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Sodexo’s Government and Energy & Resources business in partnership with The Happy Consultancy Group won Best Learning Initiative at the 2025 Business Culture Awards for its ‘Lived Experience: it’s all about you’ programme which was developed and rolled out across military sites managed by Sodexo.
The initiative, launched in 2024, was led by Samantha Hockey, Head of HR (Defence) and Duncan Limbert, learning and development business partner for Sodexo’s Government business.
In 2022, Sodexo introduced ‘The Lived Experience’ – a programme designed to address the need for attractive offers and environments that focus on enhancing wellbeing and delivering a consistent, high-quality experience for its diners on military sites.
The programme was part of a number of operational changes within Sodexo’s food service offers and to bring this to life for its employees, a people-led behavioural change programme was needed.
Hockey and Limbert worked with The Happy Consultancy Group to devise a series of vibrant, fun, and engaging sessions, which blended Sodexo’s core values (Service Spirit, Spirit of Progress and Team Spirit) with its employee value proposition (Belong, Act, Thrive) with storytelling that truly empowered employees to become heroes of their own stories.
Designed to boost engagement, confidence, wellbeing and pride across Sodexo’s teams delivering services at military sites across the UK, the programme was developed in line with Sodexo’s commitment to address the evolving needs and challenges of the UK Armed Forces.
To date over 2,500 employees, from frontline to senior leaders, have participated in the campaign and engagement events.
Mark Baker, Chief Operating Officer for Defence, Sodexo UK & Ireland said: “We wanted to connect hearts and minds and embrace change with passion, pride and confidence, encouraging colleagues to play their part in the Lived Experience. This programme is designed to transform from the inside out, and it’s working. Thanks to Samantha and Duncan’s hard work and the deployment of this transformation programme with support from The Happy Consultancy, we have seen a marked increase in retention alongside a reduction in absence rates and increase in customer satisfaction.”
Wednesday 14 January at 11:00am
Building Management Systems (BMS) have long been used to control the heart of a building – monitoring and controlling its essential systems such as lighting, ventilation, heating and air conditioning. Facilities Managers want the best visibility to help detect and deal with concerns before they become issues.
This webinar brings together the experts from energy network provider, E.ON along with FM thought leaders to discuss moving from a reactive service to a proactive service. By identifying energy issues early and automatically, instead of occupants reporting issues, then potential faults can be identified early and remedied. The BMS does this before the problem occurs by using smart alerting and EMC support services.
Panel:
- Sara Bean: Editor FMJ (Facilities Management Journal)
- Nick Westlake: Energy and Service Delivery Manager at E.ON Control Solutions
- Sunil Shah, the author of IWFM’s Energy Management Good Practice Guide and MD of Acclaro Advisory
- David Cermak, Regional Facilities Manager for David Lloyd Clubs
To register for the webinar which will be taking place on 14 January 2026 at 11:00am click here.
