Director of Learning & Employee Experience

About Sonida Senior Living

Sonida Senior Living is one of the nation’s leading operators of independent living, assisted living and memory care communities for senior adults. The Company operates 165 communities that are home to nearly 12,000 residents across 35 states providing comfortable, safe, affordable communities where residents can form friendships, enjoy new experiences and receive personalized care from dedicated team members who treat them family.

Job Description:

At Sonida Senior Living, our communities are only as strong as the people within them. We believe that when our team members feel connected to our mission, developed in their craft, and engaged in their work, the residents and families we serve feel that difference every day.

This role exists because we are ready to build the infrastructure that makes that belief scalable. Across all communities, we need someone who can design the processes, programs, and tools that ensure HR is operating consistently, leaders are being developed effectively, and our culture is showing up the same way everywhere Sonida exists.

The Director of Learning Employee Experience is a leader responsible for anchoring HR operational consistency across all Sonida communities, while building and enabling the learning, culture, and development programs that make that consistency possible.

This role owns the design and standardization of HR processes and workflows, ensures those processes are applied consistently by HRBPs and Talent Partners across all locations, and builds the training and onboarding infrastructure that equips new team members and leaders to succeed. You will lead 1-2 direct reports and serve as a cross-functional partner to the broader HR team, department trainers, subject matter experts, and community leadership.

Responsibilities:

Onboarding Effectiveness & New Leader Integration

• Own the end-to-end onboarding experience for all new team members and leaders, ensuring consistency and quality across all communities.
• Develop standardized onboarding timelines, checklists, and touchpoints that set people up for success from day one.
• Design a dedicated new leader onboarding track that introduces HR expectations, processes, and workflows early, so leaders are equipped to lead compliantly and consistently from the start.
• Partner with Talent Partners and HRBPs to create seamless handoffs between recruiting and onboarding.
• Track onboarding effectiveness through 30/60/90-day metrics, retention data, and new hire feedback, using those insights to drive continuous improvement.

Culture & Service Excellent

• Serve as Sonida's culture champion by embedding our mission, vision, and CARES values into orientation and ongoing leadership development, so relationship-centered care and service excellence show up in everyday interactions and create exceptional experiences for residents, families, and team members in every community.
• Develop a scalable, consistent orientation experience that brings Sonida's culture to life, regardless of community size or geography.
• Partner with Community and department leaders to integrate Sonida’s mission, vision, CARES values, service recovery techniques, and relationship-centered care into daily operations, reinforcing a culture where exceptional experiences are created through everyday leadership and interactions, not just formal training.
• Build tools and resources that empower department trainers to reinforce culture within their own areas.

Learning & Development

• Design, build, and continuously improve learning programs that support frontline, operational, and corporate team members across all career stages.
• Establish a consistent framework for curriculum design in collaboration with department trainers and SMEs, grounded in adult learning principles.
• Manage and develop the L&D Associate and any additional direct reports to execute on program delivery and content creation.
• Leverage UKG, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 to deliver, track, and report on training completion and effectiveness.

Leadership Development & Talent Management

• Build and manage Sonida's leadership development programming, including programs for emerging leaders, new managers, and senior community leadership.
• Partner with HRBPs and Talent Partners to support succession planning, high-potential identification, and individual development planning.
• Ensure leadership development programs build leaders who embody Sonida’s culture and service excellence standards while strengthening leadership competencies in emotional intelligence, servant leadership, accountability, operational excellence, and HR best practices to create exceptional experiences across every community.
• Support the creation and maintenance of talent review processes in partnership with HR leadership.

Employee Engagement

• Design and lead Sonida's employee engagement strategy, including survey cadence, analysis, and action planning.
• Partner with HRBPs and community leaders to translate engagement data into meaningful, community-level action plans.
• Champion recognition programs and initiatives that celebrate our people and reinforce our values in action.
• Monitor engagement trends and share regular insights with HR and senior leadership.

HR Process Standardization & Operational Excellence

• Support the programmatic framework for HR process standardization across all communities, designing the systems, workflows, and accountability structures that enable HRBPs and Talent Partners to apply processes consistently and compliantly.
• Build and maintain a library of HR process guides, SOPs, and decision trees that serve as the operational backbone for the field HR team.
• Partner with HRBPs and Talent Partners to identify process gaps, inconsistencies, and opportunities for improvement across the employee lifecycle.
• Establish accountability mechanisms and workflow checkpoints that allow the HR team to monitor process adherence and flag deviations early.
• Lead change management efforts when new HR processes or policies are introduced, ensuring adoption is supported by training and clear communication.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Organizational Development, Education, Business Administration, or a related field required. Equivalent combination of education and experience will be considered.
• A master’s degree in organizational development, HR, or a related discipline is a plus.
• 7+ years in HR, L&D, or organizational development with progressive responsibility; experience in multi-site or field-based organizations strongly preferred.
• Experience in multi-site or field-based organizations strongly preferred.
• Strong project management skills with experience building and managing multiple workstreams simultaneously; familiarity with tools like Smartsheet, Asana, or Microsoft Planner/Project.
• Confident facilitator who can deliver programs for audiences ranging from frontline hourly team members to senior leaders.
• Proven ability to design learning curricula from scratch, including needs analysis, content development, and measurement strategies.
• Comfortable working within HRIS/LMS platforms (UKG experience a plus) and Microsoft 365, including Teams for virtual delivery.
• Familiarity with employee engagement or survey platforms
• Demonstrated ability to design, document, and implement HR processes and workflows at scale, with a track record of driving consistency across distributed teams.
• Genuine passion for people, culture, and the belief that how we orient and develop our teams directly shapes the resident experience.
• Experience managing or developing direct reports; ability to build a small, high-performing team and influence without authority across a matrixed organization.