Everyone can be a brand ambassador for Sodexo

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... even my children!

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Friday was "the most wonderful day of the year," according to my almost 8 year old hamburger. Uh... I mean my almost 8 year old SON! He talked about Halloween night for nearly a week straight (and about drove me and his sister nuts). "I can't wait until Saturday," was the the first thing out of his mouth in the morning, when he walked in the door after school, and before he went to bed at night. One morning he even woke up a little agitated and he told me the reason was he didn't sleep well the night before because all he could think about was Halloween.

When the day came he was dressed in his costume by 3PM and very excited. By 6:30 he was insisting, "it's time, it's TIME!" He wanted to carry a pillow case instead of his plastic pumpkin so he could collect more candy than in the past. I wasn't willing to give up any of our pillow cases and I wanted him to take his (little) pumpkin. We both were standing our ground and on opposite sides of the candy argument - he wanted more candy and I wanted less candy. And then out of the corner of my eye I spotted my assortment of reusable Sodexo shopping bags that I keep handy for the grocery store. Hence the title of this blog post.

EVERYONE really can be a Sodexo Brand ambassador -- even my children.

My daughter chose the pink bag (also a Sodexo bag) and my son chose the blue. We have approximately 35 houses in our neighborhood so I figure at least a few folks noticed the Sodexo logo. My children hear me talk about my job to friends and family and they love to hang over my shoulder when I am Tweeting (@SodexoCareers) and updating our Facebook Page at night. So they know (or they think they do) what I do for Sodexo's Talent Acquisition Team. It's funny to hear them talk about their mom "tweeting" or "playing around on Facebook" for work to their friends. I am proud to say that if anyone had asked my little brand ambassadors about Sodexo on Halloween they would have said, "Sodexo is a large food and facilities management company and my mom works there."

Sodexo, Blog Potomac AND the Marine Corps Marathon

Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending the final Blog Potomac a social media marketing event organized by Geoff Livingston and Debbie Weil just outside DC in Falls Church, VA. I live in Maryland so the drive to Falls Church VA is not so bad...if you are used to DC traffic and if know where you're going that is. Typically when I set out for a drive like this I will go to MapQuest and print out the step by step directions for peace of mind and because I am directionally challenged. This time, however I decided to use my new Tom Tom GPS system, which is apparently also directionally challenged. As "Tom" was directing me to "Turn Left, Turn Left, TURN LEFT!" and after "Tom" and I argued about the unexplained detour through a very nice neighborhood about 6 miles from my destination I was back on track and I made to Blog Potomac a little late but ready for a full day of social media marketing ideas from some of the best in the industry.

The best quote of the day for me was from Shel Israel, author of Twitterville: “the tools change, but people remain the same.” He elaborated on this by saying, he thinks we are "at the end of the beginning era of social media, a period of enormous innovation and disruption that has forced people to do things differently." I couldn't agree more. You can read more about Blog Potomac here and here and here.

The day ended and I as I headed out of the parking lot "Tom" and I had a little chat about my need to get home to my family and I asked him very nicely to cooperate with this need and direct me home without detours. Yes, I realize it's weird to talk to your GPS. Call me weird. When Tom started to take me through DC I started to get worried but my faith is in technology and I let him guide me turn by turn. As I was driving near the Pentagon I noticed huge yellow signs along the road - it didn't take long before I realized what they were -- the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) was last Sunday and these were the signs posted for the runners. I thought how cool is this? I'm driving the same route that more than 21,000 people would be running in just a couple of days! Coming from a blogging conference my brain was in blogging/content mode so I quickly snapped a few shots of the signs.

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A little history about the MCM according to Wikipedia. The MCM has been run every year since 1976, and as of 2008, was the nation's 5th-largest race by finishers. The course, which varies slightly from year to year, is certified by USA Track and Field. The race is generally run a few weeks before the Marine Corps' birthday in November. The race is also known as "The People's Marathon" because it is the largest race that offers neither prize money nor appearance fees to draw elite runners.

And, for the second year in a row, Sodexo was the official food service provider for the Marathon feeding more than 700 VIP's and providing 30,000 bags filled with healthy snacks for the runners. Did you read the blog post by Marc Lubetkin, Communications Director for Sodexo's Government Services last week? If you did then you know Sodexo also proudly sponsored the affiliated MCM Healthy Kids Fun Run, which held on Saturday before the race and the MCM Health and Fitness Expo where Tina Reddington, a Sodexo Registered Dietitian, talked about sensible nutrition and running. I didn't attend the events but I followed them on the Twitter (@SodexoUSA) and on the MCM Facebook page. You can take a look at photos of the events on the MCM Sodexo Flickr page here.

