exploring eLearning at Nestlé

On 9 June Nestlé hosted a preparatory workshop for exploring eLearning on the subject of Academies and the training of internal digital trainers. Among those taking part were Altran, Aviva, Banca Mediolanum, CGT, Fastweb, H3G and Yoox, to discuss together how to develop internal trainers and teachers towards the digital culture, how to train tutors for eLearning courses and online communities and how to organise corporate Academies. Giacomo Piantoni, HR Director Nestlé Group in Italy, and Paola Beoletto, Learning &amp Training Manager, opened the workshop by presenting the Nestlé Learning Strategy: self-learning, multimediality, gamification and internal academies are just a few of the trends on which training and development at Nestlé is based. The workshop continued with a visit to the NestléDigital Acceleration Team (DAT), a highly technological space, devised to accelerate the digitalisation process and to support digital marketing projects through a complete knowledge of the consumer and the shopper, including by monitoring social networking activities. The DAT offers a training programme that takes in around 60 people every year. The visit continued in the Consumer &amp Shopper Engagement Centre, a reconstruction of the “ideal supermarket” for training and developing trade marketing strategies that fully satisfy the wishes of consumers (as found from the analysis of data by the DAT), to grow the value of the categories and to improve sales performance. Following a short break, the visit resumed with the Academy and training of internal digital trainers presentation by Franco Amicucci, focussing on the importance of the new trainer’s digital skills. With the digital culture come changes in planning, the production of teaching materials, management of the training and the general architecture of internal Academies. The new trainer widens his perception: from a manager of classroom catalogues and eLearning courses, to the architect of a continuous learning process. Web 2.0 tools make it possible to offer corporate training in a social and participatory way. These new technologies transform the traditional company trainer into a facilitator/tutor and allow an innovative training pact between participants, trainers and the company.

1. The participants are more active and follow up the training sessions even after they have finished, continuing along their own path through self-training (including online) and sharing what they learn informally
2. the trainer facilitates these processes of co-construction of knowledge, acting as a guide and moderator
3. the organisations promote this interaction between informal and formal learning.

In conclusion, the key skills of the 2.0 trainer were defined as:

• Know how to find information
• Know how to transfer the new digital skills to his collaborators
• Know how to organise and classify content
• Know how to create engaging content
• Be the architect of a continuous learning process

Many questions were put forward by the participants: where to begin with bringing about the 2.0 “change of skin” in the training, how to overcome resistance and how to identify “hidden” skills in people. Discover other preparatory workshops on www.exploring-elearning.com