google training and development case study

How Google's Innovative Training and Development Programs Empower Employees

"We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in '20% time.' Most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses." Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote in their IPO letter .

Discover all about:

• Google's learning and development philosophy
• The implementation of the unique employee-led learning initiative: Googler-to-Googler
• Google's several learning and development programs that foster a learning culture: Whisper Courses, Career Guru Program, and Google Developer Groups.
• How you can replicate Google's stellar system.

Imagine an environment where learning is not confined to the walls of a classroom or the limits of a standard curriculum. Google has redefined the landscape of employee training, creating a culture where continuous learning is interwoven with day-to-day work. 

It's a world where innovation is not just encouraged but is a part of the very fabric of employee development.

While companies spend days finding the perfect course or developing an ideal training program, Google took the opposite route and let employees decide what to teach and how to teach.

This unique approach worked in Google's favor. It has excellent reviews for learning and skill development. 

This L&D case study will look at Google employee training and development programs in detail.

This isn't just a story about Google. It's a treasure trove of insights and strategies that can inspire HR professionals and business leaders.

Whether adapting some of Google's practices to your organizational context or rethinking your approach to employee development, plenty of lessons can be learned and applied.

And in fact, we do share a step-by-step implementation guide for everything Google nails in their L&D strategy. 

📜 Google's learning philosophy : 4 Core pillars

Former VP of People Development Karen May's presentation on the principles shaping learning at Google highlights a modern, holistic approach to professional development, emphasizing the dynamic nature of learning.

The principles or the core beliefs that shape the design and delivery of learning resources at Google are:

"Learning is a process. It's not an event. It involves some motivation, often some pre-work. It involves practice, practice, practice, and feedback."

At Google, learning is viewed not as a one-time event but as a continuous journey. This perspective acknowledges that real learning requires time, effort, and repeated practice. By incorporating feedback into this process, learners can continually refine and improve their skills, leading to deeper understanding and mastery. 

"Our [PeopleOps team's] job is to think end to end about where the motivation gets created, how we create the opportunities to practice, and what the feedback loop is, so that we really can get to behavior change."

The key is ensuring that learners put into practice the new information obtained from training, with a final goal of enabling behavioral change. 

"Learning happens in real life , especially during transitions or challenge points."

This approach aligns learning with actual on-the-job experiences, making it more relevant and applicable. 

The most profound learning occurs not in isolation but while tackling real-world problems and adapting to change.

"Learning is personal . Everyone has different learning styles and different levels of challenge within which they can work. [...] And part of our role is helping people understand what their own learning style is so that then as people, we can create the kind of experiences that will help us accelerate."

Google understands that learning is not one size fits all and that: 

• Every individual will have different learning styles and preferences. 
• They also have different needs regarding the knowledge they should get from the training.

"Learning is social . Googlers tell us when they really need to figure something out, they ask each other. They turn to their colleagues for information and for advice and for support."

The idea that learning is inherently social reflects Google's emphasis on collaborative learning environments. By fostering a culture where employees are encouraged to seek out and learn from each other, Google leverages its workforce's collective knowledge and experience. 

This peer-to-peer learning approach enhances skill acquisition, strengthens team dynamics, and supports a culture of continuous improvement.

By embracing these principles, Google sets an example of how organizations can foster an environment where learning is integrated into the fabric of everyday work . 

🤖 How does Google enable learning and growth? 4 Stellar Google employee training and development programs

Let's delve into real-life stories and examples that illustrate the transformative impact of Google's training approach on both individual careers and the company's overall innovation trajectory.

The G2G Program

Back in 2007, Google had a ton of new hires lined up for the sales department in Dublin one summer. With only three trainers available, training these new hires looked impossible. 

The L&D team reached out to leadership to see if some top performers could temporarily act as trainers. The best sales team members trained the new hires, and the results were amazing. Quality scores of the training were quite high, and employees also enjoyed the training process. 

As a result, L&D decided to expand this program. This led to Google's outstanding peer-to-peer training program , Googler-to-Googler (G2G). 

As part of G2G programs, Googlers can nominate themselves to take training on any topic: technical, functional, domain, leadership, parenting, yoga, mindfulness, etc. And it entirely runs voluntarily.

How does Google run the G2G program?

• Employees volunteer themselves on the topic they want to teach. There are no fixed topics. Employees can teach anything from technical topics to hobbies.
• The L&D team provides training to the volunteers on how to facilitate training.
• The L&D team also provides an internally built Learning Management System (LMS) for tracking trainers, classes, and participant completion.
• Participants and volunteers can track training hours in the internal LMS.

" G2G is one of the purest expressions of Google culture. It has been a successful program. Over 80% of all formal learning at Google in 2020 was part of G2G , and our G2G volunteers have consistently outperformed external facilitators ." Sarah Devereaux , former G2G Global Lead.

Whisper Courses

Rather than assigning hours of training and overloading information on employees, Google takes the microlearning approach. The company sends bite-sized lessons to employees called whisper courses.

"A whisper course is a series of emails, each with a simple suggestion, or 'whisper,' for a manager to try in their one-on-ones or team meetings. Over the course of ten weeks, managers could build better psychological safety on their team by trying these whisper suggestions." Google , Whisper courses: on-the-job microlearning with email.

How does Google run whisper courses?

Google sends a series of emails or nudges, each with a simple suggestion or an actionable tip that employees can immediately implement. The power is its timing. It's sent when the employee needs that information. For instance, Google sends nudges to new hires and their managers with tips that improve the onboarding process. 

"I love that it was practice-focused. Often, you leave a course overwhelmed with info, and it's hard to implement a real change. Because you're encouraging stepwise change, it feels like a slow, steady progression of understanding how you can evolve the way you work." Googler quoted in Google, Whisper courses: on-the-job microlearning with email.

The Guru+ Program

In 2010, Google launched an internal one-on-one coaching program called Guru+ to help Googlers focus on their growth and development . The program saw huge participation and became one of the top perks of working at Google .

How does Google run the Guru+ program?

1. Employees volunteer themselves to be a Guru.

2. Google provides preparatory training sessions to the volunteers. Google uses a GROW coaching model to ensure participants get the most out of these calls.  

3. Participants use Google Meet (formerly, they were using Google Hangouts) to book and conduct coaching calls . 

4. Participants can fill out a feedback form after the call.

5. If a Guru receives three or more negative feedbacks, they undergo additional training.

" We have parents gurus, leadership gurus, manager gurus, innovation gurus, noogler gurus, and more. It's helpful to be able to just sit down with somebody and say I'm really having a hard time right now, and I'm not quite sure what to do . An empathetic and personal conversation with someone in a setting where you feel safe and know you have good confidentiality about what you're sharing. " Sarah Devereaux , former G2G Global Lead.

Gurus cover a wide range of topic areas , such as:

• team development;
• leadership;
• manager—for people managers on people management-related topics;   
• innovation;
• new employees;
• well-being;
• presentation—for learning to give reports and TED Talks, for example.

Google Developers Community

Google also went beyond the internal workforce and created an open community of developers where Googlers can interact with developers outside the company or end users. This way, Googlers can see practical use cases of Google technologies and gather user feedback. Two major flagship programs as part of the initiatives are:

• Google Developers Group Program 
• Google Codelabs

How Google runs Google Developer Groups and Google Codelabs?

• As part of Google Developer Groups (GDG), community members organize in-person or virtual events, webinars, online discussions, hands-on workshops, hackathons, and coding sessions on various technical topics. It promotes skill development, knowledge sharing, open-source contributions, and networking. GDG also provides a platform for Googlers to receive feedback on Google's products and technologies from the developer community. 
• As part of Google Codelabs, hands-on, self-paced tutorials and coding exercises are available on the publicly accessible platform . Both Googlers and external developers can take up the courses. Googlers can also create courses on topics in which they have expertise.

👀 3 Reasons behind Google's current L&D strategy

Each Google training program is built with deliberate thought and reflects their work culture. Laszlo Bock, former CHRO of Google, discussed it in detail in his book, Work Rules.

Here are the top excerpts that form the core reasons behind Google's training and development strategy.

