Training Program Manager - San Leandro, CA

At Ghirardelli, we're on a mission to become a one billion dollar brand and beyond. We want to be every consumer's first choice of premium chocolate, and we believe we can do that through our products and the way we do business, which are all inspired by our brand commitment to Making Life A Bite Better. We are a company committed to both personal and professional growth and believe that each employee contributes directly to Ghirardelli's growth and success.

The Training Program Manager will design and execute our upskilling strategy, ensure consistent technical competency training across teams and build a robust leadership development program in order to meet business objectives.

The Training Program Manager will also oversee hourly staffing needs, including recruiting temporary workers to support operations demand.

• Develop and implement a comprehensive learning and development program aligned with WCOM (World Class Operations Management) and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) philosophy, starting from onboarding, technical skill matrix building to leadership development training.
• Lead a cross-functional Training & Education (T&E) Pillar focused on developing workforce capability, prioritizing initiatives that close skill gaps and drive improvements in factory performance and loss reduction.
• Leads training organization, responsible for assessing resources needed for training organization and effectively on-board those resources, both in terms of personnel and/or third-party resources.
• Responsible for the Learning Management System (LMS), build on existing approach and improve the process to create a world class training organization to ensure the current labor force is running at peak performance.
• SME on skill matrix management to provide guidance, training, and insights to help other areas to identify, develop, and utilize skills matrix effectively.
• Utilize data and feedback to continuously improve learning initiatives and measure their impact on business performance.
• Design and deliver leadership development training sessions to enhance leadership skills and competencies across operations, starting with front-line leaders.
• Coach and support front-line leaders and managers to foster a culture of continuous learning and high performance.
• Build strong partnership with external training providers and consultants to enhance program offerings.
• Ensure all learning and development activities comply with company policies and regulatory requirements.

• Accountable to maintain, with their team, updates to the curriculum database and training records.
• Manage the budget for training, recognition and rewards initiatives, ensuring effective allocation of resources and adherence to financial targets.
• Accountable to keep training material (content) up to date.
• Monitor and report training compliance and effectiveness to management.
• Hire, develop and manage the performance of team. Create an inclusive environment that embraces our values and purpose.
• Lead based on building inclusive team culture.
• Identify staffing needs and implement recruitment strategies, including job postings, sourcing candidates, and managing the hiring process.
• Accountable to identify, manage and track with your team and the cross functional stakeholders (Document Control Specialist, Human Resources, and Production Department Leaders) training requirements and institute plans for training new and existing employees.
• May perform other duties as assigned.
• Complete special projects and other duties as assigned or as necessary.

Accountability:

• Manage a team of up to 4 training/scheduling resources to ensure that the strategy is implemented, and systems are improved as effectively as possible.
• Responsible/Accountable for the end-to-end training process.
• Manage training for 300 people, from shop floor to management level.
• Achieve T&E pillar maturity grid score target.
• Training performance improvement metrics.
• 100% compliance with required safety, regulatory, and job-specific training and certifications
• 80% training effectiveness (30/60/90 days) to check knowledge retention over time.

• Bachelor's degree in Education, Industrial Psychology, or a related field;
• 5+ years of demonstrated experience training and developing training systems, ideally within a manufacturing environment.
• Capacity to "train the trainers" (Content/Subject experts).
• Factory operations experience is required.
• Strong understanding of adult learning principles.
• Ability to lead cross-functional initiatives to build and influence a learning culture and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Strong desire for continuous improvement and creativity to bring different ideas for improvement to the table.
• Astute attention to detail; ability to assess Safety and Quality needs of the site and translate those into training practices.

Ability to understand and develop data/metrics to validate training performance.