Like most HR leaders, the “battle for talent” is the most significant HR priority facing Keysa Minnifield, vice president of HR for Eurest and ESFM, the food service and facilities management divisions for business and industry at Compass Group USA. Compass is the world’s largest food service and facilities company with a workforce of about 300,000.
There is a diversity of jobs available at both divisions—from the catering, custom dining and hospitality solutions at Eurest to training, operations and janitorial services on the ESFM side. Coupled with the clients the organizations serve, which include more than half of the Fortune 100, this requires leadership to lean into diversity in its hiring and talent strategy, Minnifield says, even as many organizations de-emphasize DEI.
“We’re not in a cookie-cutter industry, so we’re not going to have cookie-cutter associates,” she says, noting the company recognizes the value of an individualized employee experience as a core component of its talent strategy. Minnifield, who spent nearly 20 years at food services and facilities company Sodexo before joining Compass in 2021, recently shared with HR Executive how the organization is strategizing for talent success.
Minnifield: Finding great talent and then being able to retain that talent. It’s one of those areas where we are spending a tremendous amount of our time ensuring that we are sourcing in the right areas and going through the onboarding process to make sure we have that stickiness—that once we identify talent and onboard them, they will really want to stay with the organization.
HR Executive: When it comes to talent strategy, Compass recently piloted a program with Best Buddies, which works with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. What was the impact?
Minnifield: Best Buddies is a great program. I actually started in my role right as we were kicking that off. It’s a wonderful organization, and we see this as an opportunity for us to continue to invest in the DEI space, particularly from the perspective of inclusion. Being able to tailor job experiences and opportunities to that particular audience will bring great value to those individuals as well as to Compass as a broader organization. Working in the DEI space continues to be a big focus for us. We want to mirror the communities in which we live, work and serve.
HR Executive: This is happening as many other organizations roll back DEI commitments. Do you think those will continue?
Minnifield: It’s hard to say in the current climate. I think companies are looking at what they feel like will work best for them and their customer base. For Compass—Eurest and ESFM, in particular—this focus on DEI is critical to our success. So, we will continue that focus to make sure that we find the best and the brightest talent and that we are engaging in activities that will create that great employee experience.
Related: Corporate DEI is under fire—putting HR right in the crosshairs
HR Executive: How has the organization embraced innovation for the employee experience?
Minnifield: We actually have a team that’s dedicated to the employee experience. Employees start day one with that group with a really robust onboarding process. There’s some virtual components to it, some live components to it, but we’ve just really come to understand that having those curated employee experiences and being very intentional is what works best for us and our population. Everybody is different and people bring different things to the table, so we want to tailor the experience for the individual so they can bring their whole self to work and bring all of their experience and knowledge to bear to get the job done.
HR Executive: Who or what was your biggest influence on the type of HR leader you are today?
Minnifield: My parents had a tremendous impact on who I am in general but also on how I lead. Both of my parents are deceased, but they were very driven people. They were not super educated, but they had a tremendous work ethic and that’s what they instilled in me and my nine siblings. My parents were very open and honest people, very transparent. There’s a book—All I Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten—and I really feel like everything I need to know, I learned from my parents, in one shape or another. Now, I’m thinking back on those experiences, those lifelong lessons I learned from them, and figuring out how do I take those, and their good examples, and turn that into being a good leader and a good person today?
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