I'm not a runner -- any more that is. About two years ago I decided I was going to start running and I trained for a 10K with my neighbor for almost a year. When I crossed the finish line I was so excited I hugged a complete stranger and the next day I retired my running shoes. It was the most exhausting year of my life. I known many people who run marathons - some are training for their first and others have been running them for years. It's an impressive way of life and I'm thinking about pulling my running shoes out of retirement.

Any advice out there from runners on motivation and training?

Thank You Sodexo Plant Operations and Maintenance Employees

An open letter to Sodexo's Facilities Services Teams from Ted Bryant and Dan Ball, Senior Vice Presidents, Sodexo Facilities Services in recognition of National Health Care Plant operations and Maintenance Week


October 2009

Dear Sodexo Plant Operations and Maintenance Services Teams,

We want to THANK YOU for all you do for clients, patient’s visitors and staff. Your efforts and professionalism is mission critical for the Hospitals we serve. Your task is not easy. Many people are depending on you and your teams to keep the building and equipment operating in order for others to take care of the health of the patients we serve. Your passion and dedication is visible every single day.

The facilities we serve are both large and small. They operate 365 days a year. They're open each and every holiday. There is no time to slow down or take a break from performing your duties. Client and patient satisfaction are dependent on your services. You make a difference everyday in the lives of nursing, staff, visitors and our patients. You embody the Sodexo CARES Behaviors of Compassion, Accountability, Respect, Enthusiasm and Service.

The CARES Stories that we receive are true testaments of the role you and your teammates perform. The stories are extraordinary!

YOU are extraordinary!

To all our Plant operations and maintenance Teams - Steve Dunmore (DVP Facilities), Dan and I THANK YOU! We are proud to be part of a team that puts the patent experience first. Keep up the good work. And keep making a difference in so many people’s lives.


Regards,


Dan Ball and Ted Bryant
Senior Vice Presidents
Sodexo Facility Solutions


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Daniel Ball
Senior Vice President, Facility Solutions
As Senior Vice President, Facility Solutions, Dan Ball’s responsibilities, include leading Operations & Maintenance and Infrastructure Renewal operations for the Eastern, Southeast, Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. In addition to Dan’s passion and commitment to excellence, he brings a wealth of health care facility management and related experience, from both a client and corporate perspective. He has also accumulated a tremendous track record of success since joining Sodexo as a Facility Solutions District Manager in 2003. Dan’s many accomplishments include: the highest Customer Satisfaction scores in the Division for the last three years and 2006 recipient of the Spirit of Sodexo award for Customer Service.


Ted Bryant, CHFM
Senior Vice President, Facility Solutions
Ted Bryant is currently the Senior Vice President of Facility Solutions division, Western Region for Sodexo Health Care Services. Ted began his career with Sodexo in 1976 as a Manager Trainee in the Higher Education market. He quickly moved to unit management in the Health Care division and was promoted to the position of Vice President for Operations Support, Western Division in 1995 and in 1996 he was appointed to Senior Vice President for the 9 western states covering all services. In 2003, Ted was asked to take on the SVP role in the newly created Facilities Solutions Division.


For more information about Facilities Management Careers visit our microsite here.

Juggling with a Little Help from Sodexo Benefits

by return guest blogger, Michele Posehn

There I was, wearing a rainbow colored wig, polka dot jumpsuit with white ruffled collar, and big floppy shoes. I could hardly see past the big, red, foam nose plunked in the middle of my face.

I was a senior in high school, playing the role of a clown in the school’s spring musical. Dressing for the role wasn’t a difficult task – about 15 minutes to add the makeup to my face – red to exaggerate the outline of my lips, big blue circles drawn around my eyes. It was learning how to be a clown that took some time.

The director of the play decided that each clown in the play would need to demonstrate some sort of talent, I guess to make it more “realistic.” So, while some clowns had dogs jumping through hoops and some rode teen tiny bicycles, I was told I would be juggling. One problem, though… I didn’t know how to juggle.

With the help of my dad, I set out to learn how to juggle. To this day, I don’t know what circumstances led my dad to know how to juggle but I’m glad he did. We started with tennis balls. At first, it was just practicing throwing one ball up in the air and catching it with the other hand, all the time keeping my arms relatively still. The key, I was taught, was not to watch the ball go from one hand to the other, rather keep my eyes focused on the middle of the arc the ball traveled and trust that my hands would instinctively know when and where to catch.

