Assistant Vice President Learning & Development

Job description

Primary Objective:

Paperchase Accountancy is seeking a strategic and intellectually rigorous Assistant Vice President Learning & Development to architect, orchestrate and steward the enterprise learning agenda. This is not a role for the custodian of a training calendar; it is a charter for the architect of organizational capability a leader who can translate business ambition into a coherent capability roadmap, and convert a workforce into a genuine learning organization. The role is envisaged to be a key facilitator of AI-based productivity enhancement programs across various verticals of the organisation.

Operating at the intersection of strategy, talent and culture, the incumbent will own the full arc of learning from the diagnosis of capability gaps and the design of competency frameworks, through the cultivation of a leadership pipeline, to the rigorous measurement of learnings return on the business. The role demands a rare combination of conceptual range and executional discipline: the vision to design the learning architecture of a scaling enterprise, and the craft to make it land, lesson by lesson, leader by leader.

The successful candidate will be a trusted counsel to the executive team, a builder of academies and pathways, and a quiet but unmistakable force in shaping how Paperchase grows its people and, through them, its business.

Why This Role Matters

Paperchase operates at the demanding frontier of global finance and accounting services for the hospitality sector an environment where domain mastery, precision and client trust are non-negotiable, and where the pace of growth places a continual premium on building capability at scale. As the organisation expands its footprint and matures its global capability model, the quality of its talent engine becomes a decisive source of competitive advantage.

The AVP L&D is the principal architect of that engine. The role exists to ensure that capability keeps pace with ambition: that new joiners are productive sooner, that managers lead with confidence, that the finance domain bench is deep and certified, that high-potentials are identified and accelerated, and that succession is a deliberate design rather than a happy accident. In short, the mandate is to make learning a strategic asset measurable, scalable and inseparable from the business agenda.

Key Responsibilities

The mandate spans nine interconnected domains, each carrying the strategic weight expected of a senior leadership appointment.

1. Learning Strategy & Capability Architecture

Author and steward a multi-year enterprise L&D strategy, explicitly aligned to business priorities, growth plans and the future shape of the workforce.

Construct an enterprise capability architecture a skills taxonomy and competency framework spanning functions, levels and critical roles and translate it into structured capability-building roadmaps.

Lead enterprise-wide capability diagnostics and strategic training-needs analysis, distinguishing todays skill gaps from tomorrows capability requirements.

Define the learning operating model governance, prioritisation, design standards and the balance of build, buy and partner.

2. Leadership Development & Succession

Design and drive a tiered leadership development curriculum from first-time managers to senior leaders anchored in a clearly articulated leadership pipeline.

– Build and run high-potential identification and acceleration programmes, partnering with leadership on talent reviews, 9-box calibration and development planning.

– Embed coaching and mentoring as institutional disciplines, including the curation of an internal coaching capability and access to external executive coaching where warranted.

– Partner with the CHRO and executive team to make succession readiness a deliberate, measured outcome for business-critical roles.

3. Organizational Development, Culture & Change

– Lead organizational development interventions that strengthen team effectiveness, collaboration and managerial maturity.

– Act as a change-management partner on enterprise transformations — structured around recognised frameworks — ensuring people transition as deliberately as systems and processes.

– Champion a culture of continuous learning, knowledge-sharing and internal mobility, making growth a lived experience rather than a stated value.

4. Functional & Domain Academies

– Establish a Finance & Accounting Academy — a structured, certified domain-capability engine that builds technical depth across the service lines, in partnership with operations and quality.

– Design role-based learning journeys and certification pathways that compress time-to-proficiency and underwrite delivery quality and client trust.

– Govern domain capability standards in alignment with quality, compliance and process-maturity expectations (e.g., ISO and CMMI-aligned environments).

5. Digital Learning Ecosystem & Learning Technology

– Own the strategy for the learning technology stack — LMS / LXP selection, governance, adoption and continual optimisation.

– Modernise the learning experience through micro-learning, self-paced and blended journeys, social and experiential learning, and the considered application of AI-enabled and adaptive learning.

– Build a scalable in-house content capability — instructional design and curation standards — that produces high-quality, reusable learning assets.

– Ground all design in proven adult-learning frameworks — the ADDIE instructional-design model, andragogy and adult-learning principles, the 70:20:10 development model, and the flipped-classroom approach — so that interventions are learner-centred, experiential and demonstrably effective.

6. Learning Measurement, Analytics & Governance

– Establish a measurement framework that moves decisively beyond activity metrics to behaviour change and business impact, applying recognised models of learning evaluation and ROI.

– Build executive-grade learning dashboards and analytics that translate learning data into decisions, and report capability outcomes to the leadership team.

– Institute robust learning governance — standards, audit readiness, budget discipline and the effective utilisation of learning platforms and partners.

7. Talent Management & Career Architecture

– Integrate learning with the wider talent ecosystem — performance management, career frameworks, internal mobility and succession — so that capability-building reinforces retention and growth.

– Design transparent career pathways and skill-progression maps that give employees a credible line of sight to their next role.

– Partner with Talent Acquisition to shape build-versus-buy decisions and to strengthen onboarding as the first chapter of the employee growth journey.

8. Stakeholder Partnership & Executive Advisory

– Serve as a trusted advisor to the CHRO, executive leadership and function heads on all matters of workforce capability and development.

– Translate business strategy into capability implications, and present learning investments in the language of business outcomes.

– Govern relationships with external faculty, content providers, academic partners and learning vendors — holding them to quality and commercial discipline.

9. Team Leadership, Budget & Vendor Governance

– Build, lead and develop a high-performing L&D team — instructional designers, programme managers and specialists — modelling the learning culture the function espouses.

– Own the L&D budget with rigour, optimising spend against measurable capability and business returns.

– Establish and enforce governance, compliance and reporting standards across the learning portfolio.

Candidate Profile

Education

– MBA / PGDM in Human Resources, Organisational Development, or a related discipline.

– Advanced certifications in Learning & Development, Coaching, Leadership Development, Instructional Design, TTT certification or Organisational Development are strongly preferred (e.g., ISTD, NLP, OD certifications).

Experience

– 12–18+ years of progressive HR / L&D experience, with at least 5–7 years in Trainer cum People management roles owning an enterprise learning agenda.

– Demonstrated success in architecting and scaling enterprise learning strategy, competency frameworks, leadership pipelines and capability-building interventions in high-growth environments.

– Proven exposure to shared services, global capability centres, consulting, finance / BFSI, BPO, or global operations — with the credibility to operate in a quality- and compliance-governed environment (ISO / CMMI).

– Track record of building learning academies, deploying learning technology at scale, and measuring learning's business impact.

– Demonstrated fluency in core learning-design frameworks is essential — the ADDIE instructional-design model, andragogy and adult-learning principles, the 70:20:10 development model, and flipped-classroom methodology.

Professional Distinction

Beyond the formal criteria, the ideal candidate brings intellectual range and executional credibility in equal measure — the strategic imagination to design a learning architecture for a scaling enterprise, the gravitas to counsel executives, and the discipline to prove that learning moved the business. They are, in the truest sense, a builder of people and of the systems that grow them.

Competency Framework

The role is calibrated against two complementary competency dimensions — functional mastery and leadership behaviour — each assessed at the elevated proficiency expected of an Assistant Vice President.