Learning & Development Lead

Location: Coventry / Birmingham / Warwickshire

Contract Type: 6 Month FTC

Working Pattern: Full Time

LHH is supporting a well-established organisation to appoint an experienced Learning & Development Lead into its Talent & Performance function.

This is a senior specialist role focused on understanding workforce capability, competence and professional development across a complex operational environment. The successful individual will lead a detailed discovery and diagnostic exercise, identify capability and skills gaps, and develop practical recommendations, frameworks and career pathways to support future workforce requirements.

This is less about traditional training delivery and more about workforce capability, professionalisation, competence and long-term development strategy.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead organisational discovery, diagnostic and capability assessment activity across a significant operational workforce.
• Build a detailed understanding of current skills, knowledge, experience, qualifications, professional standards and development activity.
• Facilitate interviews, workshops, focus groups and consultation sessions with operational leaders, managers and subject matter experts.
• Review existing induction, onboarding, technical development and learning approaches.
• Identify capability strengths, gaps, risks and development priorities that could impact future service delivery.
• Develop role‑specific capability maps and competence frameworks.
• Review existing competence assessment and assurance approaches and recommend future models.
• Assess workforce capability against future operational requirements and identify critical skills and succession risks.
• Review qualifications, technical certifications, apprenticeships and professional development pathways.
• Identify mandatory, regulatory and operational development requirements.
• Develop structured career and professional development pathways across a range of operational, technical and leadership roles.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen career progression, mobility and colleague retention.
• Develop a phased workforce capability and development roadmap.
• Analyse workforce and capability data and translate complex information into clear, practical recommendations.
• Provide trusted advice and challenge to senior operational and People stakeholders.
• Prepare diagnostic reports, papers and recommendations for senior leadership audiences.
• Support capability requirements as part of a wider organisational change and workforce transformation programme.

About You

We are particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate:

• Significant experience as a senior learning, capability, professionalisation or workforce development specialist.
• Experience leading organisational discovery, diagnostic or assessment activity.
• Strong knowledge of competence frameworks, capability models and workforce development approaches.
• Experience assessing technical capability and professional standards within an operational workforce.
• Experience designing capability frameworks, development pathways and career progression models.
• Strong knowledge of qualifications, apprenticeships and professional development approaches.
• Experience translating complex workforce information into practical recommendations and solutions.
• Strong facilitation, workshop and consultation skills.
• The credibility to work effectively with senior operational leaders, technical specialists and People teams.
• Experience operating within complex organisational change or transformation programmes.
• Strong project planning skills and the ability to work independently with a high degree of autonomy.

Experience within housing, property, maintenance, construction, engineering, infrastructure or another technical/operational environment would be advantageous.

Experience supporting workforce mobilisation, service transformation, professionalisation or TUPE-related programmes would also be beneficial.

A CIPD, coaching or equivalent professional qualification would be advantageous.

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity to shape a significant workforce capability agenda and establish the frameworks, development pathways and professional standards required to support a large operational workforce.

It would particularly suit someone who enjoys getting underneath how an organisation currently operates, diagnosing capability requirements and turning those findings into a clear and practical workforce development strategy.

LHH is an employment consultancy that believes in talent, not labels. It is important to us that we run inclusive recruitment processes to support candidates of all abilities and encourage applicants of all backgrounds and perspectives to apply. LHH is committed to building an inclusive, supportive environment to enable candidates to explore the next steps in their careers. If you require reasonable adjustments at any stage, please let us know and we will be happy to support you.