After mastering catching one, I moved on to two, then three - that middle of the arc always acting as my indicator as to when to release the next ball. I got pretty good at it and eventually moved on to juggling rings and brightly colored sticks. By the time the curtain went up on our school play, I was standing on one leg while doing it.

Flash forward 16 years (wow, am I really that much older?) and I’m still juggling but now, it’s not tennis balls on stage. I work full time, I own a home that always seems to need something done to it, I am a mom to a two year old and…well, that last one should be enough to get my point across. I am busy. My days are defined by grocery shopping, laundry, teleconferences, naptimes (for the two year old, not me), cooking dinner, resume review – whatever life is throwing at me.

The great thing about the Sodexo is that it understands that juggling can be really hard, especially when you have more tennis balls in the air than you do hands to catch them. Programs like LifeWorks and flexible work arrangements may not be able to help me balance a purse, diaper bag, three stuffed animals and a sippy cup, but they can help balance the demands of work and personal life.

With all that we have going on in our lives, a ball is bound to be dropped every now and then and in my current role of mom/wife/employee/all of the above., I admit there have been times when I lost sight of the middle of the arc and let myself lose focus. But just as I did when I was a clown, I know that a dropped ball is an opportunity for me to start all over again and improve upon my talent, learn from where I went wrong and remember next time what I did right.

Just as I learned writing this blog entry which was started 3 weeks ago but only now finished as I sit in a hotel room in Maryland, working on a department project, trying to catch which star has danced their last dance on TV, all the while with the phone to my ear saying good night to my little girl.

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Michele Posehn started with Sodexo as a Senior Recruiter in February 2007. She currently recruits for culinary related positions for the Hospitals division in the New York metro area. Michele welcomes anyone out there looking for a company that is diverse and full of opportunity to follow her on Twitter.

It's Boss's Day again!

I ran this post about my boss, Anthony Scarpino last year on Boss's Day. The good news is he's still an awesome boss!

If you are reading this today, please send a shout out to him on Twitter @A_Scarpino and while you're at it you can send another shout out to Arie Ball, VP for Sodexo's Talent Acquisition Team and our fearless leader @Arie_Ball

Happy Boss's Day Anthony Scarpino!!

From Team Scarpino!

(Andrew, Angela, Amber, Darla, Doreen, LaShawn, Sarah, Scott, Suzanne & Kerry)

If you didn't know (copied from last year's post)...

Boss's Day (also known as Bosses Day or National Boss Day) is a holiday celebrated on October 16 in the United States. It has traditionally been a day for employees to thank their boss for being kind and fair throughout the year.


National Boss Day was actually started in 1958 when Patricia Bays Haroski, then an employee at State Farm Insurance Company in Deerfield, Ill., registered the holiday with the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. She designated October 16 as the special day because it was her father's birthday. Ms. Haroski's purpose was to designate a day to show appreciation for her boss and other bosses. She also hoped to improve the relationship between employees and supervisors. She believed young employees often do not realize the challenges bosses face in running a business.*


If you didn't know it was National Boss Day or you forgot, you could send your boss an E-Card from Hallmark or you could comment on this blog post with your own shout out to your great boss!





* Source for National Boss's Day information http://www.calendar-updates.com/info/holidays/us/boss.aspx

Does Twitter really make us better writers?

I noticed several months ago after using Twitter for nearly a year that my emails were getting shorter and more concise. I mentioned this to my Senior Director, Anthony Scarpino (@A_Scarpino) and my “social media partner in crime.” He agreed and jokingly added even his arguments with his wife have become shorter and more concise.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the many blog posts about how Twitter makes us better writers. If you haven’t you can here, here, here, here and more here. I'm on the fence about this. With only 140 characters to get your point across you have to be concise in Twitter. You learn how to replace phrases with single words or acronyms and longer words with shorter words. And this - the good and the bad of it - has trickled over into our daily lives whether we want to admit it or not. Case in point… below is a note I quickly jotted on a random piece of paper I found pinned to our frig this morning.

No kidding. In fact, my grocery list is on the back of that note. We need paper towels, almonds, and bread if you're wondering. Obviously I didn’t send the note. After realizing what I did I took a deep breath, found a proper piece of paper, and neatly and patiently wrote a note to Ms. Ginger, my son's lunch manager, that she could understand.

