Mondelēz's Career-Inspiring Education Program

An enthusiastic team of Mondelēz experts elucidates their innovative approach in crafting an educational program designed to inspire students to consider a career in the food industry.

Lockdown drove transformational change to work experience and what companies can now offer. Moving work experience to a virtual platform means companies can connect more students to more industry experts more effectively than traditional work experience. This transition continues to grow and stabilise allowing student experience choices beyond the usual immediate spheres of reference1-3-4

Delivering work experience virtually offers several benefits, such as:

Access- Virtual Work Experience (VWEX) opens the doors of opportunity to young people right across the country and allows employers to grow their talent pipeline and make a difference to those who really need it.

Impact- Virtual Work Experience allows for greater impact, as ‘seats’ are not required, opening up the chance for more young people to access great opportunities wherever they are.

Free- Our Delivery Partner, Speakers for Schools (SFS) is a charity organisation who are focused on ensuring educators and young people have great experiences and free access to their services to ensure a level playing field and meaningful outcomes.

VWEX enables students to experience the world of work first-hand and gain an insight into different roles across a wide range of industries. They find out about the various career paths available, build on their skills and improve their self-confidence. They meet senior professionals from leading UK organisations, expand their network to include potential employers and get evidence of extracurricular activities for their personal statement or CV.

A Speakers for Schools survey of over 2,000 people aged 18-30 revealed only a third could recall doing any work experience as students. Work experience develops essential skills and reduces the chance of becoming unemployed. It helps young people develop essential skills that employers repeatedly report a shortage of, and value when it comes to school-to-work transition.

Martyn Robinson and Ellie Cooke from Mondelēz International's Chocolate R&D Centre, Bournville, launched their 5-Day Product Development Virtual Work Experience Programme in Summer 2022, the first of its kind from a food producer.

Mondelēz International's VWEX was piloted with the Bournville site's three IGD partnership schools. Student participants worked in groups of six and attended ten sessions chronologically associated with the product development process, starting with a project brief, and ending with the students presenting their fully finished product concept. The format worked very well and with feedback from students, presenters, and teaching staff, tweaks were made to improve the 2023 offer which was advertised nationwide to 100 students. Places were taken very quickly.

Each session started with a presentation of the specific area from subject matter experts, tasks were set via a workbook, and live group guidance was provided inside the breakout rooms. This was supported by the Speakers for Schools Platform using Google Classrooms.

Mondelēz International colleagues’ own experiences show they were not aware of the range of career types inside the food industry until higher education. It was important for them to showcase this to students as they begin to make choices for their future educational path.

There was tremendous feedback from students, school teaching staff, and stakeholders. The students had clearly learned a great deal and had a lot of fun doing so.

Our final poll headline showed a transformation in consideration of the food industry as a career choice, turning a 62% ‘No’, to a 63% ’yes’, plus 80% of students said they would recommend Mondelēz International's VWEX to a friend.

Pre-covid, Bournville R&D facilitated in-person work experiences, but on a small scale due to confidentiality issues. Students were always accompanied in their strictly scheduled timetable. During the COVID-19 Lockdown, the R&D Community Champion Team wanted to develop a virtual alternative available to a wider audience.

Work Experience placements are a yearly challenge for schools and students. It's difficult reaching out to companies to obtain valuable work experience. This can cause stress for the students and an issue for schools in terms of resources etc.

VWEX addresses these challenges and creates a more inclusive opportunity for students across the UK regardless of where they study or live, taking the experience to another level whilst helping schools and students by providing a safe, secure, and fun solution to this issue. It also provides a valuable learning experience that students may choose to do in preference to their direct in-person opportunities.

The West Midlands STEM lead connected Martyn and Ellie with various businesses who were putting together similar programs who were happy to share their experiences. They then connected with the teaching staff at the schools who shared their expectations in terms of educational content and offered delivery guidance.

The Virtual Work Experience complies with Child Safeguarding by being delivered via the external platform Speakers for Schools who host both the Mondelēz International expert ’tutors’ and the students and provide facilitators. SFS use the Google Classrooms software which students became very familiar with during lockdown.

The Mondelēz International VWEX was split into ten sessions throughout the week, covering different areas of the product development pipeline. Each session was run by a subject expert and involved a presentation of learning content followed by a workbook task. The workbook tasks allowed the students to work in groups and develop a new product idea throughout the week, building on the idea with considerations from each subject areas such as process and packaging. Having developed the product throughout the week, each group then presented their product ideas on the Friday to the rest of the groups.

• Introduction to the program, hosts, and the company.

• What is an FMCG and what it is like to work within one?

• Icebreaker workbook challenge.

• Deliver the Product Brief & describe the ideation process.

• Illustrate the range of product formats, features, and sensory attributes.

