Sr Manager Learning & Development - Post Consumer Brands

Headquartered in Lakeville, Minn., Post Consumer Brands, a business unit of Post Holdings, Inc., is dedicated to providing people and their pets with delicious food choices for every taste and budget. The company’s portfolio includes beloved brands such as Honey Bunches of Oats®, PEBBLES®, Grape-Nuts® and Malt-O-Meal® cereal, and Peter Pan® peanut butter, as well as Rachael Ray® Nutrish®, Kibbles ‘n Bits® and 9Lives® dog and cat food. As a company committed to high standards of quality and to our values, we are driven by one idea: To make lives better by making delicious food accessible for all. For more information about our brands, visit www.postconsumerbrands.com and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest news.

Post Consumer Brands recently acquired several iconic pet food brands, venturing into a new market while remaining true to our purpose to provide delicious and accessible food that our consumers love. We’re always searching the center store for the next exciting product to add to our portfolio, and right now, we’re growing and need passionate, driven individuals with diverse perspectives to help us reach greater heights. That’s where you come in. Join a team where your voice is not only heard but valued. Make a real impact on brands enjoyed by millions of people and their pets.

At Post Consumer Brands, we take pride in our longstanding legacy of making one of every five breakfast cereals families eat daily. Today, we’re just as focused on our future as we expand our grocery business with different shelf-stable foods, including snacks and peanut butter. We are committed to providing accessible and delicious food for families, and we’re always searching the center store for the next exciting product to add to our portfolio. As we soar to new heights, we need creative, determined individuals from all walks of life to join our team, where your unique perspective and ideas are acknowledged and valued. Be a part of a company that empowers you to make a difference that’s evident on grocery store shelves and families’ tables across North America.

Post Consumer Brands corporate headquarters in Lakeville, Minn. is about 20 miles south of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Lakeville has all the benefits of smaller town living with access to everything a large metropolitan area has to offer. Join more than 400 team members collaborating on the two-building campus to help put breakfast on the tables of millions of consumers in North America. 

OVERVIEW:

The Sr. Manager of L&D is responsible for leading a team of site-level Learning and Development Business Partners, and for delivering on the L&D strategy across Manufacturing. This is a highly cross-functional role requiring exceptional stakeholder coordination and alignment, partnering closely with central L&D, Manufacturing leadership, Continuous Improvement and Human Resources.

In addition to building a strong culture of learning in Manufacturing, primary areas of responsibility include team leadership, learning program development and delivery, program and project management, learning technology and content management. Process and technology optimization and alignment across the manufacturing network are keys to success in this role – strong leadership in these areas is required.

Post Consumer Brands is making significant investments in learning and development, including for our largest population - Manufacturing. The Sr. Manager of L&D is a critically important leadership position, with the opportunity to reshape L&D for Manufacturing and position Post Consumer Brands for continued growth. This role reports to the Director of Learning and Development and is an important contributing member of the L&D Community of Practice.

Location: this position offers hybrid flexibility out of Lakeville, MN Corporate Campus, when not traveling.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES:

Learning Culture and Stakeholder Management

• Participate in the development of a long-term strategy and roadmap for building a stronger learning culture and operating model in Manufacturing.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders and executive leadership to define, enable and reinforce clear behavioral expectations for managers and leaders related to building a stronger learning culture.
• Serve as a champion for Continuous Improvement (CI); partnering closely with corporate CI and site-level CI leaders.
• Enable L&D Business Partners to collaboratively create and sustain a culture that values learning, and dedicates resources for meeting learning objectives.
• Actively participates in and contributes to a thriving Learning Community of Practice to share best practices, stay up to date on current trends, and to align on content, technology, delivery, and measurement standards.

Team Leadership

• Provide leadership and direction to a team of L&D Business Partners at locations throughout North America.
• Provide ongoing coaching, mentoring and career development support for individuals and the team as a whole.
• Define and drive accountability for achieving department goals and objectives.
• Actively monitor and manage team workload, balancing for capability, development, cross-training, engagement, etc.