You learn the best when you learn the least

Google shifted the lens from the traditional approach of measuring the hours spent by employees in training programs. Instead, it focused on behavior changes in employees through the training. That's how Google came up with the idea of whisper courses. Delivering small impactful nudges/checklists/notes that bring immediate positive action rather than hours of training. 

"It's a better investment to deliver less content and have people retain it than to deliver hours of learning that is quickly forgotten. " Laszlo Bock, former Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google , in his book Work Rules .

Build your faculty from within

"I can't tell you what to teach your team or organization since that depends on what your goals are. I can't tell you whether the best way to teach is in person or remotely, through self-study or group classes. That will depend on how your people learn best, and whether they are trying to learn job-specific skills, such as a new programming language, or more general skills, such as how to work better together as a team. I can, however, tell you exactly where to find the best teachers. They are sitting right next to you. I promise you that in your organization, there are people who are experts on every facet of what you do, or at least expert enough that they can teach others." Laszlo Bock, former Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google , in his book Work Rules.

Lazloh highlights the two core questions to ask yourself when designing the right training program for your organization:

• What's the best training for your team? It depends on your goals .
• What training method best suits your team: virtual, in-person, self-study, or group classes? It depends on how your people like to learn and your work culture . 

Laszlo further explains this with an example. 

" In your company, there is certainly the best salesperson in terms of total sales. By turning to that person to teach others rather than bringing in someone from the outside, you not only have a teacher who is better than your other salespeople. But also someone who understands the specific context of your company and customers. Sending your best salespeople to the most expensive sales webinars, led by someone who sold products for someone else, is unlikely to revolutionize your sales performance because the specifics of your company do matter. "

Trust employees will do the right thing

Learning is quite contextual, and the trainer needs to know how your company works rather than delivering generic best practices. 

So, Google turned to their employees to lead all the top training initiatives: G2G, Guru+, and GDG. 

Sarah Devereaux spoke about their biggest issue with the G2G program: releasing control. 

When they tried to expand the G2G, they put in many more processes, criteria, guidelines, and mandates. It messed up the program, and employees started running away from it. 

They finally let go of control and let employees decide what they want to teach and how they want to teach, and they are only there to assist. 

As a result, participation skyrocketed. Also, instead of making any session mandatory, Google trusted employees to take ownership of their learning journey. The decision power acted as a major motivator for the participants.

"Trust people to do great work. They are capable of more than you think." Sarah Devereaux , former G2G Global Lead.

🗝️ The key to Google 's L&D success

Let's look at the reasons behind why Google's training initiatives succeeded. 

Incorporating peer learning the right way

National Training Laboratories Institute for Applied Behavioral Science studied various learning methods and which is the best. Based on their research , an individual retains knowledge the most by teaching others. Google's learning programs, G2G and GDG, benefit both participants and facilitators. Facilitators retain their knowledge by teaching others, and participants learn the tricks of the trade from an insider. 

Another reason to have employees as trainers is it increases employee engagement and gives them a stronger reason to be at work.

"Giving employees the opportunity to teach gives them purpose. Even if they don't find meaning in their regular jobs, passing on knowledge is both inspiring and inspirational." Laszlo Bock , former CHRO at Google.

Giving employees more control

What companies are predicting now, Google implemented years back. As per the latest study done by TalentLMS on the state of L&D , 37% of employees want more control over training. Google gave it already by trusting employees to decide on their learning journey and not mandating training programs. It instilled a strong learning culture and grew training participation. 

Promoting voluntary participation

Encouraging employees to opt into training programs rather than making them mandatory taps into your learners' intrinsic motivation. This leads to more engaged and enthusiastic learners.

In an interview with the New York Times , Karen May reflected on the common mistakes she noticed in employee training programs.

‍ "One thing that doesn't make sense is to require a lot of training. People learn best when they're motivated to learn. If people opt in, versus being required to go, you're more likely to have better outcomes. [...] If a group of people go through some kind of program and they like it, then you ask them to nominate someone who might find the program beneficial. If the invitation comes from a colleague or a manager, you have that kind of peer-to-peer influence that says: 'I got something out of this. You might, too.' Then the people who come are motivated. They assume they're going to get something out of it. You just create a much different vibe than, 'I was told I have to show up to this thing.'"

When you foster a training atmosphere perceived as an opportunity for growth rather than an obligation, you can significantly enhance the effectiveness of learning experiences.

Using the power of nudges

The same study by TalentLMS also found that 28% of employees want training broken into shorter sessions. Google did it beautifully through whisper courses. Sending short nudges through emails to employees when needed.

Bringing in the social element

As per the same TalentLMS survey, 27% of employees also want more social elements in training. Most of Google's training programs (G2G, Guru+, GDG) have a social element. Employees get to learn and interact with peers.

Getting leadership buy-in: Support, not just permission

When G2G first started, the G2G implementation team focused on getting manager permissions for the volunteers, as they would be spending time away from their core day-to-day activities. However, they realized that permission and support are not the same thing. 

"Permission and support are two very different things, and it's taken years to shift the organization to a culture of support for volunteer programs like this." Google, Guide: Create an employee-to-employee learning program .

The team worked hard to showcase the value of participating in G2G programs, sharing data on the individual and organizational value of having employees become teachers. 

Having manager support can seamlessly integrate such activities into your people's (weekly) tasks and workload. 

➡️ Impressed with how Google's training process stands out? Also, check how Google handles onboarding and performance reviews . 

🌱 How can you run a development process like Google?

Using Zavvy, you can recreate Google's successful training programs. 

✔️ Assign transparent career paths

You can define career paths for each department to show the role progression clearly . For each progression level, you can define competencies, so employees know what is needed to grow. This transparency will let employees own their learning journey and develop competencies accordingly.

✔️ Create courses easily

You can create custom courses that support your organization's learning requirements. You can design self-paced training for employees.

With the collaborator feature, employees can also create courses on topics they have expertise in.

✔️ Send whispers to your people 

Create small training nudges with a simple suggestion, and send them to your people. This is a very accessible yet effective form of training your people. 

Choose the communication platform of your choice: Slack, Email, or Teams .

The best part is that you can apply Google's whisper methodology to your entire company (not just managers). 

✔️ Bring the social element to learning

You can create group challenges or quizzes for employees.

We have helped Freeletics in the past by running leadership roundtables. The leadership development program had a combination of short weekly nudges, courses, and group sessions to discuss leadership challenges.

✔️ Facilitate mentorship connections

• You can match employees with mentors for coaching calls. You can send surveys to employees to find volunteers.
• You can also share a quick checklist (or course if needed) with mentors and participants on conducting coaching sessions. 

✔️ Take advantage of external training options

Suppose you're trying to teach highly specialized content. In that case, content aimed at your most senior leaders or content that could be very sensitive, peer-to-peer programs might not be the ideal choice. 

Instead, you can use Zavvy's extensive learning library with over 10.000 from top-notch providers. 

Alternatively, set up recurring learning events with professional trainers.

✔️ Encourage learner motivation with voluntary sign-ups

One thing that has made the G2G program successful at Google is that the employees participate voluntarily and are supported by a culture that values learning.

You can either assign Zavvy journeys to employees or publish them to the library so that employees can enroll themselves or do both. 

To publish a journey to the library, you must first enable the "self-enrollment" option in the journey settings. 

After training sessions, encourage participants to share their experiences and what they learned with their peers. This not only reinforces their own learning but also promotes the program to others.

All courses on Zavvy have a share function; encourage your learners to use it and spread the word about the best materials they engage with. 

Since self-enrollment is active, your employees would have no issues signing up for courses recommended by their peers.

Track the courses that receive the most love from your people and try to replicate what makes them successful.

✔️ Provide LMS to support and track learning

Lastly, you can support employees in creating their learning and development plans . Also, you have a centralized LMS to keep track of all training in one place.

✔️ Use the 1:1 software conversations between mentors and mentees

You can easily replicate Google's career conversation worksheet with Zavvy's 1:1 software. You can adapt elements from the worksheet into a template that everyone in your company can use in their mentorship or coaching conversations. 

