Jean Grunenwald

CEO

Nestlé Hungária Kft.

What happens to a country when its economy is losing the youth? Youth employment is a social issue that can only be solved by working together and involving stakeholders. In 2013, we launched the Nestlé Needs Youth program globally to help young graduates in job search. Within the scope of this program we committed to increase the number of intern positions with minimum 50% and provide employment for 150 young graduates in Hungary until 2016. We are proud of achieving all these goals already. In synergy with our business strategy, we believe in the multi-stakeholder approach through which we maximise our efforts and create social values. In 2014, Nestlé joined forces with companies and professionals to launch the ‘Alliance for YOUth’ program with the intension to find business solutions for the issue of youth employment. This effort we made is considered forward-thinking on both the international and the Hungarian business palette.

‘Alliance for YOUth’

Industry: Food

Date: 2013-2016

Employment


Solutions of the macro-sustainability challenges

Improve the inclusive employment of disadvantaged people according to their share of the population, especially that of young people and minorities through the whole value chain

Further targets:

What´s the solution?

This program is a cooperation between business sector, governments and educational institutions to help young graduates gaining work experience for their future carriers, and thereby contributing to Hungary’s economic competitiveness. In 2014, Nestlé launched the ‘Alliance for YOUth’ program in Europe and committed to create 20,000 jobs and training opportunities for young people under the age of 30 by 2016. In 2015, Nestlé expanded the program globally and as part of the initiative we pledged to increase the number of intern positions with minimum 50% and provide employment for 150 young graduates in Hungary until 2016. The program has four pillars, including: preparing for job market; gaining real work experience; supporting employment among young people below 30 years of age; and ‘Alliance for YOUth’ partner program. After we did everything within our scope to provide job and carrier opportunities directly, we searched for partners to enhance this effect. This process started by inviting our business partners to join the Alliance and follow our example. Following the invitation, we began to think and create ideas with those partners that had relevant knowledge, competence and experience. Together we hope that more ground-breaking business and social solutions will be found to mitigate to this employment challenge.

Business connection

The dissonance between labour market supply and demand poses diverse and serious challenges for companies, including Nestlé. On one hand, it can create significant shortage of skilled workers. On the other hand, growing unemployment rate reduces purchasing power of consumers which can risk sales. The ‘Alliance for YOUth’ partner program is intended to address these issues and make labour market more effective thereby increasing the competitiveness of the domestic economy.

Results

At our company, we attained cooperation across all departments with the support of the CEO by involving three of our factories in the implementation of this program. More than 10 Hungarian companies and organisations have joined the program already. Moreover, we initiated round-table conversation series with the involvement of educational, youth, municipal and business stakeholders, at which many key partners have been regular participants already.

In Spring 2015, we organised meet-ups where employees of our company helped young people with job search by giving advices and useful practices at the Nescafé Carrier Café during the HVG carrier fair. Throughout this two-day long event, we talked to more than 2000 young people and tried to contribute to their job search and expanding their carrier choice. Thanks to these results, we have already provided 200 jobs and 122 training positions in Hungary in the first year of this initiative.