HR Manager – Learning and Development – Lively Minds

Job Title:  HR Manager: Learning and Development

Organisation: Lively Minds

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda, Ghana or Pan Africa

Reports To: Head of HR

Salary Band: 5

Contract Type: Fulltime

Salary: GBP 29,084 – 36,355 per annum (gross)

About Organisation:

Lively Minds is on a mission to get quality early childhood development (ECD) to millions of rural pre-schoolers by activating the power of parents. There’s no debate: the early childhood years are critical for a child’s lifelong success and well-being. But, a staggering 250 million children globally miss out, the majority of whom live in rural communities in the Global South. Current solutions don’t offer the quality, affordability, urgency or scale needed.

Our big idea: parents are the “sleeping giant” of early learning. Children spend most of their early years at home, yet rural parents – particularly mothers – often lack the information, confidence, and support to provide nurturing care and early learning. Current solutions don’t offer the quality, affordability, urgency or scale needed.

We provide technical advisory support to governments enable them integrate proven, evidence based, practical ECD solutions into their existing systems, adapting to their context, resources and priorities. This enables them to be the doer and the payer from the start and at scale.

Our parent-powered model gets simple, practical, play- based activities into the hands of parents through existing pre-primary and community systems, ensuring it is low- cost, scalable, and sustainable. Governments deliver and fund the programme themselves, using their own resources and staff, while we provide technical advisory support, tools, and implementation guidance to ensure quality and scalability. We complement this with innovative mass-reach solutions, including radio programming in local languages, equipping millions of parents with practical tools and ideas to support their children’s development.

We are an award-winning, ambitious and fast-moving organisation, now piloting new approaches in Ethiopia and The Gambia, and exploring further country partnerships. Our ambition is bold: to lead a global paradigm shift and make parent-powered ECD the norm.

To find out more about our programme, please visit www.livelvminds.org.

Job Summary:   The HR Manager will have a strong focus on Learning & Development, leading Lively Minds’ approach to learning, talent development and succession planning to build the skills, leadership capability and talent pipeline needed to deliver our organisational priorities and support future growth. The role will design and deliver practical, high-impact learning initiatives, identify current and future capability gaps, strengthen succession readiness for critical roles and proactively manage key people risks.

As a senior member of the HR team, the HR Manager will also provide high-level operational and strategic HR support across the organisation and deputise for the Head of HR when required, ensuring continuity in the delivery of key people priorities and contributing to a high-performing, learning-focused and positive workplace culture.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Learning & Development Strategy and Delivery

• Develop and implement a forward-looking L&D strategy and annual learning plan that builds the capabilities required to deliver organisational priorities, support scale and strengthen performance.
• Use organisational priorities, performance data and skills/behavioural gap analysis to identify critical capability gaps and translate these into targeted development priorities.
• Develop practical, cost-effective learning interventions, including leadership programmes, bootcamps, cultural briefings and other development initiatives, using an appropriate blend of internal expertise, peer learning and external providers.
• Facilitate training sessions and learning activities, coordinate the development and adaptation of learning content and materials, and ensure sessions are appropriately documented and accessible for future use.
• Promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing and accountability for development, while building external peer networks and identifying relevant practices and innovations that can strengthen organisational capability.
• Establish appropriate quality assurance and evaluation mechanisms, including learner feedback, trainer evaluations and impact assessments, to determine whether learning interventions are improving capability and performance and to continuously strengthen programme quality.

Succession Planning & People Risk Management

• Partner with the Senior Management Team (SMT) to identify critical and vulnerable roles, assess succession risk and maintain a robust organisation-wide succession plan that strengthens leadership, builds strong talent pipeline and ensures organisational continuity.
• Develop and monitor targeted development plans for identified successors, using learning, coaching, mentoring, stretch assignments and cross-functional exposure to progressively build readiness for future roles.
• Develop structured leadership and career development pathways that build the capabilities required for current and emerging leadership roles and strengthen the organisation’s internal talent pipeline.
• Use performance, competency and talent data to identify high-potential employees, development needs and readiness for progression, ensuring development investment is targeted where it will have the greatest organisational impact.
• Proactively identify roles and talent where loss could significantly affect organisational delivery and work with managers to develop appropriate retention, knowledge-transfer and risk-mitigation actions.
• HR Insights, Reward & Organisational Effectiveness
• Analyse key workforce metrics, including turnover, absence, retention, recruitment and learning effectiveness, and provide the Head of HR with actionable insights to inform workforce decisions and priorities.
• Undertake periodic salary benchmarking and pay equity reviews and provide recommendations that support internal equity, external competitiveness, career progression and retention.
• Champion agreed diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, monitor progress and use relevant workforce data to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Supervise and develop the HR Coordinator, setting clear expectations and ensuring HR administration/operations, systems and services are delivered accurately, efficiently and to a consistently high standard.