You add questions and agenda items to structure coaching sessions better. But each coaching pair will be free to make the template their own. 

Plus, the coach can set up the recurrence of the meetings once. Then Zavvy's automation will take care of all the rest: creating Google calendar invites and events for all participants and sending reminders before each session. 

✔️ Collect feedback on your training experiences

Google meticulously tracks the quality of their training initiatives. Especially for their Guru program, coaches are evaluated by those they coach.

With Zavvy, you have 2 ways of collecting feedback on your training and coaching initiatives: 

• Add a survey step to your learning journeys. 
• Create a training evaluation survey and send it out to your cohorts of learners.

📅 Ready to adapt Google's best practices? Get Zavvy's 360 growth system for your employees. Book a demo to see it in action.

Lorelei is Zavvy's Content Marketing Manager. She is always on the hunt for the latest HR trends, fresh statistics, and academic and real-life best practices to spread the word about creating better employee experiences.

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• Google (Alphabet) HRM: Training, Performance Management

Google’s (Alphabet’s) human resource management practices cover effective employee training programs, as well as performance management to maximize human resource capabilities. The information technology company uses needs analysis to design training programs aimed at supporting an innovative workforce. The training programs and their results are regularly evaluated to ensure that they meet Google’s human resource needs. The company also has finely tuned performance management practices, inclusive of performance planning that directly addresses corporate objectives for HRM and supports the competitive advantages noted in the SWOT analysis of Google (Alphabet) . To solve performance issues, Alphabet’s human resource management uses performance management practices along with employee training programs.

This article is part of a series on Google’s (Alphabet’s) human resource management:

• Google (Alphabet) HRM: HR Planning, Job Analysis & Design
• Google (Alphabet) HRM: Recruitment, Selection, Retention
• Google (Alphabet) HRM: Compensation, Career Development

Employee Training at Google (Alphabet)

Needs Analysis . Google’s HR management uses different types of needs analysis, such as organizational analysis, work analysis, and cost-benefit analysis. Organizational analysis identifies new human resource needs based on the firm’s current situation. For example, in developing new software products and investing in new businesses, Google conducts organizational analysis to determine the corresponding human resource requirements. Work analysis determines the specific requirements to fulfill work tasks. Google applies work analysis on new jobs, or when an organizational restructuring has just occurred. Cost-benefit analysis determines the practicality of training programs and activities. Alphabet’s HRM objective in using this type of analysis is to maximize the benefits achieved through training programs.

Program Design . Google’s HR management uses a combination of the relational model and the results-oriented approach for training program design. The relational model focuses on the relationship of the company with employees. Google maintains positive internal relations to foster employee participation in creative and innovative processes. The results-oriented approach focuses on training outcomes. For example, in implementing a training program, Google uses this approach to facilitate employees’ learning. Thus, the relational model optimizes relations among employees, while the results-oriented approach ensures that the information technology company’s human resources are effective.

Delivery . Google’s human resource management delivers training programs in various ways, such as discussions, simulations, and on-the-job training. Discussions enable Google to maintain rich communications involving employees. With rich communications, training programs also benefit through maximum feedback from the trainees. The company uses simulations to facilitate creative responses. Simulations empower Google’s employees to understand the details of work tasks, projects, and products. The company’s HRM uses on-the-job training to maximize the transfer of knowledge to new hires or interns. Many of these interns are absorbed into Alphabet’s organization.

Evaluation . Google has summative and descriptive purposes in evaluating training programs. The summative purpose is to determine the effectiveness of the program in developing human resources to support strategies, such as Google’s (Alphabet’s) generic strategy for competitive advantage and intensive strategies for growth . The descriptive purpose of evaluation is to understand the effects of the training on employees. Google’s human resource management uses evaluation variables, like trainees’ learning and reactions, and the results of training programs in terms of changes in human resource knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Alphabet’s (Google’s) Performance Management Practices

Performance Planning . Google’s performance planning efforts address different dimensions of its human resource management, including customer service, communication, support for diversity, and problem-solving abilities. Google’s performance appraisal programs also use variables corresponding to these dimensions. For example, the company’s HRM evaluates employees’ performance in internal communications and problem-solving activities to decide on performance management approaches.

Link to Corporate Objectives . Google’s performance management practices are directly linked to corporate objectives for human resource management because they ensure that employees remain capable of supporting the firm’s business activities. For instance, the emphasis on diversity supports diverse ideas, which lead to higher rates of innovation. Innovation is part of the corporate objectives and the goals set in Google’s (Alphabet’s) mission statement and vision statement . Also, the emphasis on problem-solving abilities ensures that human resources are satisfactory in developing organizational resilience in information technology, consumer electronics, and online services markets.

Measurements and Standards . Google’s HR management uses different sets of measurements and standards for its performance management practices in different areas of human resources. The firm uses individual measurements of ethical conduct and contributions to innovation and quality of output. Alphabet’s human resource management also uses team variables, like collaboration level. Creativity is also an important measure of the performance of the firm’s workforce because creative employees contribute more to the innovation factor in the organizational culture or company culture of Google (Alphabet) . The company maintains high standards for all these measures and always emphasizes excellence in employees.

Performance Interviews . Google’s human resource management conducts performance interviews that address concerns about individual performance and team performance. The individual performance interviews cover knowledge, skills, abilities, and other attributes of employees. The team performance interviews cover how employees perform as part of project teams at Alphabet. Note that the company forms and disbands teams for different purposes and projects. The interviews are also structured and unstructured, as well as formal and informal. Google’s HRM uses unstructured and informal interviews at meeting places, such as the coffee and snack areas of its offices.

Performance Problems . Google’s human resource management is usually concerned about performance problems in the areas of quality of work and work behaviors. In terms of quality of work, some red flags for HR managers are errors and ineffective work techniques. In terms of work behaviors, Google’s HR managers are concerned about negativism, power struggles, and tardiness or delays.

• Alphabet Inc. – Form 10-K .
• Alphabet Inc. – Google – Building a More Inclusive Workplace .
• Långstedt, J., & Arrowsmith, J. (2023). Values, Work and Well-being in Artificial Intelligence Society: Exacerbating Dilemmas in Human Resource Management. In Algorithmic Ethics (pp. 22-38). Routledge.
• Mhatre, S. G., & Mehta, N. K. (2023). Review of phenomenological approaches and its scope in human resource management. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 10 (1), 112-131.
• U.S. Department of Commerce – International Trade Administration – Software and Information Technology Industry .
• Zhang, J., & Chen, Z. (2023). Exploring human resource management digital transformation in the digital age. Journal of the Knowledge Economy , 1-17.
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• Educators, Researchers, and Students: You are permitted to quote or paraphrase parts of this article (not the entire article) for educational or research purposes, as long as the article is properly cited and referenced together with its URL/link.

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Case Study: How Google Boosts its Employees’ Engagement

You might have heard about this mantra: ‘happy employees produce better results.’ this is the mindset of google to keep its employees productive and satisfied. this article explains more..

Let’s say you’re a company providing software development services . If your developer’s team isn’t enthusiastic about their projects every day, you’re not going to achieve excellence. This is productivity’s power. But remember productivity is dependent on the company’s culture.

Why is everyone talking about Google’s culture or work environment? We know that Google is one of the most influential and powerful companies around the globe. The company follows a pretty well unique culture instead of corporate culture.

It has something that every big organisation needs to follow to level up their employees’ engagement or morale. The culture of any company is vital to its success and Google is perfectly right on the track.

It has one sole purpose:  Keep the employees happy and keep up the productivity.

Google has been at number ONE place from the past six years and featured on  Fortune’s  annual list of  ‘Best Companies to Work For.’  And this is not it. Google has also been named as the tech company with the best culture. (Reported by Forbes) Furthermore, Google has a 4.4 rating on  Glassdoor  based on 6000+ employees reviews.   

Google’s morale

This is what the employees of Google answered the questions asked about their work culture.

• Acknowledged for the efforts?

Yes: 61 % Employees

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No: 39% Employees

• Job Security?

Very Secure: 34 % Employees

Neutral: 19% Employees

Insecure: 8% Employees

Very insecure: 5% Employees

• Work Environment?

