Sodexo

Easing administrative tasks with better Workforce Scheduling

With 427,000 employees in 80 countries and 100 million consumers served daily, Sodexo is the world leader in quality of life services. The company delivers food services, facilities management and other life improving services to companies, government agencies, schools, hospitals, correctional facilities and many other client segments. Sodexo is known at the #1 France-based employer worldwide. They have an employee engagement score of 68%, something that surely contributes to their yearly revenues - which amount to 20.7 billion euro.

Finding a user-friendly workforce scheduling solution

To keep momentum going, Sodexo was looking to improve workforce scheduling. The Dutch division of Sodexo, in particular, was looking to decrease administrative work times and improve the scheduling process for its 1,000 country locations. They were looking for a user -friendly application for location managers to easily execute schedules and manage payroll administration. The app needed to interface with the company’s SAP HR and SAP Business Intelligent installation. They asked ORTEC to help.

From a quick scan to app adoption

ORTEC was initially hired to perform a quick scan, aimed at gathering information about the planning process for all the different business segments at Sodexo. The results of our scan showed that improved administration and control over employee work time could result in a 1% revenue increase. This made the business case compelling. We also found that our Workforce Scheduling application could address the company’s planning needs. With that, Sodexo became one of the early adopters of ORTEC’s web-based Workforce Scheduling solution.

The implementation process took place in three steps. First, Sodexo used ORTEC Workforce Scheduling to address administrative tasks and payroll calculations. The company then started using cyclical schedules and very basic scheduling functionality. Finally, they took steps towards centralizing service planning. This step approach made it easier for Sodexo to ensure proper change management and adoption of the tool.

End users, who were not familiar with IT systems, were closely involved in the implementation process and often provided feedback that was crucial to the project’s success, influencing general usability improvements for ORTEC Workforce Scheduling. Results seen by Dutch locations were so compelling that the Swedish division of the company showed interest in adopting our solution as well.

Increased efficiency and integration

Thanks to ORTEC Workforce Scheduling, Sodexo was able to ease into centralized planning. They expanded the use of the solution to other locations. An integration with the temp agency Randstad was implemented to manage the company’s flex pool schedule as well. This resulted in better planning orchestration and all-round efficiency improvements.