getAbstract is my daily digest. The summaries are easy to read and easy to use. This allows us to raise awareness among employees about relevant topics.
Danone S.A. is a multinational food products corporation based in Paris, France. The company employs over 100’000 people in 55 countries. Danone’s international brands include Evian, Volvic, Actimel and many more.
For Frédéric Hebert, Head of Digital Learning at Danone, one thing is clear: In today’s “learn or die” environment, all employees must continue learning or risk becoming irrelevant. “Yet Learning is not always on top of people’s agenda,” he remarks. “Employees need to find space for it.” Frédéric has thus grappled with a challenge that many L&D experts share: How do you promote curiosity and foster a culture of learning among a diverse, global workforce?
For Frédéric, learning must be an experience and not just an outcome. “I will say that we will have done our job properly when we’ve created a culture of learning where our end users refer to learning as an experience rather than a mere training,” he explains.
Danone has created Campus X, which puts the learner front and center. It is a virtual platform where people can meet, collaborate, share and learn. getAbstract’s knowledge library forms a core element of the Campus X platform – for good reason, Frédéric contends: “getAbstract is my daily digest. The summaries are easy to read and easy to use. This allows us to raise awareness among employees about relevant topics.”
Danone also uses a company-wide Facebook group, where daily posts are shared on company goals and current, important topics, such as World Health Day. During COVID-19, demand for curated content by getAbstract was particularly high at the company. “getAbstract serves as an entry door to a current topic and thus helps us a lot in raising awareness on relevant issues and engaging with the learner community,” Frédéric says. To foster a habit of continuous learning among Danone’s staff, getAbstract shares regular reading recommendations. Frédéric deems it important that the learning ecosystem allows for and welcomes outside perspectives. Thus, he places great value on the collaboration with getAbstract and other content suppliers: “I am not the only one with the expertise. getAbstract interacts with our employees directly and shares its expertise, allowing employees to see things from different perspectives. This creates transparency and a sense of trust among our people.”
This community marketing approach has helped Danone boost getAbstract usage by 138% within six months. For Frédéric, another asset of the getAbstract solution is its multimodality: “You can use it on your PC, you can use it on your phone, or you can print out your readings on paper – which is something some employees at the company still like to do. ” Finally, getAbstract helps ease some of the language barriers that the multinational company is facing. “The fact that getAbstract’s solution is available in various languages helps me a lot,” Frédéric remarks, noting the advantage of having one single provider supporting a large part of Danone’s learning audience.