Positive: 85% Employees

Negative: 15% Employees

• Excited about going to work daily?

Yes: 80% Employees

No: 20% Employees

So, without further ado, let’s move towards the ways Google uses to boost its employees’ engagement .

“There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week. But if you love what you do, it (mostly) doesn’t feel like work.”- Elon Musk.

How Google Keeps Its Employees Productive And Engaged?

Exclusive perks.

Today, employees want a job in a company that makes them love what they do. Never for financial benefit or intellectual recognition. Yet instead of chance to add to the common good.

The major differentiator is to make a real difference.

Google offers different perks to its employees to show them that they are not only investing in their overall health but their future as well.

• Chef-prepared free organic food (breakfast, lunch, and dinner);
• Free dental and health checkup;
• Free and unlimited dry cleaning;
• Subsidised massages;
• Several foosball, ping pong, video games stations;
• On-site physicians;
• Gyms/swimming pools memberships;
• Free haircuts from professional hairdressers;
• In-house nap pods;
• Death benefits to deceased employees’ families, and;
• Hybrid car subsidies.

Flexibility

Google has been one of the very first companies that had a vision of understanding the employees’ needs. It lets its workers have a flexible schedule so that they can work on their terms and enhance creativity and productivity. They have given their employees complete freedom to work in a way that is most suitable to them.

Knowing the employees well

Google had gone through a series of laboratory tests to figure out the productivity of their employees. They had four different experiments that included 700 participants. All the employees were treated to free drinks, fruits, and chocolates or shown a comedy movie clip.

They also enquired some of the participants about the family tragedies as a part of their assessment. After this, they found that happiness is the reason for 12% more productivity.

Google promotes an innovative and diverse organisational culture that has been a part of its employee’s life. A positive creative atmosphere and a safe working space offered by Google to its workers keep them comfortable and happy at work. The concept that being a part of Google is about being smart and wise encourages the employees to think openly and keeps them productive.

Nowadays, there are different creative coworking spaces which are known to be a perfect alternate to a workplace. These spaces are believed to deliver various advantages such as strong networking and increased engagement.

Google’s founders were researchers who had a belief in innovation and freedom of thinking. This is one of the main factors that influenced the style of Google’s leadership.

According to Brassfield, 2013, a positive leadership style stimulates inspiring and motivating employees to develop innovative ideas and inventions.

Keeping people inspired

Future Workplace, in 2017, demonstrated in a study that one of the biggest threats to employees’ engagement is employee burnout. It has also been found out that many proficient workers are often overburdened with the tasks that lead to halted innovation, incomplete work, etc.

What does Google do about keeping its employees productive, inspired, or motivated? Google’s strategy for this is  20% time . Every employee devours up to 20% of his time at work each week on ventures that inspire him.

This concept inspires employees as it allows them to concentrate on things they love or are passionate about. It can prevent burnout, decrease turnover, increase engagement.

Image: Pexels

Career development

Google provides an extensive professional growth program that is successful and creative and guarantees long-term performance for all the employees. The career development program of Google is one that ensures incentives are provided to employees to meet their professional and personal progression.

Google has adopted a unique way to promote the professional development of all its employees. CareerGuru  is a career coaching that provides all the details to the employees by Google’s leaders about working at a specific role in the company.

Creativity Encouragement

The companies that believe in fostering a culture of creativity have happy, satisfied, and motivated employees. Google leads the way in promoting creativity in their employees.

They are free to express their ideas as a solution to any problem. Moreover, employees are encouraged to work wherever they are comfortable in the workplace. Google has a set up where rather than just considering an applicant’s professional background, they look to recruit people who are normally inquisitive and fond of learning.

Trusting Employees

Google believes in trusting their workers because trusted employees feel more valuable. It can also boost the sense of job satisfaction and can also decrease the rate of staff turnover.

In a survey by PwC, reliable employees are 76% more engaged in their work than those in a low trusting environment. Trusted employees are happier and they have the urge to go the extra miles.

Culture based on qualitative data

Google has always been searching out different ways to optimise the performance of its employees while ensuring their happiness and satisfaction. Everything done at Google is based on real data. They use the qualitative and quantitative facts to set up processes and every single rule that is streamlined.

Google has additionally performed researches to discover how much paid time off new mothers would need and ways of building an improvised and better culture.

Fun workplace

Have you ever been allowed to design your own workstation at your company?

Probably not. But Google does it. It lets the employees design their desks or workstations.

When you see the pictures of the workplace, it seems an interesting adult play and work area and not a dull and lifeless space.

Google has always tried to push the boundaries of its workspace.

Collaboration of coworkers

At Google, the employees are urged to collaborate. They have a program called ‘Googler to Googler’ to keep them productive and promote skills such as management, public speaking, orientation, or extracurricular activities.

It is crucial to build a sense of community to create a positive culture. The company has arranged several micro kitchens around the whole workspace where coworkers can have a little chit-chat session. No one has to spend time on deciding where to eat because Google has various break-out spaces for lunch.

Google’s way of listening

Google employees have developed great software and projects that include Gmail, AdSense, Google News, etc. and all these big projects were originated because of its staff productivity approach. Google has a way of collecting employees’ feedback and listening to their suggestions that is  gDNA.

• The employees utilise a device ‘Google Moderator’ , the result of 20% time strategy, to inquire about something and vote on inquiries of others;
• The company holds a meeting, every Friday, where the managers react to the most famous inquiries of the week;
• Leaders or managers utilise a charting instrument called Google-O-Meter to measure the prominence of various worker bits of advice;
• Leaders likewise plan “Fixits” to comprehend huge, critical issues; and,
• Fixits are 24-hour runs where team members give their full focus around discovering solutions for explicit issues.

So, can Google teach us anything?

If you are planning to adopt these learnings at your organisation just like Google keeps its employees productive, it’s essential to test the progressions first and measure the results.

It’s a great deal of work, however, the engagement advantages will make the difficult function admirably justified.

About the Author

Usman Akram is a digital marketer and SEO specialist who’s passionate about experimenting and discovering new SEO tactics and strategies to dominate search rankings while bringing an unmatched user-experience. As of now Usman is serving Buzz Interactive , a leading digital marketing agency as the head of SEO.

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THE CHALLENGE:

There were issues amongst the Google Learning & Development International training teams abilities and confidence in the areas of stakeholder management and negotiation skills. Many of them were finding it challenging getting buy in from the business on the services they offered.

THE SOLUTION:

We developed a programme based on the teams needs. In the weeks leading up to kick off, we gathered examples of critical incidents and concerns from the team and created scripts and processes based on bringing these to life, so that the team could re-experience these situations, but this time in a safe supportive environment. As they re-experienced these situations, they got the chance to reflect, to receive coaching and feedback, and to implement change. The idea was that re-experiencing these situations, and implementing change during the training would arm them to know exactly what to do when such a situation occurred. They got to ‘do’ with us so that they could be way more effective when ‘doing’ in the future.

THE RESULTS:

Google’s trainers now have the skills they need to put their learnings into practice immediately as a result of the methods we delivered.

The scenarios we brought to life had an amazing impact on the Google staff even though they are a very experienced team of trainers who were not easily impressed and who were dubious about what we could possibly teach them.

The team are now proficient in stakeholder management and negotiation skills and have become more credible and confident in getting buy in from managers throughout the business.

Michelle Cronin, Learning & Development Team Lead, Google:

“adaptas™ are committed, hard working and enthusiastic trainers and actors, with a thorough understanding of our company and a clear, well structured delivery of the message required. Our team was comfortable with the role plays because of the safe environment adaptas™ created, which made the team more willing to try new things. What amazed the team most was how well adaptas™ understood our business and how realistic the scenarios they directed were. Celine and the other actors provided immediate feedback and suggestions that the team and I found very useful and well communicated…The team learnt more than the agreed topics at hand and are more confident about using their sphere of influence after the training. adaptas™ have a fresh new innovative way to train people and improve any issues they need assistance with. You won’t find this anywhere else. I would have no hesitation in recommending Celine and adaptas™ for training or workshops in the future‘

Various members of the Learning & Development Team, Google

“The training method was excellent; using the actors is a powerful tool to get into the mindset of people and to get the trainees talking and thinking. The secret of success of this training method, was your gathering of real-life scenarios beforehand. It was great, because we all identified with the situations. Seeing how others responded to these problems gave us lots of ideas of alternative ways to respond. It was also lots of fun!”

