The facilities management and food service industry has been evolving for some time, and now more than ever, workplace is on the strategic agenda for our clients. Sodexo’s foundation lies within facilities management and food service. But Sodexo has capabilities and expertise that stretch beyond just FM and food that can help our clients transform their workplace and the experiences of their employees… but there is little awareness and understanding both internally and externally of what more we can bring.
So we need to change the way we express what we do… we need to change the language around our foundational services in food and FM… we need to break down the internal silos between Sodexo’s adults at work services ….
We need to move from COST to VALUE in the minds of clients and move from selling LABOUR and MATERIALS to selling Value Added Services. We need our clients, prospects and our own teams to be aware of our broader capabilities… and we need to send a message to the market that Sodexo is a credible strategic partner for workplace and employee experience strategies.
This is why we have created Vital Spaces. Vital spaces is our new value proposition for everything Sodexo can deliver for adults at work. It covers all our existing services and offers within corporate services… whether we self-deliver or provide capabilities through partnerships, and it includes our offers from the broader Sodexo business including B&R and PHS. And it will cover all future services, offers and partnerships that we develop to help our clients meet their workplace challenges. Vital Spaces is not an offer, it’s not just a brand or a campaign… it is the full value proposition of everything we can bring to support adults at work.
Vital Spaces is composed of two parts:
Brand & Visual Identity
- It has a unique logomark with Sodexo logo incorporated. Also has colour palette and design architecture aligned with the Sodexo mother brand.
- It provides a way to integrate offer brands and partner companies as well.
Strategy & Offer Architecture
- All the offers are structured around 5 main service pillars and the objective is to strengthen our offers within each service pillar in all key regions
Internal document
- The strategy is to provide services aligned with 3 distinct work environments – office-based, manufacturing and R&D - that exist in varying combinations in our target industry clients Vital Spaces is not a campaign, program, an offer or a concept. To introduce the new value proposition, we will run a launch campaign. Post-launch, different regions may run sub-campaigns for food, IFM, etc., but these will always feature the Vital Spaces branding.
Vital Spaces is a key component in helping us transition our Corporate Services business as the concept of the workplace rapidly changes. Most organisations are now looking at hybrid and flexible workplace models which allow employees to work from home or other locations. As result our services need to evolve and also how we position them needs to evolve. This was a trend that was happening before Covid-19, but has now been hugely accelerated.
We know that the workplace of today is not just about the physical boundaries of an office but encompasses the employee experience wherever and whenever they work and that’s why we have developed Vital Spaces.
Vital Spaces is a compelling and differentiated post-COVID offering geared toward serving adults at work, no matter where and how they are working. Vital gives us a compelling and differentiated value proposition for workplace that brings together our expertise, our partnerships and our underlaying corporate mission to promote quality of life.
Vital Spaces gives a brand platform designed to deliver growth in our target sectors. It will allow us to target and generate new sales leads and opportunities for organic growth with current clients.
Vital Spaces is our opportunity for us to leapfrog our competitors by focusing on people first with an integrated workplace ecosystem that can transform work environments to create those optimal experiences so people can thrive wherever and whenever they work.
No, we think Vital Spaces works across all types of workplace environments, whether that is office-based, manufacturing or R&D. Vital Spaces isn’t a one-size-fits-all. It gives us the flexibility to grow our business in new ways and develop solutions that fit the changing demands of the workplace.
We have used insights from our clients and from the wider marketplace for Workplace. We have also pulled in external market research such as from Harris International. Vital Spaces is designed to deliver against eight current issues that might be facing our clients and our prospects:
The key difference is that iFM is focused on buildings and real estate, whereas Vital Spaces is designed to be focused on people and employee experience. Vital Spaces is geared towards serving adults at work, no matter where and how they are working.
The key components of iFM – workplace services, space management, real estate planning, consultancy and vendor management – are very much captured within the Vital Spaces pillars, but the architecture allows us to build in employee-focused solutions.
Managing Workplace and Employee Experience is increasingly more than just delivering iFM. Vital Spaces allows to communicate the full breadth of the services Sodexo can deliver for Adults at Work, build out to develop more solutions and cross-sell those solutions.