Nestlé UK and Ireland has created 1,433 employment opportunities for young people, including work experience placements and development programmes since the launch of the Youth Employment Initiative in 2013.
This sets the company well on track to meet its commitment to create 1,900 employment opportunities for young people by 2016, including 300 paid work experience placements.
To support this commitment, the company has also expanded its range of opportunities available to young people by launching new apprenticeship and graduate roles in Food Manufacture and Confectionery, new IT apprenticeships and the ground breaking Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship scheme.
As part of the initiative, Nestlé UK and Ireland has partnered with youth employability experts MyKindaFuture to offer skills, training and work experience to young people in local communities close to Nestlé’s sites.
The campaign promotes the breadth of career pathways available within the Food and Drink Industry and Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.
Since 2013 the programme has reached 2,653 young people through employability skills workshops in 51 schools and colleges and through an online game and skills challenges has engaged with 9,405 14-19 year-olds.
Young people also had the opportunity to visit some of Nestlé’s sites, meet employees and see aspects of its business in action.
Read more about the Nestlé UK & Ireland and MyKindaFuture campaign here.
Last year, Nestlé expanded its Youth Employment Initiative in Europe to create the Alliance for YOUth, a collaboration between leading companies that has helped more than 50,000 young Europeans find jobs or training opportunities in its first year alone and now unites close to 200 companies.
As part of the Alliance for YOUth, earlier this year Nestlé UK and Ireland joined forces with Twitter to launch a unique joint internship opportunity. The selected intern gained a paid 10 weeks of experience, split equally across Nestlé’s UK headquarters and Twitter’s UK head office.
Apprentice swaps with DS Smith and joint work shadowing programme in partnership with Sodexo were among other opportunities offered through the Alliance.
Over 320 employees of Nestlé UK and Ireland and Alliance for YOUth companies have also been involved in 150 ‘readiness for work’ events, which include CV clinics, job fairs, job interview preparations and other support events for young graduates.
In addition, Alliance for YOUth launched a 'Readiness for Work' toolkit to help young people prepare to enter the job market.
The toolkit provides practical help on issues including job searching, managing a social media profile and securing and preparing for interviews.
Employees from Alliance member companies use the toolkit to deliver workshops in universities, further education colleges and schools.
On top of the Youth Employment Initiative achievements to date, the Nestlé Academy won ‘Innovation in Recruitment’ at the Recruiter Awards 2015.
The Academy was awarded for its strengths based approach to assessment and Jobmi platform, which has removed screening criteria popularly used by other early recruiters like the UCAS points system or selection from universities to allow for more diverse candidate pool.
The Nestlé Youth Employment Initiative is now in its third year and its focus will be on working closely with the Alliance for YOUth partners to create even more innovative opportunities for young people.
Nestlé has also launched its final online challenge of the MyKindaFuture partnership and is giving students the opportunity to win a place on a Finale Day at its York and Gatwick sites.
Students are being asked to create a marketable product from waste.
More details on the #ZeroToHero challenge can be found here.