“The actors and trainer were excellent. The roleplayers helped verbalise what we needed to be able to say.”

“This was perfectly tailored to our team. There was a good balance between the interactive parts and the information being put across.”

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Our solutions, +353 (0) 1 442 9952, buy our new books our learning brain and developing learning habits both by dr. celine mullins to download the first chapter and learn more about our learning brain - click here.

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Home » Management Case Studies » Case Study of Nestle: Training and Development

Case Study of Nestle: Training and Development

Nestle is world’s leading food company, with a 135-year history and operations in virtually every country in the world. Nestle’s principal assets are not office buildings, factories, or even brands. Rather, it is the fact that they are a global organization comprised of many nationalities, religions, and ethnic backgrounds all working together in one single unifying corporate culture .

Culture at Nestle and Human Resources Policy

Nestle culture unifies people on all continents. The most important parts of Nestle’s business strategy and culture are the development of human capacity in each country where they operate. Learning is an integral part of Nestle’s culture. This is firmly stated in The Nestle Human Resources Policy, a totally new policy that encompasses the guidelines that constitute a sound basis for efficient and effective human resource management . People development is the driving force of the policy, which includes clear principles on non-discrimination, the right of collective bargaining as well as the strict prohibition of any form of harassment. The policy deals with recruitment , remuneration and training and development and emphasizes individual responsibility, strong leadership and a commitment to life-long learning as required characteristics for Nestle managers.

Training Programs at Nestle

The willingness to learn is therefore an essential condition to be employed by Nestle. First and foremost, training is done on-the-job. Guiding and coaching is part of the responsibility of each manager and is crucial to make each one progress in his/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.

Literacy Training

Most of Nestle’s people development programs assume a good basic education on the part of employees. However, in a number of countries, we have decided to offer employees the opportunity to upgrade their essential literacy skills. A number of Nestle 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 Nestle 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 more advanced equipment. But it’s not only new technical abilities that are required.   It’s 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 .

“Sometimes we have debates in class and we are afraid to stand up. But our facilitators tell us to stand up because one day we might be in the parliament!” (Maria Modiba, Production line worker, Babelegi factory, Nestle South Africa).

Nestle Apprenticeship Program

Apprenticeship programs have been an essential part of Nestle training where the young trainees spent three days a week at work and two at school. Positive results observed but some of these soon ran into a problem. At the end of training, many students were hired away by other companies which provided no training of their own.

“My two elder brothers worked here before me. Like them, for me the Nestle Apprenticeship Program in Nigeria will not be the end of my training but it will provide me with the right base for further advancement. We should have more apprentices here as we are trained so well!” (John Edobor Eghoghon, Apprentice Mechanic, Agbara Factory, Nestle Nigeria) (adsbygoogle=window.adsbygoogle||[]).push({}); “It’s not only a matter of learning bakery; we also learn about microbiology, finance, budgeting, costs, sales, how to treat the customer, and so on. That is the reason I think that this is really something that is going to give meaning to my life. It will be very useful for everything.” (Jair Andres Santa, Apprentice Baker, La Rosa Factory Dosquebradas, Nestle Columbia).

Local Training

Two-thirds of all Nestle employees work in factories, most of which organize continuous training to meet their specific needs. In addition, a number of Nestle operating companies run their own residential training centers. The result is that local training is the largest component of Nestle’s people development activities worldwide and a substantial majority of the company’s 240000 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 own 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, most courses are delivered in-house by Nestle trainers but, as the level rises, collaboration with external institutes increases.

“As part of the Young Managers’ Training Program I was sent to a different part of the country and began by selling small portions of our Maggi bouillon cubes to the street stalls, the ‘sari sari’ stores, in my country. Even though most of my main key accounts are now supermarkets, this early exposure were an invaluable learning experience and will help me all my life.” (Diane Jennifer Zabala, Key Account Specialist, Sales, Nestle Philippines). “Through its education and training program, Nestle manifests its belief that people are the most important asset. In my case, I was fortunate to participate in Nestle’s Young Managers Program at the start of my Nestle career, in 1967. This foundation has sustained me all these years up to my present position of CEO of one of the top 12 Nestle companies in the world.” (Juan Santos, CEO, Nestle Philippines)

Virtually every national Nestle company organizes management-training courses for new employees with High school or university qualifications. But their approaches vary considerably. In Japan, for example, they consist of a series of short courses typically lasting three days each. Subjects include human assessment skills, leadership and strategy as well as courses for new supervisors and new key staff. In Mexico, Nestle 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. Nestle 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 Nestle 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.

International Training

Nestle’s success in growing local companies in each country has been highly influenced by the functioning of its International Training Centre, located near company’s 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 Nestle 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—20 nationalities. The Centre delivers some 70 courses, attended by about 1700 managers each year from over 80 countries. All course leaders are Nestle 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 Nestle 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 four to five years. The intention is to develop a real appreciation of Nestle values and business approaches. These courses focus on internal activities.
• Executive courses: these classes often contain people who have attended a management course five to ten years earlier. The focus is on developing the ability to represent Nestle externally and to work with outsiders. It emphasizes industry analysis, often asking: “What would you do if you were a competitor?”

Nestle’s overarching principle is that each employee should have the opportunity to develop to the maximum of his or her potential. Nestle do this because they believe it pays off in the long run in their business results, and that sustainable long-term relationships with highly competent people and with the communities where they operate enhance their ability to make consistent profits. It is important to give people the opportunities for life-long learning as at Nestle that all employees are called upon to upgrade their skills in a fast-changing world. By offering opportunities to develop , they not only enrich themselves as a company, they also make themselves individually more autonomous, confident, and, in turn, more employable and open to new positions within the company. Enhancing this virtuous circle is the ultimate goal of their training efforts at many different levels through the thousands of training programs they run each year.

External Links:

• Employee and Career Development  (Nestle Global)

Related posts:

• Case Study of Dell: Employee Training and Development
• Case Study of IBM: Employee Training through E-Learning
• Case Study: Nestle’s Growth Strategy
• Role of Case Studies in Employee Training and Development
• Different Employee Training and Development Methods
• Training and Development – Meaning, Definition and Need
• Skill Development Training Methods
• Four Major Theories of Training and Development
• HRM Functions: Training and Management Development
• Outsourcing of Training and Development

4 thoughts on “ Case Study of Nestle: Training and Development ”

Very nice case study

one question, when is this case study published? please ,thank you. i am doing this for final year project. as references

Post date: 03-09-2010

How does Nestle evaluate the effectiveness of training programs? Explain your reasons

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How to use case studies in training programmes

As a trainer, I often think about how to make my training sessions more interesting and useful.  

The purpose of a training course is to help trainees understand a concept that can be used in their field. For this, they require both theoretical and practical knowledge so they can apply the learning in real-life situations. 

Using case studies in training sessions is a great way to achieve this. They’re practical training tools, which actively engage trainees through descriptive, real-life and/or fictional situations. Crucially, they focus on how to solve a problem, rather than on the solution alone. 

They also offer alternative experiences, approaches and solutions to help broaden trainees’ knowledge and skills, e.g., teamwork, practical knowledge application and problem solving. 

Types of case studies 

Picking the right type of case study for your training programme is important. Here are some of the main types:

• Descriptive case studies focus on explaining a particular situation or action. For example, it could be used to help trainees learn effective strategies.
• Exploratory case studies explore the potential benefits and limitations of existing strategies or examine emerging trends or new phenomena.
• Instrumental case studies focus on understanding a particular problem and then provide insights into a broader issue or problem.
• Intrinsic case studies focus on a particular case and then generalise the findings to other scenarios.
• Collective case studies examine a group of related cases to gain insights into broader phenomena.

How to use pre-existing case studies

All the case studies that you provide should include sufficient information so the trainees can develop solutions and apply them to similar scenarios. 

