Learning & Development Partner in London

Scott Dunn is an award-winning luxury tour operator creating tailor-made vacations to destinations all over the world. With offices in the UK, US and Singapore, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding service to all our guests from the moment they begin their research online, right the way through to post-vacation evaluations.

Reporting to the Head of People & Culture, the Learning & Development Partner will work in strong collaboration with the US based L&D Partner and the wider People & Culture team both within Scott Dunn and Flight Centre Travel Group. The L&D Partner will be accountable for designing and implementing strategic learning initiatives that drive organisational performance and business transformation across Scott Dunn's global operations. This role will lead the development and delivery of sales training, change management support, sales excellence programmes, leadership capability building, and talent management strategy implementation across our Sales and Support teams globally.

A critical focus of this role is to drive continuous improvement and upskilling of our sales teams, ensuring Scott Dunn maintains competitive advantage in the luxury travel market through excellence in sales capability and guest service delivery.

The Learning & Development Partner will influence performance throughout the guest journey by combining the "why Scott Dunn?" messaging with key business metrics including team engagement scores, employee retention rates, 'Progression' readiness, guest NPS scores, conversion rates, and GP% across Scott Dunn's five global offices in London, San Diego, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver a comprehensive annual sales training plan in partnership with the L&D Partner, Head of People & Culture, and Regional Leaders, ensuring alignment with key business priorities and tailored for local markets.
• Provide internal coaching support to sales teams, ensuring they have the necessary skills to provide expected levels of guest service and meet sales expectations.
• Work closely with Sales Leaders (STM/SSMs) to ensure consistent training and coaching is provided to support new starters during their probation/trial period.
• Ensure alignment with sales induction processes and methodology by collaborating with key stakeholders across all global offices.
• Collaborate with the Sales Enablement Team to create resources focused on consultative selling, guest service excellence, and performance management.
• Drive continuous improvement in sales delivery as a constant priority.
• Track and analyse sales training effectiveness using conversion rates, GP%, NPS scores, and other relevant KPIs.

Continuous Improvement & Sales Upskilling

• Implement regular refresher training and skills updates to ensure consistent application of best practices and “Why Scott Dunn”.
• Build capability in emerging sales channels and new destination knowledge as the business evolves.
• Stay ahead of luxury travel industry trends and integrate relevant insights into upskilling programmes.
• Measure the impact of upskilling initiatives on key business outcomes including conversion rates, average booking values, and guest satisfaction scores.
• Celebrate and share success stories to motivate ongoing improvement and learning engagement.
• Develop, enhance, and apply the current Sales Progression Framework, ensuring quality of promotion assessments and individual objective criteria.
• Leverage existing programmes across Scott Dunn and Flight Centre Travel Group where appropriate.
• Create career development pathways and support the existing succession planning tools to incorporate continuous upskilling across Scott Dunn globally.
• Design high-potential employee development programmes with accelerated learning pathways.
• Working with the L&D Partner based in the US, support individual development needs across our US, UK, and Asia offices.

Change Management Support

• Lead the implementation of new process rollouts across the business globally through targeted training interventions.
• Design change adoption strategies that facilitate smooth transitions during organisational transformation.
• Partner with stakeholders across all four global offices to assess training needs during periods of change.
• Create communication and training materials that support change initiatives and drive engagement.
• Measure and report on training effectiveness during change programmes.
• Ensure training consistently engages and motivates teams to drive performance during transitions.

Leadership Development & Management Capability

• Leverage on existing FCTG material to implement a comprehensive leadership development strategy that supports both emerging and experienced leaders across Scott Dunn globally.
• Develop and deliver management fundamentals training covering people management, performance management, coaching conversations, difficult conversations, and team motivation.
• Build leadership capability in strategic thinking, commercial acumen, decision-making, and business planning.

Strategic Learning & Development Operations

• Ensure all sales and management training is up to date, relevant, and provides the necessary platform for success in role as quickly as possible.
• Stay up to date on emerging trends within the Learning and Development space to continuously improve existing L&D programs.
• Regularly review and refresh training content based on business performance data, guest feedback, and market changes.
• Implement quality assurance processes to maintain training standards across all global offices.
• Align teams and individuals with Scott Dunn's vision and values to improve guest service by nurturing a culture of internal brand ambassadors.
• Manage learning technology platforms, such as Everywoman, LinkedIn Learning etc.
• Design and build creative training materials from scratch.
• Continuously evaluate and improve training methodologies based on business impact and feedback.
• Establish metrics and reporting frameworks that demonstrate the ROI of learning investments.
• Travel to offices in London, San Diego, New York, and Singapore as required.
• Extremely organised and efficient with ability to balance and prioritise workload, delivering to deadlines.
• Flexibility, agility, and ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.
• Process-driven with high level of accuracy and attention to detail.
• Positive attitude with excellent communication skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong ability to influence and build stakeholder relationships with credibility at all levels, particularly with senior leaders.
• Creative thinker capable of designing and building training material from scratch.
• Strategic thinking with ability to align learning initiatives to business objectives and ROI.
• Strong analytical skills to measure training effectiveness using multiple business metrics and identify upskilling opportunities.
• Change management expertise and ability to support transformation initiatives.
• Continuous improvement mindset with ability to challenge the status quo constructively.
• Strong coaching and facilitation skills.

Requirements

• Understanding of the luxury travel market and how our competitor set operates within both single and multi-centre travel.
• Comprehensive understanding of adult learning principles and styles as well as key instructional design methodologies.
• Leadership development best practices and current thinking.
• Best practices in sales training and performance coaching.
• Emerging trends in Learning and Development.
• Understanding of talent management frameworks and succession planning.
• Knowledge of skills gap analysis and competency framework development.
• Awareness of continuous improvement methodologies and their application to learning.
• Understanding of different leadership styles and their application.

Location

We aim to find someone who would be office based in our London, Hammersmith office.

Why work for Scott Dunn

• In return for your expertise and commitment to our values of in the detail, in the know, and inspiring; we support your career growth – We provide you with career progression aligned with your chosen career path, access to internal job opportunities across Scott Dunn's global offices, as well as across 30+ brands spread across 93 cities worldwide as part of Flight Centre Travel Group.
• We give you the tools to succeed – We provide personal and professional development enabled by our award-winning Learning and Development team, comprehensive familiarisation, and educational trips, unlimited access to LinkedIn learning amongst other professional and personal development platforms, as well as 1 hour for your own development each week.
• We recognise and reward your success and loyalty – We run commission and bonus incentive schemes to complement competitive salaries, as well as a company loyalty scheme, which includes a personal travel fund for each staff member and 23 days annual leave.