Learning Program Development and Delivery

• Partner closely with central L&D and Manufacturing leadership to identify training needs, contributing to curriculum development and content/program design.
• Partner with HR to develop and deliver onboarding training, including New Hire Orientation.
• Enable the site-level train-the-trainer model, ensuring local trainers are prepared to execute consistent localized training programs effectively.
• In collaboration with central L&D and in keeping with standards, supervise custom content maintenance and development on an ad hoc basis using approved authoring tools (e.g. Articulate).

Program and Project Management

• Reinforce process, tools and standards for learning programs and project management.
• Provide leadership and oversight L&D Business Partners, building and optimizing their project leadership skills.
• Build and deliver easily digestible (simple) program/project status metrics and updates.
• Leadership of annual training calendar in close collaboration with site stakeholders, network L&D peers and central L&D.
• Ensure plans and resources are in place to effectively execute on annual training calendar and priorities; effectively navigates competing site-level needs with network standards.
• Oversee the preparation and roll out of training programs, coordinating with trainers and managing logistics to ensure smooth delivery.
• Facilitate regular customer/stakeholder feedback to ensure learning program quality and impact.

Learning Technology

• Provide leadership to site-level LMS admin to enable loading content, tracking completions, pulling reports and aligning to LMS standards.
• Establish and maintain all Manufacturing learning metrics and reporting.
• Reinforce established standards and best practices.
• Provide effective change leadership for the effective use and full adoption of learning technologies in order to ensure impact and ROI.

Content Management

• In partnership with Continuous Improvement, subject matter experts, Process/Program/Change Management leadership, and Central L&D, help to shape and maintain an enterprise learning content management strategy and roadmap.
• Follow and reinforce established standards for content storage, maintenance, updating, and decommissioning.
• Utilize established templates, standards, style guides, and review standards in order to ensure a consistent learner experience and to maintain high content-quality standards across all locations.
• Drive accountability for maintaining content standards.

REQUIREMENTS

Education: Bachelor's degree in learning and development, instructional design, human resources, organizational development, industrial psychology, or related field required; Master's degree preferred.

This role will require travel to manufacturing locations (approximately 25-50% up front, then approx. 25%)

Experience:

• 5+ years of experience in a fully dedicated learning and development or equivalent role
• 3+ years of successful people management experience
• Experience leading a geographically distributed team
• Experience supervising a learning and development team
• Experience in a manufacturing environment
• Excellent facilitator/trainer using adult learning principles to design, develop, and deliver learning solutions to meet learning objectives
• Proficient at using Learning Management Systems; experience with virtual training and eLearning preferred
• Content design and development experience utilizing a variety of modalities
• Experience with measuring and reporting on training effectiveness and business impact
• Experience coordinating and gaining alignment among a diverse range of stakeholders
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Expertise in the development, delivery and evaluation of training initiatives to support ongoing improvements in knowledge, skills, process and engagement
• Highly detailed, organized, efficient and deadline driven on all project and administrative tasks
• Superior project management skills and ability to steward a team through a project
• Strong skills in Office (Excel, PPT, Word)

Other Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Ability to be Agile – Moving quickly and adapting to changes in real-time
• Ability to be Simple – Simplifying the complex to enable quick, aligned decision making. Excellent writing, storytelling, facilitation and presentation skills
• Be Bold – Taking the risk to lead, to appropriately challenge, to have an informed point of view
• Ability to influence at all levels of management
• Win as One – Leveraging the diversity and skills of the whole team to win on shared objectives. Exceptional stakeholder management and customer delivery skills
• Act Like an Owner – Keeping the needs of the enterprise in mind with all decisions. Attention to detail and excellent project management skills
• Do Right by coworkers and customers
• Bring Joy – Taking work seriously, but not yourself

Post Holdings and Post Consumer Brands provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, status as a covered veteran and any other category protected under applicable federal, state, provincial and local laws.