The length of the training course will affect how you integrate the case studies. 

Some effective ways to successfully use case studies in your training programmes include the following:

• Provide a brief, written scenario and include questions that trainees can evaluate themselves. This will enable them to apply their learning immediately and identify options for solving the problem.
• Show short videos that present specific problems/scenarios and ask the trainees to develop role-plays based on them to analyse the problems objectively.
• Provide a written scenario, e.g., addressing local climate change issues, and accompanying data and ask trainees to analyse and present their understanding of the issues in groups.
• Make a presentation, supported by visual aids. Provide practical examples of the theory or techniques covered and follow up with a question-and-answer session (structured or unstructured).
• Ask trainees to read a case study independently and then have a whole-group discussion about the challenges and the possible solutions.
• Get the trainees to complete individual/group assignments on a case study. Provide a worksheet and get them to write/present their analysis, including their recommendations/solutions.
• Use several case studies so the trainees can the identify similarities and differences among them.
• Case studies can also be provided as reading materials for trainees to take home to test their knowledge and skills without worrying about marks.

Helping your trainees write their own case studies

In longer training courses you could even give the trainees a scenario and get them to develop their own case studies on it. 

To support them with this you could give them a list of steps as a framework , like the following:

• Read the scenario and highlight relevant facts and underline the key problems. 
• Identify between two and five key problems. For each, answer the following questions: Why does the problem exist? What’s its impact? Who’s responsible for it ?
• Review the source documents, have discussions or conduct more research to find possible solutions to each problem/the changes required.
• Choose the best solution, making sure it’s realistic and that the supporting evidence is strong. Identify the pros and cons of your chosen solution.

You could also give them a more detailed template, providing a clear structure for developing their own case studies. This could provide guidance and prompts for writing the following sections: introduction, background, evaluation, recommendations and conclusions.

At the Public Affairs Centre (PAC) , we train many government officers and decision-makers and our use of case studies has been well-received and beneficial. 

But the training strategies outlined above would be beneficial and effective in any training context.  

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How innovative companies train their employees (Google, Amazon, Uber & more)

Have you ever wondered how Google share knowledge and create their own learning culture? Where the likes of Amazon and Microsoft are investing their training budgets to upskill and develop people? Or what the ethos is at companies that keep their training strategies under cloak and dagger?

Whether you’re planning a wedding, holiday or your dream home, a little inspiration can go a long way. Looking at what others have done is the window shopping that helps you understand what might work for you. And the same should apply to your training and development strategy, whether you’re the one leading it or hoping to share some tips with those higher up. So, where better to glance enviably through the glass than with a look at some of the most innovative companies?

Google Apple Amazon Airbnb Uber Microsoft Netflix Booking.com

How do big companies train and develop employees?

You’re going to see some interesting themes across our eight examples. Marrying the skills you need tomorrow with the talents people want to develop today being one, while the sharing of knowledge between colleagues is something else you’ll notice as you read through. For others, it’s about shaping a culture where people can thrive whether they’re learning or just trying to be productive on the job. And you’ll also see that tackling potential skill shortages is something the big guns seem to have nailed.

The thing to remember as you read through is to think about what can be applied on a smaller scale. We’re not going to upskill thousands and thousands as they might at Amazon, but the same principles can help our businesses move forward at similar speeds.

Whispering sweet nudges into Googler’s ears

Proving that you don’t need to shout to get people to buy into your development ethos, Google began using Whisper Courses to drive microlearning in 2017. Recognising that the majority of information learnt in courses was lost within days, their idea was to provide managers with a series of weekly nudges in the right direction. In their soothing wisdom, Google opted for the term Whisper.

“A whisper course is a series of emails, each with a simple suggestion, or ‘whisper’ for a manager to try in their one-on-ones or team meetings.”

Their trial run – which you can discover in greater detail here – was the concept of managers creating a psychologically safe team culture, by being given a 10-week Whisper Course.

Source: Google – A sample nudge email

Googler-to-Googler learning leads the training way

This is just one half of the tale, but we bet you’re wondering what Google does to encourage peer learning and train employees socially? The answer is another simple one: give them the platform to become both student and teacher .

“A strong learning culture can better position your organization for future needed skill shifts and primes employees to think and act more like owners when it comes to their own development needs.”

80% of Google’s tracked learnings happen through their employee-to-employee (Googler-to-Googler) network, where over 6,000 employees across the business have become volunteer teachers. They share their knowledge and skills in workshops, one-to-one sessions, job aids and beyond. Notice the word volunteers, there is no obligation to get involved.

Instead, Google encourages passionate teaches who are experts in that content to deliver training to employees , they’re interviewed for the position and given feedback/recognition throughout. Not only does this engage people, it cuts the costs associated with training and ensures the budget is only used for specialised training programs or sessions and niche content that’s needed.

Google is not only a training innovator, they’re completely transparent about their learning and development strategy! That means you can learn from the best in the business via re:Work . It also made our job a little easier in writing this. Thanks, Google, for sharing how you’re training and developing your employees so openly!

From Google’s transparency to a training enigma. Have you ever Googled ‘How Apple train their employees’? Being honest, we hadn’t either until it came to writing this. But what’s interesting is that little is known for certain, and the search results paint an interesting picture of how Apple has evolved over time…

A short history of Apple training, according to Google search results

Google search results for ‘How Apple train their employees’

In 2012, Gizmodo published ‘How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple’s Secret Employee Training Manual’, a pretty negative take on how they were training employees to get inside your head through language. Gizmodo claimed that Geniuses were trained to “become strong while appearing compassionate; persuade while seeming passive, and empathize your way to a sale.”.

Fast forward four years and Shopify’s 2016 article on the tech giants indicated that the culture was instead about finding people already passionate about the brand and products. They also pipped us to the pun of ‘picking the right apples’. Although it referenced Gizmodo’s take, Shopify gave the impression that the focus had shifted (or was possibly all along) to creating value over prioritising sales. By 2018, A Guardian article focussing on the physical stores and Ron Johnson (who developed the concept) revealed that Apple had been able to “foster a sense of commitment to a higher calling while flattering employees that they were the chosen few to represent it.”.

What’s the training reality at Apple’s core?

When it comes to ways to train employees outside their organisation, their ethos is that “designing world-class technology is only part of our job. Teaching you how to master it is the other.” But trying to discover their approach to employee development is like the iPhone X files! The truth is out there, kind of..

According to the New York Times , employees are discouraged from sharing their experiences. However, they were able to interview three former Apple employees that remained anonymous in 2014.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Apple’s employee training programs take place in-house and year-round. They have full-time academic staff that design and deliver their courses, with employees able to sign up for courses tailored to their position and background on an exclusive internal website. They’re also assigned courses related to the product or part of the business they work in. All pretty standard so far, right?

Well, there is something interesting in the article, at least in terms of how Apple encourages people to think and develop. A course on ‘Communicating at Apple’ used Picasso’s drawings of ‘The Bull’—which demonstrate how something complex can be broken down into its essential, core components. If you look at how Apple’s products have become increasingly more slick with a decreasing number of buttons, you get the impression that this ethos goes from training employees through to product launch.

While a Steve-Jobs-inspired course named ‘The Best Things’ encourages “employees to surround themselves with the best things, like talented peers and high-quality materials.” Despite their cards being kept close to their chests, this gives the impression that social learning is happening behind the scenes.

What’s Amazon’s current training strategy and rationale?

When you stop to think about it, Amazon’s current employee training program and approach seem so obvious. And yet, it’s quite rare that companies apply these ideas on a large scale. Amazon analysed data on their workforce and US hiring to determine their fastest-growing highly-skilled jobs over the past five years.

These were data mapping specialist (832% growth), data scientist (505%), solutions architect (454%), security engineer (229%) and business analyst (160%).  In customer fulfillment, meanwhile, highly skilled roles increased by over 400%. Next, they put their money where their mouth was in 2019 and announced they would spend $700 million to upskill 100,000 of their US employees by 2025.

