Director, Talent Development

About Indigo and Mission

Indigo represents a vibrant blend of physical and digital spaces filled with books, innovative ideas, stylish lifestyle items, and the passionate individuals who bring it all to life. The company embodies a commitment to real books and a generous, kind approach towards people and the environment. Through stories—large and small—Indigo fosters connections, aiming to be a joyous destination for book enthusiasts who share a love for reading, ideas, and a desire to create a better, more beautiful world.

Guided by core principles, Indigo's mission is to inspire reading and enrich the lives of its customers. These principles emphasize attracting top talent, nurturing employee potential, fostering thriving environments, focusing on customer centricity, entrepreneurship, care for communities and environment, value creation, and employing data and AI-driven systems thinking.

Role Overview

The Director of Talent Development at Indigo holds a pivotal leadership role tasked with defining and implementing the company's philosophy and strategy for talent growth. This position spearheads efforts to advance organizational capabilities, leadership development, and a high-performance culture aligned with Indigo's business goals. Responsibilities include overseeing critical processes such as learning, performance, potential assessments, succession, and career planning across all Indigo teams including Home Office, Retail, and Distribution Centres.

The role contributes to driving Indigo's transformation into a growth-focused organization by equipping employees to develop skills, manage careers, and deliver impactful business results.

Key Performance Indicators

• Delivery of talent programs within timeline and budget
• Strength and readiness of leadership pipelines and critical roles
• Talent team customer satisfaction ratings
• Talent team engagement levels

Core Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior HR leader shaping people and capability strategies that support business growth and customer outcomes
• Collaborate with senior leadership to identify capability gaps, critical functions, and future workforce needs, translating these into comprehensive development strategies
• Continuously refine and align Indigo’s talent development philosophy with evolving business and workforce requirements
• Create and manage a multi-year roadmap for talent development, outlining priorities in learning, leadership, performance enhancement, succession, and career guidance
• Lead and inspire a high-performing Talent Development team with clear goals and accountability
• Enhance Indigo’s learning platforms (including Indigo U and LMS/LXP), ensuring they remain scalable, user-friendly, and data-informed to support employee growth
• Design, update, and embed key HR talent processes related to learning, performance, potential, succession, and career planning
• Define clear success metrics and leverage analytics to monitor and improve talent development outcomes
• Drive adoption of talent initiatives with effective change management and leader enablement strategies
• Provide trusted counsel to senior leaders on leadership effectiveness and organizational capability
• Maintain knowledge of emerging trends in talent development and leadership to keep Indigo competitive and future-ready
• Partner across HR and business units to identify critical future skills and roles for succession and workforce planning
• Align talent and learning priorities with overarching business strategies
• Participate in annual planning, budgeting, and prioritization activities for the talent development function
• Lead the design of adult-learning-based custom learning experiences with practical application
• Facilitate change and adoption when implementing talent practices
• Support initiatives tied to employee engagement including surveys, action plans, onboarding, and offboarding feedback

Key Relationships

• Internal partnerships with HR Business Partners, cross-functional leaders, and IT teams supporting learning and analytics platforms
• External collaboration with vendors, suppliers, industry experts, and talent development peers

Qualifications

• 10 to 15 years of progressive leadership experience in learning, talent development or talent management within top-tier organizations
• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Education, Organizational Development, or a related discipline
• Expertise in enterprise-wide adult learning and instructional design, with proven ability to build tailored curricula for varied audiences including frontline staff and corporate leadership
• Deep knowledge of performance and potential management, leadership development, and succession planning
• Strong analytical skills with ability to convert data insights into practical actions and measurable results
• Creative thinker who demonstrates resilience in problem-solving
• Alignment with Indigo's core values and guiding principles
• Passionate about Indigo's mission to inspire readers and enrich lives

Additional Information

This is an active recruitment opportunity at Indigo. The hiring process incorporates responsible use of AI tools to aid aspects such as screening and assessments, complemented by human evaluation to ensure fairness, compliance, and prevention of bias. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility are foundational to Indigo's culture, practices, and policies. Applicants from all backgrounds—including those identifying as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and persons with disabilities—are encouraged to apply. Accommodations during recruitment are available upon request via Human Resources.