Xref Allows Sodexo to Continue Their World-Leading Services

As a world leader in over 100 services, Sodexo aims to improve the quality of life of the people they serve. But Sodexo also strives to enhance the quality of life of their own employees.

Find out how Xref improved the working conditions of Sodexo’s human resources staff so that they could operate at their best and continue to hire the right people, to maintain Sodexo’s standing in the marketplace.

For Sodexo, improving quality of life isn't just a dream, it's a mission. They believe quality of life helps to keep people healthy, happy & motivated.

"We believe healthy school meals make kids do better,”  

“That relaxed patients recover faster. And organisations with engaged employees perform better. With our unique wide range of integrated services, this is what ourOn-site, Benefits and Rewards and Personal Home services do every day.”

Over 420,000 employees deliver Sodexo’s services in 64 countries around the world, but the organisation’s previous automated reference checking system wasn’t allowing their own human resources department to function at its optimum output.

Pain Points

The manual nature of Sodexo’s previous recruitment system was having a negative affect on overall business operations:‍

• ‍Administration: “In the past, our recruitment team spent far too much time on admin. Our processes were conducted manually, and the team could end up spending 60 – 70% of their day doing admin-heavy tasks. It added little value and took them away from the broader recruitment role they were employed to do.”‍
• Time Pressure: “Ultimately, every business relies on their HR and recruitment team to find and hire the best people. But they want it done quickly, which adds pressure to get talent through the door and into a role at speed.”‍
• Inefficiency: “The manual system left recruitment teams with very little time to assess their processes and consider whether they could be doing their job better, with a different approach.”‍
• Cost: The manual system was costingSodexo financially as they would often have to replace people sooner than expected, coupled with the time taken by their recruitment team to carry out their tasks.‍
• Candidate Experience: The time-consuming nature of Sodexo’s system meant that the process was not a great experience foreach candidate. This could lead to a damage to Sodexo’s brand and reputation.‍
• Lack of confidence in the result: Ultimately, Sodexo wasn’t totally confident that they were hiring the best people for each position as reference fraud was going through undetected.

Integration is essential

“We recognised that the main reason for our lack of efficiency was our Application Tracking System was outdated and not fit for purpose,” “We needed a modern alternative that could meet the demands of today’s recruitment role.

“We discovered SmartRecruiters, with its Marketplace of different recruitment solutions providers.”

SmartRecruiters is a Talent Acquisition Suite that provides full source-to-hire capabilities for the modern workforce. It is also fully integrated with Xref’s industry-leading technology.

Benefits of using Xref

“Xref has been a seamless addition to our newly automated recruitment process. It has enabled our team to significantly reduce the amount of time they spend on a critical but otherwise time-consuming part of the recruitment process.

“To us, Xref just made sense. We instantly saw the value of the platform; beyond just the time savings it could offer.”‍

• ‍Improved working conditions: “We wanted to free recruiters up to do what they do best - engage and interact with the best talent for our business, form close relationships with hiring managers to understand their needs, and ensure we’ve got a deep pool of talent for the future.”‍
• Improved efficiency: “Previously our recruiters would have conducted reference checks during their usual working hours. Xref has allowed us to collect more references between 8pm - 12am on aSunday than we do between 9am - 12pm on a Monday.”‍
• Time reduction: It now takes Sodexo an average of just 17 hours to turnaround references.‍
• Enhanced quality: Sodexo references now includes an average of 298 words per report and a new level of data analytics.‍
• Peace of mind: “We have a heightened sense of assurance in the data we gather and use for hiring decisions.” ‍
• Fraud detection: “We’re also now confident that, should a fraudulent candidate make it to the referencing stage, they will be detected and weeded out before it’s too late.

Infact, just two weeks after we’d implemented the platform, we were alerted of a potentially fraudulent candidate who, as it later emerged, had been trying to complete her own references. She would have been hired for a fairly high-profile role that required trust and integrity. I’m not confident that, without Xref, we would have picked up on her deliberate attempts to deceive us.”

Admittedly, Sodexo did have some reservations But at Xref whenever rest on our laurels. We’re always striving to meet our customer’s needs and develop our offering.

“One of our greatest objections to the adoption of an automated reference checking solution was the fact that it would remove the tone of voice we’d previously relied on during referencing calls. Xref has been met with this objection on other occasions and, as a result, at around the same time we started using the platform, the Xref Sentiment Engine was launched.

“Our team now benefits from the clear and simple sentiment ratings provided with every reference report. Xref’s nimble and accommodating approach to meeting needs such as this is as technically impressive as it is beneficial to our decision making.”

From childhood to professional life to retirement, Sodexo can now fully focus on delivering a positive impact not only on individual health and wellbeing, but also on neighbourhoods, cities, and the planet, thanks to Xref.