Broader HR Management Responsibilities

• Support the Head of HR to:
• Implement HR priorities aligned with organisational goals, including organisational development, change management, culture-building and workforce initiatives.
• Support end-to-end recruitment and ensure new employees receive consistent, high-quality onboarding and induction that enables them to become effective quickly.
• Support the fair, timely and consistent management of disciplinary, grievance and other employee relations matters in accordance with organisational policies and applicable legislation.
• Ensure consultants and contractors, including those engaged in new-entry countries, receive appropriate onboarding and understand the organisation’s expectations, values and behaviours.
• Design and implement practical initiatives that strengthen employee motivation, trust, wellbeing, connection and retention.
• Review, update and support the effective implementation of HR policies and procedures, ensuring they remain relevant, legally compliant and aligned with organisational needs and good practice.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

Essential

• At least 2-3 years in a similar role with an additional 4-6 year background in a more generalised HR position.
• Deep understanding and application of learning concepts, frameworks, theories, instructional design, and organizational needs.
• Experience in conducting job evaluation and development of salary structure based on salary benchmarking and localisation across multiple countries.
• Experience in succession plan development and talent development.
• Experience in creating and implementing L&D strategies for an organisation that spans multiple countries (preferably within the Global South).
• Experience in developing and delivering training programmes and achieving proven results.
• Ability to develop practical approaches that support employees to apply and embed learning in their day- to-day work.
• Ability to conduct post-training evaluations and use feedback to reinforce learning and address gaps.
• Good understanding of the labour laws in Ghana, Uganda and UK.
• Ability to manage a complex and varied work load and to work under pressure.

Desirable

• Ability to analyse training data, participant feedback and performance outcomes to identify trends and continuously improve L&D interventions.
• Experience coaching others, a coaching certification is desirable.
• Experience in change management.
• Behaviour-change experience.
• Worked in a charity or NGO operating within or across the Global South

To succeed in this role, you must:

• Be passionate about developing others and love to find creative and fun ways to enable others to learn and thrive.
• Have a solid background in more generalised HR management but a spike in L+D.
• Be an excellent planner, facilitater and communicator- you thrive when organising practical learning opportunities for others, whether this is in virtual or formal classroom settings, or by finding clear opportunities in day-to-day activities.
• Be able to coach and deliver feedback to trainers so that they improve the quality of their work.
• are a great trainer yourself who can flex your style and approach to fit different audience types.
• Be flexible to travel to Uganda, Ghana and other countries that the organisation is expanding to.
• Be able to work on multiple tasks while maintaining high quality standards.
• Bring external best practice and learning to Lively Minds by networking, attending conferences and having a large appetitie for learning and continous development

What We Offer

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience
• 25 days annual leave
• Health insurance
• Pension contribution
• Learning and development opportunities

How to Apply:

Interested candidates are encouraged to read the Job Description carefully before applying to ensure they understand the role and meet the required criteria.

To apply, please complete the pre-screening questions and submit vour updated CV using the link below:

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PLEASE NOTE – Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Deadline:  15th September 2026 by midnight GMT

For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline

Our Stance

Lively Minds operates a strict Safeguarding Policy and is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of children and vulnerable people. As part of our recruitment process, the suitability of successful candidates will be verified through appropriate background checks including professional references and police checks.

Lively Minds is fully committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and to providing equal opportunities throughout our recruitment process. We want this commitment to be reflected in the diversity of the people who work for us, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, identities, experiences and perspectives.

We are committed to ensuring that recruitment decisions are based on merit, skills, experience and suitability for the role, and that all candidates are treated fairly and with respect throughout the recruitment process.