Program Manager, Operations Services and Learning

Summary

This position contributes to MOD’s success by providing operations and learning support/consultation on industry best practices for operational excellence, project rollouts and communications, and promotions/changes impacting retail operations. This role is pivotal in planning, developing and testing of products, systems, and programs within restaurant operations to ensure we deliver guest experiences that enhance and grow the value of our brand. In this role your ability to be curious, demonstrate a growth mindset will help you keep both the operations and learner lens front-and-center. You will project manage multiple projects in the operations and learning space, while also conducting gap/needs analysis, developing learning objectives to compliment operational implementations/updates, and working with a variety of subject matter experts to create rollout strategy and resources (including job aid, toolkits, digital, in-person, and virtual learning). In this role, you will be the subject matter expert to bring leadership throughout the company along to identify opportunities and optimize training and operational performance in support of our Squad and guests. 
 

Work Location and Schedule Expectations

The Program Manager is a hybrid position. At MOD this means that 60% of your time is spent working onsite in our Support Center located in Bellevue, Washington. Seattle Area residents are required to meet this expectation with three days a week in partnership with your team. Your schedule is a standard business day and has flexibility to come in early or stay late based on your personal and work demands. 

Key Responsibilities

• Support multiple projects concurrently (flexing to meet the needs of the business) by utilizing reasonable discretion to balance competing time constraints/priorities.   
• Project management – manage the schedule, milestones/timelines, dependencies, risks, expectations etc., of projects and inform stakeholders of updates/status while maintaining quality and deadlines. 
• Think strategically and creatively to support operational rollouts and ops/learning resources, to align with competencies and knowledge gaps that support growth and development of our people and our business. 
• Prepare, communicate, and partner with cross functional teams on best practices for program development, training initiatives, and communication with our restaurants. 
• Support resource updates (Ops/Learning) for operational processes and restaurant/product changes. 
• Recommend solutions for testing, training, and implementation of projects, programs, and initiatives to optimize restaurant performance relative to sales, profitability and guest experience. 
• Build training/operational materials and resources to enhance learner experience and drive operational excellence in restaurants (including Trainer Guides, In-Person Learning, Job Aids, toolkits, etc.)  
• Stay current on restaurant operations by spending time in restaurants, the test kitchen, and being willing to jump in to learn, solve, create operational solutions and innovations. 
• Recognize the best solutions can only be found after making a few pivots and shifts in priorities, be ready to lead in those moments of innovation. 
• Understand best practices for learning program accessibility to support diverse communities by promoting inclusivity and eliminating biases in content and decreasing gendered/discriminating language/depiction.  
• Support team members to scope projects, analyze operations and training gaps, challenges, and opportunities across MOD. 
• Support the creation of storyboards and final content process with subject matter experts and Learning Team leadership prior to building training content. 
• Proactively seek feedback from teammates and project stakeholders to ensure that operational and learning solutions align with expectations and iterate as needed. 
• Be proactive, have a “can do” attitude, and support solves for issues as they arise. 

Basic Qualifications

• 2+ years of restaurant/retail operations management level experience; strong expertise in restaurant/retail operational processes. 
• 1+ year developing learning content and designing training for multiple delivery modalities (traditional classroom, online classroom, and self-paced eLearning modules). 
• Ability to manage full cycle project management with demonstrated experience driving timelines and deliverables, multi-tasking, and identifying risks.  
• Ability to work independently, take initiative, set priorities, and manage multiple priorities accurately while meeting deadlines. 
• Demonstrated interpersonal skills with an emphasis on building effective partnerships with internal and external partners with a team approach 
• Excellent written and verbal skills, including the ability to communicate effectively, clearly and accurately; role requires daily/weekly communication with working partners, comms channels, and team members.  
• Willingness to work through change (shift gears comfortably), competing priorities/directions as business needs evolve. 
• Results-orientated mindset with the ability to deliver results in a fast-paced, high-quality environment. 
• Proactively seek out feedback and opportunities for improvement for individual work and as a part of the broader team. 
• Experience designing training and resources for multiple delivery modalities (traditional classroom, online classroom, and self-paced eLearning modules). 
• Leverage storytelling in both presenting and receiving/delivering feedback with the ability to effective bring all audiences along on the journey.  
   

Preferred Qualifications

• 2+ years of professional project management experience including coordinating, organizing, scheduling, administering, and monitoring projects. 
• Experience working in a PMO environment with an established Project Management Methodology. 
• Knowledge of adult learning theories and iterative instructional design methodologies (i.e., ADDIE, etc.). 
• Proficient in Articulate or other authoring tools for developing eLearning content.