This would enable people across the business to access platforms and resources that develop and move them into these higher-skilled positions. You can read the full list of new training opportunities and what they’re doing to build upon existing courses here , but here are some of the important takeaways: knowledge sharing, learning in the flow of work and microlearning.

How Amazon plans to upskill its people

Source: Amazon Upskilling 2025

Amazon Technical Academy equips people with the skill to transition into software engineering. Another proponent of peer-to-peer training sessions, this was created by Amazon’s software engineers and uses project-based learning to ensure trainees understand how they’ll apply these skills in practice via tuition-free learning.

Associate2Tech program is a 90-day course for IT support technician roles, in which they receive on-the-job training and Amazon pays for their A+ Certification test. With no degree required, there are little barriers to entry.  

The Machine Learning University , on the other hand, is open to those with a background in tech and coding. These six-week modules only require a half or full day of participation each week, during which Amazon Machine Learning scientists help them develop the skills needed to progress.

The idea that Amazon are taking control of the supply for their in-demand positions is an interesting one, but it could be what primes them for success. With the company and machine learning/tech growing at such rapid speeds, there’s no guarantee that the talent will be available to plug those gaps in the coming years. And, if better engagement, morale and retention is a by-product of upskilling their people , that $700 million could turn out to be a shrewd investment.

Isn’t there a risk that upskilled employees will seek other opportunities?

Perhaps, but looking a little further back shows that Amazon’s investment in people is selfless to an extent. Amazon Career Choice was designed to give hourly associates that had been with the company for more than a year the skills to move into four in-demand industries and occupations: Healthcare, IT and computer science, transportation, and mechanical and skilled trades.

Jeff Bezos stated that “we pre-pay 95 percent of tuition, fees, and textbooks (up to $12,000) for certificates and associate degrees in high-demand occupations”. Inc. summed it up excellently in their coverage of the announcement: “Amazon has a lot of lower-wage, warehouse-type jobs that have higher turnover rates than much higher paying tech roles. Amazon effectively embraces this reality and figures: Why not make these important laborers as happy as they can be in the time they are going to give to Amazon?”

Free Guide! Training Lessona From 6 Innovative Companies

Becoming a superhost and driving employee staycations

Airbnb might have been founded in 2008, but by 2015 they’d already had an epiphany: it wasn’t just their customers that deserved a good host, their employees deserved a five-star experience too. Mark Levy, Global Head of Employee Experience, had only joined the company a couple years earlier, but he realised that:

“If Airbnb had a Customer Experience Group, why not create an Employee Experience Group?”

That’s exactly what he did, putting employee experience at the core of what they do. If the headlines are anything to go by, it was a move that paid off. ‘Airbnb, spearheading the employee experience’, ‘How Airbnb Became The World’s Best Place To Work’, ‘How Airbnb is building its culture through belonging” – these are just some of the articles you’ll find if you search for their approach to the employee training program .

Glowing reviews from Airbnb employees

With such praise and glowing recommendations about their culture, it’s no wonder employees are willing to share their experience at Airbnb. Which gives excellent insights into how they develop people. It’s certainly a case of learning from each other and being encouraged to have the initiative to self-learn.

Let’s take the first point. Chip Conley wrote about his experience of joining the company aged 52 and with 20-plus years in hospitality, giving a pretty funny account of how he relied on listening to his younger colleagues to settle in. In fact, the article does an excellent job of summarising Airbnb’s philosophy at the time: Create, Learn, Play . The middle part of that sandwich involved looking “inside and outside for inspiration and learning”

Another employee, Mark Curtis, wrote about his experiences in 2014 —the year between Levy’s arrival and the creation of the Employee Experience Group. It seems that the culture of learning in the flow of work already existed to an extent, and Curtis stated that: “Our culture, tools, and processes all revolve around giving individual contributors accurate and timely information that they can use to make great decisions”. He also added that “we default to information sharing” in order to provide engineers with as much information as possible so that they can find it and work autonomously.

Forget the culture trip, tell us about their training!

Ready for the training-heavy, juicy part of the Airbnb rundown? If they think a course or platform isn’t up to delivering what they need, they’ll simply create their own. Which makes sense, given that it has to work in the culture as well achieve the goals. In 2016, they created Data University to improve data literacy among their staff, because existing courses just weren’t tailored to their data and tools. This comprised of multiple courses tailored to different roles, technical literacy and departments across the business. For example, “ more intensive courses on Python and machine learning have helped engineers brush up on necessary skills for projects .”

In the months that followed, a total of 500 employees took one class and use of Airbnb data science tools rose from 30 to 45 percent. Interestingly, it wasn’t their first attempt at a project like this but it seemed to be their most successful. Product Manager, Jeff Feng, gave three reasons why he believed it worked this time around: Designing an accessible curriculum for everyone, working with leadership across the company to set data literacy expectations and finding ways to measure success.

When you start to unpick what training must look like at Uber, there are no pangs of jealousy, we’ll be honest. First, there’s the issue of training their 22,000 core staff but there’s also the slight issue of 3.9 million drivers across 60-plus countries.

Those drivers are all over the world, speaking different languages and they’re often without access to a computer. When was the last time you hailed a ride and hopped into a car with a laptop on the passenger seat? Exactly. Bring all those drivers together physically and you’re probably looking at more air miles than most cover over the ground in a month!

The answer? Using a platform that enables mobile learning, in bite-sized chunks that drivers can find between fares. In South Africa, Uber used the Workforce Success platform EduMe to provide short and interactive sessions using an app. This resulted in time to first trip being 13% faster than face-to-face training sessions, and it also reduced pressure, time spent and costs for the support centre.

In Mexico, Uber turned to Mindflash in order to deliver web-based courses to drivers. The content from live sessions was converted into PDFs, which were uploaded as courses alongside quizzes to improve and measure knowledge retention. As was the case in South Africa, mobile learning was also made available—giving the option to study between fares. Since, they’ve managed to deliver up to 30,000 courses in a single week, and record 13,000 mobile course completions in three months.

Some of the companies on this list really took some digging, Microsoft is an open book! In fact, there’s probably too much information out there, that’s how open they are. Below is a screenshot from Microsoft’s Empowering Our Employees page. And it certainly implies a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing and upskilling towards career development.

Tapping into AI for a better learning outlook

Let’s tackle the top point, that learning should be personalised and relevant. When discussing the topic of cybersecurity at the company, Ken Sexsmith, Director of Security Training and Awareness at Microsoft, revealed how they had tapped into the power of AI to empower knowledge retention and create a personalised experience.

Using a tool from Elephants Don’t Forget, users began to receive emails with questions about training sessions they’d taken and were given explanations for any incorrect answers. As Sexsmith put it , “On a given day, following a training you take, we will send you an email that says, ‘Hey, you came to training and we want you to answer a couple questions about the content.”

Sharing skills and creating a learning culture through Hackathon

Have you heard of Hackathon ? Launched in 2014 to help drive a culture change where employees would take risks to improve the world for better, by participating in projects.

“One place for everyone to come together, experience creative and fast-paced collaboration, make a difference, and drive the culture forward.”

Don’t let the name fool you, this is not just for techies or coders, it’s a platform for everyone and their skill set. The projects range from assessing broadband availability, to helping the visually impaired get around more easily and even something as weird as ‘Designing for the Zombie Apocalypse’. These act as platforms for sharing knowledge and ideas , while giving people a different scenario to practice their skills in. 2017 welcomed 18,000 people across 400 cities and 75 countries.

Using gamification to engage employees and collect their feedback

Microsoft were using gamification before it was cool! Although you’ll find plenty of mentions and examples that they use it, the most common example is Communicate Hope . Created by Ross Smith to gather feedback on Microsoft Lync in 2010, “thousands of employees got on board and ‘gamers’ contributed at 16 times the rate of non-gamers.” – this was part of  Smith’s ethos that you need to get people excited about participation.

Just a few years later, they used the Language Quality Game to tap into 4,500 users who assessed the quality of translations. They even included some poor translations on purpose. You might not think of these as training exercises, but their employees would become more familiar with the products, learn their faults and be given a platform to share their feedback, which would make them more engaged.

