With instant coffee, baby food, and bottled water in the mix, Nestl crunches more than just chocolate.

With instant coffee, baby food, and bottled water in the mix, Nestlé crunches more than just chocolate. The world’s number-one food and drinks company in terms of sales, Nestlé is also the world leader in coffee (Nescafé). It also makes coffee for the home-brewing system, Nespresso.
Nestlé is one of the world’s top bottled water makers (Nestlé Waters), one of the biggest frozen pizza makers (DiGiorno), and a big player in the pet food business (Friskies, Purina). Its well-known global food brands include Buitoni, Dreyer’s, Maggi, Milkmaid, Carnation, and Kit Kat. The company also owns Gerber Products. North America is Nestlé’s most important market.81 Nestlé has over 2,000 brands, which are made in 418 factories located in 86 countries, and employs nearly 330,000 employees selling products in 191 countries.82 How does one feed this growing concern? Mergers and acquisitions is one answer, yet that does not solve the skills-gap issue faced worldwide. Primarily, Nestlé’s success in growing its local companies in each country has been highly influenced by the functioning of its International Training Centre, located near corporate headquarters in Switzerland. For over 30 years, the Rive-Reine International Training Centre has brought together managers from around the world to learn from senior Nestlé managers and from each other. Country managers decide who attends which course, although there is central screening for qualifications, and classes are carefully composed to include people with a range of geographic and functional backgrounds. Typically, a class contains 15 to 20 nationalities. The center delivers some 70 courses, attended by about 1,700 managers each year from over 80 countries. All course leaders are Nestlé managers with many years of experience in a range of countries. Only 25% of the teaching is done by outside professionals, as the primary faculty is the Nestlé senior management. The programs can be broadly divided into two groups:
Management courses: These account for about 66% of all courses at Rive-Reine. The participants have typically been with the company for 4 to 5 years. The intention is to develop a real appreciation of Nestlé values and business approaches. These courses focus on internal activities.
Executive courses: These classes often contain people who have attended a management course 5 to 10 years earlier. The focus is on developing the ability to represent Nestlé externally and to work with  outsiders. It emphasizes industry analysis, often asking, “What would you do if you were a competitor?”83 An important factor in Nestlé’s productivity is the skill set of entry-level workers. Employers invest in the skills of new entrants as an alternative to hiring more experienced people, partly on grounds of cost but also for the opportunity to shape ways of working around specific technologies and processes and particular company values.84 The willingness to learn is therefore an essential condition to be employed by Nestlé. Primarily, training is done on-the-job. Guiding and coaching is part of the responsibility of each manager and is crucial to make each person progress in his or her position. Formal training programs are generally purpose-oriented and designed to improve relevant skills and competencies. Therefore, they are proposed in the framework of individual development programs and not as a reward.
Most of Nestlé’s people development programs assume a good basic education on the part of employees. However, in a number of countries, they have decided to offer employees the opportunity to upgrade their essential literacy skills. A number of Nestlé companies have therefore set up special programs for those who, for one reason or another, missed a large part of their elementary schooling.
These programs are especially important as they introduce increasingly sophisticated production techniques into each country where they operate.
As the level of technology in Nestlé factories has steadily risen, the need for training has increased at all levels. Much of this is on-the-job training to develop the specific skills to operate equipment that is more advanced.
However, not only new technical abilities are required. It is sometimes new working practices. For example, more flexibility and more independence among work teams are sometimes needed if equipment is to operate at maximum efficiency.
Two thirds of all Nestlé employees work in factories, most of which organize continuous training to meet their specific needs. In addition, a number of Nestlé operating companies run their own residential training centers. The result is that local training is the largest component of Nestlé’s people development activities worldwide, and substantial majorities of the company’s employees receive training every year.
Ensuring appropriate and continuous training is an official part of every manager’s responsibilities and, in many cases, the manager is personally involved in the teaching. For this reason, part of the training structure in every company is focused on developing managers’ coaching skills.
Additional courses are held outside the factory when required, generally in connection with the operation of new technology. The variety of programs is very extensive. They start with continuation training for ex-apprentices who have the potential to become supervisors or section leaders, and continue through several levels of technical, electrical, and maintenance engineering as well as IT management. The degree to which factories develop “home-grown” specialists varies considerably, reflecting the availability of trained people on the job market in each country. On-the-job training is also a key element of career development in commercial and administrative positions. Here too, Nestlé
trainers deliver most courses in-house but, as the level rises, collaboration with external institutes increases.
Virtually every national Nestlé company organizes management-training courses for new employees with high school or university qualifications.
Nevertheless, their approaches vary considerably. In Japan, for example, they consist of a series of short courses typically lasting 3 days each.
Subjects include human assessment skills, leadership and strategy, and courses for new supervisors and new key staff. In Mexico, Nestlé set up a national training center in 1965. In addition to those following regular training programs, some 100 people follow programs for young managers there every year. These are based on a series of modules that allows tailored courses to be offered to each participant. Nestlé India runs 12-
month programs for management trainees in sales and marketing, finance and human resources, as well as in milk collection and agricultural services. These involve periods of fieldwork, not only to develop a broad range of skills but also to introduce new employees to company organization and systems.
The scope of local training is expanding. The growing familiarity with information technology has enabled distance learning to become a valuable resource, and many Nestlé companies have appointed corporate training assistants in this area. It has the great advantage of allowing students to select courses that meet their individual needs and do the work at their own pace, at convenient times. In Singapore, to quote just one example, staff is given financial help to take evening courses in job-related subjects. Fees and expenses are reimbursed for successfully following courses leading to a trade certificate, a high school diploma, university entrance qualifications, and a bachelor’s degree.85

Questions 

1. For what purposes does Nestlé train and develop employees?
2. What challenges does Nestlé face in conducting their training programs?
3. Which skill sets does Nestlé focus on in their training programs?
4. What on-the-job training methods does Nestlé utilize in their training programs?
5. What forms of off-the-job training are available at Nestlé?
6. What are some of the ways that Nestlé’s training programs address career development?
7. What trends in training and development are Nestlé utilizing, and what trends could they benefit from?