Sodexo's 2016 Workplace Trends Report Highlights Nine Tips For Improving Employee Engagement and Performance

GAITHERSBURG, Md., March 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sodexo, a leader in delivering sustainable, integrated facilities management and food service operations with over 130,000 employees across 9,000 client sites in North America,  has published its 5^th Annual Workplace Trends Report for 2016.  The nine articles in the report are focused on issues that can contribute to workforce quality of life. While the topics are varied, a common theme amongst the nine articles in the report is the importance of leaders taking a strategic and holistic approach in meeting the needs of employees, clients and communities while improving organizational performance.

Sodexo's 2016 Workplace Trends Report combines insight from principal research, clients, academia, and leading facilities management and human resource trade organizations. The company's researchers used mixed-method research to monitor and collectively examine trends that affect the quality of life of consumers in the workplace. This approach included traditional quantitative measures such as end user satisfaction and preference surveys, psychographic analysis at client sites, social media monitoring and a literary review consisting of consultant reports, academic and trade journals, and information from industry associations.

"Companies spend a daunting $720 million on employee engagement annually. From how leaders are recognizing and rewarding employees, to more effective health and wellness program design, we see the importance of a personalized, holistic approach. The 2016 Workplace Trends Report articles collectively share a theme that programs that effectively reward and recognize the varied individual employee motivators are essential in today's multi-generational workplace," explains Mark Bickford, CEO of Corporate Services, North America, for Sodexo "In our Humanizing the Workplace trend, we see the opportunity to leverage a range of design principles to help keep a "human-centric focus" in our work," added Bickford

The 2016 Workplace Trends Report is available at: http://sodexoinsights.com/2016-workplace-trends-report/

Experts contributing to the report provided insights on the following quality of life trends impacting the workplace:

Population Health Management: A New Business Model for a Healthier Workforce
Population Health Management, or PHM, is a broad effort whereby individual-, organizational- and community level interventions are used to improve the disease burden of entire groups or populations. By keeping people well at the onset, PHM strategies can be used to decrease overall healthcare usage and avoid future overuse of the healthcare system.  However, in order to bend the curve on health costs, programs that go beyond the typical employee wellness models toward a more integrated and comprehensive approach are required.

Humanizing the Workplace: Using Design Principles to Inspire Workplace Thinking
In these times of transition and change, it is increasingly difficult to make the right decisions in creating the right work environments. Design principles, acting as a set of guardrails, can help shape the promise and trajectory of approaching the design and maintenance of workspaces, by inspiring new thinking, fine-tuning directions and guiding decision-making processes. This piece highlights seven design principles that can guide managers and leaders who are charged with humanizing the workplace.

Reaching Every Employee in an Organization: Engagement through Recognition
The vast majority of today's employees are disengaged, and study after study indicates that engagement is one of the key drivers of business success. Corporate managers understand this imperative. Despite laser-like efforts, however, employee engagement scores in the United States remain lackluster.  Many organizations are embracing a corporate-wide approach to employee engagement today. There are generally two key areas that these organizations focus on in order to boost engagement and business performance: improving quality of life for employees and reaching every employee in an organization.

Smart Energy Management: A Win for the Environment, People, and Business
There is growing recognition that human activities are major contributors to climate change. The new normal is likely to require consumers to become more active participants in the creation and use of energy. Smart energy management can enhance the quality of life of employees by creating a more comfortable work environment. By implementing an action plan and working toward increasing energy awareness among employees, businesses can reap a multitude of benefits.

Stories of Urban Transformation: The Rise of 18-Hour Work/Live Communities
Cities all over the world are hotbeds of ideas, blending new and old concepts to create exciting urban experiences for residents, workers, enterprises and visitors.  This piece focuses on a few of the most interesting stories that demonstrate early signs of urban transformations, which will spread into more and more cities around the globe in 2016 and beyond. Each story is about how the various city players are using innovation and technology to transform the work they are doing and shape the world's future cities.

Sodexo Study: Gender Balanced Teams Linked to Increased Business Performance
Achieving gender balance is important for workplaces not only because it is "the right thing to do" but also because it makes good business sense. To better understand and leverage this trend, Sodexo initiated an internal study which analyzed key performance indicators (KPIs) from 100 global entities and 50,000 managers in 80 countries. The preliminary results were powerful, indicating that entities with gender-balanced management performed better on all of the performance indicators.

Creating The Lab of the Future: A Shift Toward Greater Agility, Flexibility, and Efficiency
Aging populations, chronic diseases, market expansion, and treatment and technology advances are expected to spur life sciences sector growth in 2015. However, efforts to reduce costs, improve outcomes, and demonstrate value are dramatically altering the demand and delivery landscape.  Accordingly, service providers must adapt to the new demands placed on them by more effectively anticipating trends in the industry.

Workplace Violence: Best Practices for a New Reality
Each year, nearly 2 million American employees are victims of workplace violence. This violence has far-reaching negative consequences for employers, employees, and the larger society, primarily because of the central role the workplace has in our lives.  This paper discusses the emergence of a fifth type of workplace violence – terrorism. Alongside implications for costs and risk factors, this new understanding also impacts future prevention efforts.

Sodexo in North America Sodexo, Inc., leading Quality of Life services company in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, delivers On-site Services in Corporate, Universities, K-12 Schools, Hospitals, Seniors, Government, and Remote Site segments, as well as Benefits and Rewards Services and Personal and Home Services. Sodexo, headquartered in Gaithersburg, Md., funds all administrative costs for the Sodexo Foundation, an independent charitable organization that, since its founding in 1999, has made more than $27 million in grants to end childhood hunger in America. Visit the corporate blog at SodexoInsights.com. Like Sodexo on Facebook and follow on Twitter @SodexoUSA.

Sodexo Group Founded in Marseille, France in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, an essential factor in individual and organizational performance. Operating in 80 countries, Sodexo serves 75 million consumers each day through its unique combination of On-site Services, Benefits and Rewards Services and Personal and Home Services. Through its more than 100 services, Sodexo provides clients an integrated offering developed over more than 50 years of experience: from foodservices, reception, maintenance and cleaning, to facilities and equipment management; from Meal Pass, Gift Pass and Mobility Pass benefits for employees to in-home assistance and concierge services. Sodexo's success and performance are founded on its independence, its sustainable business model and its ability to continuously develop and engage its 420,000 employees throughout the world.

SOURCE Sodexo

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