Are you wondering about the story behind this note? Here’s where I’m going to lose my newly acquired skills for concise writing.

My son was not able to buy a treat on Friday and our school requires a parent’s permission to buy a treat on any other day. To a 7 year these Friday treats are very important and a near tragedy if missed. To a parent of a 7 year old these Friday treats are a huge annoyance. My kids get enough junk in their lives – school should be a place where good nutrition is a priority and the treats should be healthy - not an adult size chocolate eclair. We are NOT lucky enough to live in a county that contracts with Sodexo for school lunches. If we did, these treats would be an issue as new research from our School Services shows that Sodexo school lunch saves time, money and provides good nutrition. Sodexo School Services conducted the research for National School Lunch Week (Oct. 12 to 19) to determine if participating in a Sodexo school lunch program is a solution for parents who are concerned about good nutrition, stretching their food budget and are pressed for time. You can read more about the study here.

I’m not arguing that more concise writing is a good thing. I like being more concise in my communication. And I agree that Twitter forces us to exercise our vocabulary and forces us to improve our editing skills as noted in this blog post on Copyblogger and again here in this blog post by Michael Gass. But sometimes this new way of communicating is not such a good thing and less is not always more as exampled by my note to the Ms. Ginger. So I remain on the fence about whether or not Twitter really improves our writing skills.

Now, if I can get my voice mails more concise I might do a little dance of joy. Yes, I am one of those long voice mail ramblers. I drive my husband nuts with this and he often will not even listen to my voice mails because of it. I try really hard not to do this at work… oh, wait we don’t leave voice mails at work anymore, do we?

I wonder if Julia Child would Twitter?

While I was on a beach vacation in August I decided not to take my Kindle with me for fear of sand that seems to come home with us in every nook and cranny of our belongings. So I grabbed an actual book called, My Life in France written by Julia Child and Alex Prud' homme who is also Paul Child's grand nephew. Paul Child of course being Julia Child's beloved husband. What an amazing story on so many levels.

We all know Julia Child, right? The 6'2" American, world famous chef, quirky TV personality, and author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I remember watching reruns of her shows with my mother growing up and seeing my mother chuckle as Julia would swoop the mess from her cooking surface on to the floor. And who could forget her "Chicken Sisters" episode of "The French Chef" series? She was pretty much the Food Network before there was a Food Network!

Did you know she went to culinary school at age 32 while in Paris? By her own admission, she couldn't "boil an egg" when she arrived in Paris in 1948 but that didn't stop her from enrolling in the 10-month course at Le Cordon Bleu and immerse herself in the art of cooking. Not only was I amazed by her culinary talent after reading this book, I was also amazed with her communication skills.

In 1951, Julia joined a women's cooking club called Cercle des Gourmettes where she met, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, fellow foodies who were writing a French cookbook for Americans. Simone Beck proposed that Julia work with them to help it appeal to Americans and that's how she became involved with the 734-page Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Are you surprised to learn Julia Child is a co-author on the now famous cook book?

When the three started their collaboration on the book they all lived in Paris. In 1953, Julia and her husband, Paul moved to Marseilles, more than 400 miles from Paris, and in 1956 they moved back to the US. The book wasn't published until 1961. If you didn't know Sodexo (then Sodexho) was launched in 1966 by Pierre Bellon in Marseilles, France, initially serving company restaurants, schools and hospitals under the name Societé d'Exploitation Hotelière. And today, Sodexo’s 2,000 chefs and 25,000 culinary professionals dish up millions of delicious, nutritious meals for customers in businesses, colleges and universities, hospitals and schools across North America. I wonder if Pierre Bellon (founder and Chairman of the Board of Sodexo) knew Julia?

It took 10 years to write the book. Chef's notes for each chapter were hand written, typed and mailed back and forth to each other until a recipe was mastered. There are 426 recipes in this book. She had to communicate with her co-authors by way of short phone calls, letters and an occasional visit. The amount of time they spent writing what has become a work of art is mind boggling and at first I had a hard time grasping how it could even be done. But then I realized most of Sodexo's Talent Acquisition team is remote. Instead of hand written letters, we send emails and if email happens to be "down" we send direct messages in Twitter or Facebook. I guess we all adapt to the technology or lack of technology available. But, can you imagine if Julia had the internet, email, Facebook or Twitter?

Do you think Julia would be on Twitter if she were still with us today? What do you think her handle would be?