Finding new ways to build skills: Learning for Life

Our Learning for Life (L4L) programme is a perfect example. L4L is designed to inspire and transform the lives of people throughout the communities in which we operate, providing tools, training and skills in four key areas related to our industry and value chain – hospitality, retail, entrepreneurship and bartending. 

This year, Covid-19 presented unprecedented challenges to the face-to-face training programmes that have underpinned L4L since its launch in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2008, and throughout its subsequent expansion into all regions that we work in across the globe.

The Virtual Hospitality Academy 

In the UK, for example, we paused all face-to-face training for L4L in March 2020 – at a time when more than 900 trainees and recent graduates were actively involved in the programme. 

It was a crucial moment in their training, and potentially in their careers – and we were determined not to let them down. So, we moved our L4L GB programme fully online, working with our partners Springboard through their new Virtual Hospitality Academy, which had been envisaged before the pandemic as a tool to complement training, and was rapidly expanded to deliver our complete programme. 

Between March and May 2020, 902 people registered on the new Diageo Learning for Life Virtual Academy, which includes over 40 online skills and training modules and webinars. Each trainee receives dedicated one-to-one employability mentoring and coaching through video calls, phone, text and email.  

Stronger for the future  

We believe adapting to the challenges of this year has made L4L stronger by giving it a greater range of virtual and digital resources. We plan to build on them for the future, so that more graduates can join the over 146,000 people who have benefited from L4L since 2008. Using both digital and face-to-face training, we want L4L to inspire trainees and remove the barriers to inclusion for women and underrepresented groups as a key element in our strategy for the decade ahead. You can find out more about L4L here.