiaries from TBBT to benefit from our SheWorks partnership giving women an additional way into employment, taking an extra step to this existing collaboration.

What inspired Sodexo to launch Starting Fresh, and how does it reflect your commitment to social impact?

Sodexo is committed to supporting marginalised groups within our local communities. Our recruitment strategies include helping people with convictions, young people, the long-term unemployed, and people with disabilities find employment opportunities.

The Starting Fresh programme leverages Sodexo’s experience in the justice sector to advocate for and provide employment opportunities for people with criminal convictions. We know there is untapped talent from prison leavers who have used their time inside to learn new skills and gain recognised qualifications.

The challenge is educating employers about this untapped pool of talent and the value they can bring by offering employment opportunities to this group. Prisoners at the sites we manage are prepared to be job-ready for opportunities in the outside world, whether in IT support, cleaning, catering, hospitality, or hairdressing and beauty. With a huge skills shortage in many UK sectors, we believe ex-offenders could help plug some of these gaps while providing a more stable and secure income for themselves.

We actively encourage employers to consider this group and investigate how they can make a difference by giving them a chance. We are continuing to extend Starting Fresh beyond our own prisons by holding information sessions at prisons and probation offices across the country and have been invited to run and attend events across the prison estate. In 2024 we attended 23 employment events in prisons across the UK and have a further 17 visits booked in for this year, giving us an enormous opportunity to further raise the programmes profile.

Another significant milestone in our commitment to social mobility is our recent implementation of guaranteed job interviews for people with criminal convictions. Applicants with a disclosed criminal conviction who meet the job criteria and pass the required screening will now be guaranteed an interview, giving them a vital opportunity to re-enter the workforce and rebuild their lives.

As an employer of more than 30,000 people in the region, Sodexo has the power to be a driver of social mobility everywhere it operates – a force for good.

How can others support Starting Fresh and the work of the Stop Hunger Foundation?

We are continuing to encourage other employers to consider and explore recruiting people with convictions by sharing our experiences and offering support to those who are looking to start to venture into recruiting people with convictions.  Our online hub of information can provide valuable information for employers considering tapping into this talent pool: https://uk.sodexo.com/social-impact/people/starting-fresh

With food insecurity an ongoing societal challenge the work of the Stop Hunger Foundation will continue to work with charity partners in addressing the root causes and offer our employees hands on and skills based volunteering opportunities across the country.  We encourage our employees, clients and supply partners to actively engage with the work of the Foundation whether that is through joining volunteering days, to extending grant giving and partnerships into their organisations; it all goes directly to the communities and our charity partners.