• Workbook 3 product ideas.

• Who is a consumer? And what is Consumer Science? How does it work?

• Explain consumer test types and how to analyse results.

• Perform a test on their three ideas to identify a lead idea.

• What is process engineering? And why is consistency important?

• How to adapt or modify existing processes to make new products.

• Create a process flow diagram to manufacture their product.

• Designing human interaction into pack shapes using CAD modelling.

• The current and future of sustainable pack materials.

• Designing the pack graphics to communicate the contents to the consumer.

• Demystifying food regulations: Nutritional, Allergens, ‘Use by’ vs ‘BBE’.

• Explaining claims, GDAs, and logos.

• Adding the right and best information for their target consumer.

• What other information would you like to see on pack?

• Describing the importance of a factory trial.

• Opening up the world of supply chain & logistics.

• Understanding lean production efficiencies and how waste affects profitability.

• Tracking market trends- the How and Why.

• The importance of Branding and Brand Architecture.

• How to sell new products into the market using traditional and modern media.

• A run through of the many varied career types seen so far and their transferable skills.

• The importance of soft skill competencies.

• Routes into meaningful food industry careers; Apprenticeships, Grads, Interns, Agency, Direct entry.

• Each group gives a Dragons Den presentation of their finished product design and sales plan.

• Live feedback session with Awards, Certificates, and Thank Yous.

For the students who took part, there was transformational change in their knowledge and engagement at the end compared to the beginning. To begin with, the students were very comfortable with the chat-box functionality after home-schooling, but rarely came on speaker or camera. It was also clear that some were not initially fully engaged.

As the week progressed, the levels of enthusiasm and engagement rose as the students started to take emotional ownership of their virtual product and wanted to actively see what happened to it next. The team were aware that final presentations would be tricky but were surprised at how animated these were.

It was clear that all the participants had contributed within their group and were invested in their product. They all responded well at the end with what their favourite career types were and their favourite sessions.

For the core Mondelēz International team, it was a challenge to manage this with little to no experience in managing students, but one the team overcame and learnt greatly from. They worked well together through the well-planned interactive sessions that had been carefully thought out to ensure they maintained concentration from the students and built their confidence in leading the program throughout the week.

For those that joined the presenting team, it was a real opportunity for all to network and discover more about each other's roles’, with lots of the presenters using this as a personal development opportunity, pushing them out of their comfort zone and improving their confidence with presenting and delivering content.

The common goal and a standardised session delivery format brought the 18 strong presenting team together, and during the regular meetings, ideas were created and swapped. Everyone was invited back to join in and see the final presentations at the end.

The biggest challenge for the Mondelēz International Virtual Work Experience was to turn it from an idea into reality.

Putting VWEX together was a process of evolvement where the finished product could not have been predicted from the outset. Research and discussions led to storyboarding an idea which was presented to Mondelēz International's UK senior leadership & stakeholders. The complexity of building a compelling virtual experience required full commitment from Martyn and Ellie who firstly designed the program, and then inspired colleagues (peers and more senior) to partner in successfully creating something worthy of Mondelēz International's iconic brands.

This combined team needed to invest additional time, so the vision and leadership of Martyn and Ellie was vital in securing their emotional commitment and motivation to succeed. Each member volunteered their time to bring this idea to life in addition to their project workload.

VWEX required a critical mass of senior stakeholder support behind it before it could become real. Many senior stakeholders have very limited time, so it was important to be able to sell this opportunity short and concisely, whilst ensuring to express the large benefits it had to offer.

Securing support required a further specific challenge which was Child Online Safety via the delivery platform and the technology behind it. A variety of external providers pitched at various price points and budgets were discussed. Speakers for Schools were contracted after recommendations from STEM and their contacts, and after validating their promotional material.

Mondelēz International's first VWEX concentrated on three local schools. It was a huge success for the students, the school teaching staff, the presenters, and the business. It has also been a huge learning and development process for Martyn and Ellie.

They presented their output at internal UK-wide Mondelēz International meetings and following the positive feedback from all involved, they secured increased budget to expand their reach with Speakers for Schools, and expanded their VWEX team to include Ryan and Kate who are adding their own skills and experience to enhance the planning and delivery.

Mondelēz International's Bigger and Better VWEX `23 implemented learnings, increase student numbers, and UK wide geographical scope. The desire to enthuse as many students as possible to consider a motivating career in the Food & Drink Industry is still at its heart and the quality of output from 2023 was genuinely surprising with students independently using Blender 3D software to create their product and pack images and creating half minute Adverts to market their products.

The icing on the cake for 2023 was winning the FDF Award for Education Initiative. This has helped to raise the profile of the program and bring it to a wider industrial audience, and to help cement its place as an annual feature in the calendar.