Director of Learning and Talent Development

Who We Are:
Challenge Manufacturing’s mission is to manufacture with operational excellence by empowering our employee-owners. As a leading tier 1 supplier of complex metal assemblies for the global automotive industry, we drive innovative solutions for future mobility. We believe the best ideas come from individual unique perspectives. These ideas combined with the teamwork of industry leaders allow us to accomplish any challenge. Our team members take pride in the work we do and embody our core values of safety, ownership, and teamwork every day; they are the true driving force in our operations.

Challenge is proud to be one of the largest employee-owned automotive companies in North America. One of the many benefits of joining the Challenge team is the ESOP program. This program allows Challenge to give shares of the Company to all employee-owners annually. These shares are an additional retirement benefit that will continue to grow during your time at Challenge. Being part of an ESOP means our employee-owners share in Challenge’s success!

Challenge is #QualityDriven and #PeoplePowered!

Who We Want:

Reporting to the Executive Director of Human Resources, the Director of Learning and Talent Development will create innovative, enduring workforce development solutions to meet the organizations’ talent-related business challenges and help our team members advance their skillsets, knowledge, and capabilities. Human-centered design thinker that creates environments that drive personal and business success utilizing expert-level data analytics, performance management initiatives, create engagement, as well as talent development strategies.

What You'll Do:

• Demonstrated experience navigating a fast paced, dynamic working environment
• Demonstrated project management experience with multiple stakeholders prioritizing and delegating projects/tasks
• Demonstrated team leadership, partnership, influencing and communication experience
• Conduct assessments and analyses to define performance, skill and knowledge gaps and recommend training and development to drive individual and company-wide capability and performance improvement
• Responsible for training logistics and data integrity within the Learning Management System (LMS). Conducts annual needs assessment by administering surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews. Reviews outcomes to develop leadership and learning curriculum for the coming year. Establishes operational and performance tools and metrics to measure and support learning and development initiatives and programs, drives priorities and measures outcomes and efficacy
• Knowledge of statistical analysis (e.g., descriptive statistics and knowledge of statistical significance), quantitative research, and experience gathering and interpreting data
• Provides oversight to the Learning and Development team by supervising, guiding, and directing employees to optimize output and team collaboration. Ensures that all team members are equipped with the right skills, tools, and talents necessary for executing their objectives. Using the established people processes (performance, development, succession, and career) to ensure that their team’s level of performance and capabilities meet current and future standards. Influences and effectively communicates to key stakeholders on the progress of programs, program budgets and design in a timely manner
• Identifies organization-wide and business-specific learning and development needs through needs assessment; develops and implements strategic initiatives and solutions by creating, leading, and growing a world-class learning and development program.
• Ensures all learning and development programs and processes incorporate company policies and values while supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Lead the incorporation of the most effective learning and development modalities and strategies including gamification, simulations, and AI learning, when and where possible.
• Develops and drives communication, awareness and support of learning and development initiatives and expectations throughout the organization. Assumes prime responsibility for leading organizational improvement efforts to onboarding systems to increase “speed to productivity” for new hires across the organization.
• Responsible for budgeting and overall financial management of learning and development programs

When and Where:

This will be a full time position located at our Corporate Office in Walker, MI.  This position requires travel to other locations and may require non-traditional working hours to achieve results.

Occasionally, this may require you to arrive early, stay late, or work on weekends, outside of our regular hours, to ensure we successfully meet customer needs, deadlines, or urgent requests.

What You Need to Have:

• BA or BS Degree in Organizational Development, Industrial Psychology, Education, Business Administration or Related field Required.
• 5+ years’ experience managing a training and development team at the corporate level
• 5+ years’ experience designing and delivering leadership and management programs, to include increasing levels of responsibility in the learning and development space required. 7+ years’ experience preferred
• 5+ years’ experience in managing HR systems in partnership with HRIS to enable key Talent  and Learning processes (e.g., LMS, performance and development systems, etc.).
• Strong knowledge of adult learning methodology practices, instructional design, and measuring effective learning and development programs
• Up-to-date knowledge and proficiency in the types and uses of technology in modern corporate learning and development
• Written, verbal, and presentation; ability to engage, inspire and influence people
• Actively engages in talent management practices (selection, promotion, development, and engagement) to cultivate a workforce that is well aligned with current and emerging talent needs
• Builds and sustains partnerships across organizational boundaries and functions as well as outside the organization to achieve common goals and outcomes
• Project management skills including planning, logistics, and program management and scheduling. Ability to manage multiple complex assignments, with proven ability to assess competing priorities in a high energy, fast paced environment. Strong organizational skills. PMP certification preferred, but not required
• Strategic planning and interfacing throughout the product lifecycle especially for complex or critical products. Impact of regulatory changes on internal processes or products. Clear, comprehensive understanding of the link between HR and business strategy
• Leads through analysis of situations with appropriate attention to detail and the big picture including consideration of impact at multiple levels of the system
• Up to 20% overnight travel required