LONDON, June 12, 2021 – Sodexo UK & Ireland has made a crucial new appointment by making Raj Jones its permanent Head of Diversity & Inclusion.

Raj started her career with Sodexo in 2007, taking on a role in Learning & Development for the Justice part of the business before moving to a secondment with the central Diversity & Inclusion team.

After five years, she took up a role at London’s South Bank University as a member of their Diversity & Inclusion team before returning to Sodexo a year later as part of its D&I team.

In 2019, she was promoted to Diversity & Inclusion Manager and has led the function since spring 2020 on an interim basis. In addition, Raj was appointed to the race and equality in HTL Committee in 2020.

Sarah Perry, Sodexo’s HR Director UK & Ireland, said, “Raj is an experienced, passionate, and skilled D&I practitioner. She works closely with our global colleagues and is a member of the global Cultures and Origins, Generations and Pride workstreams.”

“She is a strong advocate for grassroots involvement with a firm belief there is more that unites people than divides. I look forward to working with Raj and her team in supporting the agenda for D&I and wish her every success in this next step of her Sodexo journey.”

On her new role, Raj said, “I am really pleased to be appointed Sodexo UK and Ireland’s permanent Head of Diversity & Inclusion, having led the function on an interim basis since last year. Sodexo is an employer that really sees the value of inclusion in the workplace and has a strong desire, and commitment, to achieving sustainable positive culture change.”

In 2019, Sodexo publicly pledged, through Business in the Community’s Race to Work Charter and through the INvolve/EMpower ethnicity pay gap mandate framework, to publish its ethnicity pay gap. It became the first company in the hospitality and FM industry to do this when the report went live in May 2021.

Sodexo’s 2020 pay gap report reveals its mean ethnicity pay gap, which is the difference between the average hourly pay between BAME and non-BAME staff, was five per cent. In 2020, the mean ethnicity pay gap in the UK was 29.3 per cent.