I’ve worked for Sodexo for five years as social media manager. Previous to that I worked at a number of agencies running social media for clients including Coca-cola and Volkswagen. How I got into social media was through blogging and an art project I started in spare time (around 12 years ago now) Before social media was main stream I was obsessed with social communities and how people interact with each other, so I set up a project called Niceties Tokens. Which was a bit like an offline social media platform (sounds a bit weird I know, but this interview I did with the Londonist describes it well)
At Sodexo I use social media to create solutions across all parts of our business. Sodexo has 34,000 employees in the UK and Ireland alone, so using it for internal communication has helped increase engagement of staff. We also use it for communicating with our customers, clients and stakeholders.
One of the projects I’m really proud of is, when I came back from maternity leave I really felt there was a huge information gap for maternity returnees, and I believe that was resulting in women feeling disengaged. So along with a couple of other mums, we set up the Sodexo Working Parents group.
I’m also the communication lead, on the committee for the Sodexo LGBT Pride network, and amongst other things use social media to make Sodexo a more inclusive place.