What’s next? Upskilling for the future

Microsoft recently announced that they will partner with education provider General Assembly “to close skills gaps in the rapidly growing fields of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and data engineering, machine learning, data science, and more.”

They’re aiming to upskill and reskill 15,000 employees for AI-based roles by 2022. Microsoft will therefore be a founding member of the GA’s Standards Board and help “define skills standards, develop assessments, design a career framework, and build an industry-recognized credential for AI skills”. The pair will also work together to create an AI Talent Network that sources candidates for project-based work and for hire.

You’ll hardly find anything about Netflix’s training strategy or culture from the last decade, and yet they’ve been credited with reinventing and revolutionising HR. So, while we can’t tell you exactly how they train their employees, we’re sure you’ll agree that this deserves further investigation.

In 2009, Netflix shared a 126-slide presentation titled Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility , sharing some ideas that were pretty revolutionary at the time. Ideas like employees deciding the vacation time they thought was appropriate are still seen as madcap by some. The argument in those 126 slides has convinced many more people their approach is the right one.

Source: Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility

The learning takeaways from Netflix’s iconic presentation

• “ You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you.”
• “You learn rapidly and eagerly.”
• “Avoid top-down decision making.”
• “We support self-improvement.”
• Scepticism of independent silos because “work that requires coordination suffers.”

What do we actually know about training at Netflix?

Well, the fact that a Quora reply has become such a commonly-used resource highlights that Netflix’s approach to outward transparency has evolved over the past 10 years. Today, finding information on exactly how Netflix train their people is a well-kept secret. But, let’s look at what we can learn from that infamous Quora question.

Netflix weren’t kidding when they said people get their opportunity and a big challenge to sink their teeth into! The engineer who shared his onboarding experience revealed that his first product was Netflix on Apple TV. Also, the idea of collaborative learning seems to carry through the company, with new starters meeting senior management, CEO Reed Hastings and a dedicated mentor as they settle in.

Booking.com

The first lesson you can learn from Booking.com is that knowing your internal audience is crucial. It’s easy to forget sometimes, but you should consider your employees with the same attentiveness that you’d give to your customers. Recognising the number of millennials in their workforce, Booking.com turned to Udemy for Business as they searched for an “online learning platform that could help its younger employees develop their technical and leadership skills to grow individually and push the company forward.”

The goal was to encourage them to develop new skills and use those to seek out new opportunities in the company, as opposed to new opportunities somewhere else. They were steered in the direction of management and leadership development, public speaking, data science and web development. Having access to the variety of courses and flexibility to learn on the move through the app appealed to the younger generation at Booking.com.

As you can learn from Udemy’s case study , this signalled a move away from just providing a learning budget to employees and the low adoption rate associated with this. Instead, the average learner spent five-plus hours on the platform, and a particularly enthused employee summed up why:

“Using Udemy’s iPhone app, I managed to download an amazing course just moments before boarding London Underground and ended my 45 minute train journey (quite boring usually) feeling so empowered.”

Sometimes, upskilling is the only option. Adapt like Booking.com!

Upskilling seems to be a theme here, and it was an approach they also employed when finding developers who could operate with Practical Extraction and Report Language (PERL), Booking.com’s coding language. The issue was finding the finished pearl, and they realised they’d need to crack a few training oysters in order to build their collection. Plus, they’d need to do it on a large scale.

The solution, find developers familiar with other coding languages and use Geekuni to train them during their onboarding process , something they’ve done for over 350 employees. Because their existing teams don’t need to provide this training, it ensures their productivity isn’t affected and enables them to onboard developers on a greater scale. Using the same company for this process ensures consistency. Communication between Geekuni and the onboarding team leads at Booking.com means the company are up-to-date with progress and how ready that person is to move into their role.

How to train employees: What did we learn from these training innovators?

You probably noticed, but we mentioned the word upskill(ing) a lot in this piece, 11 times in fact! But as our Amazon and Microsoft examples showed, it’s important to understand which skills are in-demand before you develop them. Otherwise, how do you know if you’re closing the right skill gap?

Social learning, knowledge sharing, peer-to-peer, however, we dressed it up in this piece, popped up time and time again. That’s because the best resources are sometimes your employees, especially for providing contextual and business-relevant learning. Besides, if Google are happy enough to shout about it on their blog, it’s probably worth a go.

Our last two lessons go hand-in-hand, use microlearning to make the experience manageable and deliver it on mobile to allow learning flexibility. The Uber example was the perfect one, because if drivers had time to kill, they could learn through short lessons, videos and quizzes. But how is that any different to commuting time for your employees? It’s not, and that Booking.com employee was so enthused by the experience that he felt empowered leaving the London underground. If that doesn’t tell you about the power of mobile learning, nothing will.

One last thing, learning this way isn’t some sort of exclusive VIP club for the biggest, global companies, it’s something you can experience for yourself. There’s no waiting line to trial HowNow, you’ve just got to fill in a short form and your journey to learning innovation begins.

Free Guide: 37 Lessons For A Winning L&D Strategy

Check out our other people development resources

• 5 reasons why talent development is so important
• How People Leaders Can Create Effective Learning Strategies | The Definitive Guide
• Why you need to train and develop your employees
• Training and development: Why forward-thinking companies need to add learning to the mix
• Why employee development is the key to driving people and businesses forward
• Build A People Development Strategy That ACTUALLY Develops People
• The 7 Skills Every Successful People Development Professional Needs To Develop

More From Forbes

Google introduces new ai training course.

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Google is introducing two training opportunities to increase basic AI skills for the workforce

Google has announced a new major training initiative designed to increase AI skills throughout the workforce.

The project includes a new Google Google Google AI Essentials Course that will be offered on Coursera Coursera , the online learning platform, in addition to a $75 million AI Opportunity Fund to make the course more widely available.

The company’s new online Google AI Essentials course is designed and taught by Google experts in AI. The course, which will not require a prior degree or AI experience, will focus on “teaching workers foundational AI skills, AI best practices, and how to use AI responsibly.” Google claims that “in under 10 hours of self-paced study,” students will gain an introduction to AI, learn how to write effective prompts and be able to identify AI’s potential biases and harm.

Designed to give learners hands-on experience using AI in their work, the course, which will cost $49 on Coursera, will involve videos, readings, and interactive exercises. Individuals who complete the course will earn a certificate from Google.

The $75 million Google AI Opportunity Fund , offered through the company’s philanthropic arm, is aimed at enabling at least one million Americans take the course and learn basic generative AI skills by providing grants to workforce development and education organizations.

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For example, Miami Dade College will offer the course to all students enrolled in its AI college-degree program, and the University of Virginia’s Darden Executive Education and Lifelong Learning will provide the course to working learners.

These and other organizations will allow the AI training to be extended for free to several segments of society, including rural and underserved communities, educators and students, public sector workers, nonprofit leaders and small businesses.

“AI offers significant opportunities to accelerate economic growth, particularly if people have access to the right resources and training,” said James Manyika, senior vice president for research, technology & society at Google, in a release shared with the press.

“Google.org’s new AI Opportunity Fund and Google’s AI Essentials Course are important next steps in our commitment to ensure everyone, everywhere can access AI training. No single employer or policymaker will be able to modernize workforce programs on their own – we are committed to collaborating across industry, civil society and government to ensure the opportunities created by new technologies are available to everyone,” Manyika added.

Despite the increasing demand for AI skills across several industry sectors, the World Economic Forum estimates that only half of workers have access to adequate AI training today. To equip as many workers as possible with foundational AI skills, Google introduced an AI Opportunity Agenda last year.

One of the first recipients of Google.org’s AI Opportunity Fund grant will be Goodwill. With more than 80% of Americans living within 10 miles of a Goodwill, it’s expected the organization will be able to offer Google’s AI Essentials course at scale to many local communities at no cost.

“Beginning in 2017, our digital skills training work with Google.org has unlocked new opportunities for hundreds of thousands of workers, including many in lower-wage jobs,” said Steve Preston, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries International, in the news release. “By expanding our efforts and leveraging Google’s new AI Essentials course, we can help US jobseekers attain the core digital and AI skills needed to step into well-paying jobs and greater prospects for economic mobility.”

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