Senior Manager - Learning & Development - FMCG

Senior Manager - Learning & Development

Reports to:

General Manager - OD

Primary mandate:

L&D

Broader remit:

Employee Communication, Experience & Wellness

Role Purpose:

Lead the learning agenda and translate business priorities into future-ready capabilities across functions and levels. The role will serve as a strategic partner to business and functional leaders, building a coherent capability architecture, strengthening leadership and talent pipelines, and ensuring measurable application of learning at work. In addition, the role will provide strategic oversight to the employee communication, employee experience and wellness agenda, ensuring that these portfolios reinforce engagement, culture and organizational effectiveness. Learning & Development will remain the role's primary mandate, with the broader people agenda delivered through the team, specialist partners and digital platforms.

Principal Accountabilities:

1. Shape the Division-wide Learning Strategy:

- Create and drive a multi-year learning strategy aligned to company's business priorities, organization plans, Succession requirements and emerging capability needs.

- Conduct rigorous capability diagnostics across functions and levels; convert insights into a prioritized learning portfolio with clear investment choices.

- Partner functional leaders to build role-based curricula, academies and learning pathways that reflect each function's critical capabilities and value drivers.

2. Build Leadership and Talent Capability:

- Design and institutionalize leadership development journeys for different career stages, including first-time managers, people leaders and senior talent.

- Integrate learning with talent reviews, high-potential development, succession pipelines and career pathways to accelerate readiness for critical roles.

- Strengthen behavioral and functional competency frameworks and ensure that development interventions are anchored to them.

3. Strengthen Learning Ecosystem:

- Create a blended learning ecosystem combining on-the-job experiences, classroom learning, digital content, coaching, mentoring and peer learning.

- Own the learning technology and content roadmap; improve adoption, accessibility, personalization and the quality of the learner experience.

- Build and govern a strong network of internal faculty, external institutions, experts and content partners; manage the annual learning plan and budget.

4. Drive Application and Business Impact:

- Establish clear outcomes and success measures for major interventions, with emphasis on capability gain, workplace application and business relevance rather than completion alone.

- Use learning analytics, stakeholder feedback and impact reviews to improve programmes, redirect investment and discontinue low-value interventions.

- Embed manager ownership of development and build a culture of continuous, self-directed and shared learning.

5. Oversee Employee Communication, Experience and Wellness:

- Provide strategic direction to employee communication, ensuring that enterprise priorities, culture messages and key people initiatives are communicated with clarity, consistency and credibility.

- Shape an integrated employee experience agenda across critical moments that matter, using listening insights and employee feedback to improve engagement, belonging and trust.

- Oversee a holistic wellness agenda spanning physical, mental, social and financial wellbeing, with interventions tailored to workforce and location needs.

- Ensure coherent governance, measurement and partner management across communication, experience and wellness, while aligning these portfolios with the broader OD and capability agenda.

6. Lead Stakeholders, Team and Governance:

- Act as a trusted thought partner to Divisional and Functional leadership on capability, culture and employee experience priorities.

- Lead, coach and enable the team; clarify outcomes, build specialist capability and ensure disciplined execution across portfolios.

- Create robust governance rhythms, dashboards and reviews to track progress, surface risks and sustain accountability.

Key Interfaces:

Internal: Divisional leadership and Functional heads, HR and OD teams across locations, People managers, talent pools and employees

External: Learning institutions and universities, Coaches, facilitators and subject-matter experts, Learning technology, content and wellness partners

Success Measures:

- Business-aligned capability priorities translated into a focused, funded learning portfolio.

- Improved readiness of leadership and succession pipelines for critical roles.

- Strong learner and manager adoption, with demonstrable application of learning at work.

- Improved employee listening outcomes and experience indicators in identified priority areas.

- Effective governance of budgets, partners, platforms and the annual portfolio.

- A capable, accountable team delivering consistently across the expanded mandate.

Experience and Capabilities:

Experience: Experience in L&D, Talent Development or Organizational Development, with ownership of enterprise or business-wide programmes. Exposure to employee communication, experience or wellness will be valuable.

Business orientation: Ability to understand business strategy, operating realities and future capability implications, and to convert them into pragmatic people solutions.

Design expertise: Strong grounding in learning, capability diagnostics, curriculum design, leadership development and blended learning architecture.

Influence: Credibility to partner senior leaders, challenge constructively, align diverse stakeholders and mobilize action without relying on formal authority.

Digital and analytics: Comfort with learning platforms, digital content ecosystems, listening tools and data-led evaluation of outcomes and impact.

Leadership: Ability to lead a multi-portfolio team with clarity, judgement, empathy and strong execution discipline.

Role Profile:

The ideal candidate will combine strategic depth with execution discipline: a learning leader who can see around corners, simplify complexity, build credibility with the business and create experiences that employees and managers value. The role requires intellectual curiosity, sound judgement, strong communication, comfort with ambiguity and a bias for measurable impact.

Educational Qualifications:

MBA in HR from Tier I B School with 4 to 8 yrs of work experience in Talent Management | OD | L&D