Program Director, Workplace Experience Development (Hospitality)

About Cbre And Experience By Industrious CBRE manages more buildings than any company in the world. Experience by Industrious (EBI) is the hospitality operating system that runs inside them, bringing together CBRE’s scale across 7,000+ experience employees and 2,500+ buildings with a real hospitality model so that being in a building feels human. We want every person in those buildings, whether they are greeting a guest at the door or working behind the scenes, to keep the operation running, to feel that standard in how they are trained, supported, and led. This role exists because someone has to take what EBI has built centrally and make it real on the ground, reading the client, reading the team, and knowing what needs to shift so the standard lands. About The Role This is not a training job with a hospitality title. It is a hospitality operations role for someone who has run great teams and now wants to develop them. If you have spent your career holding high standards for how people are treated, and you understand that a hospitality mindset belongs as much in the back office and the loading dock as it does at the front desk, this role was designed with you in mind. Your most visible responsibility is the training and development program for this site. EBI provides the framework, your job is to take those centrally designed resources, shape them around the realities of this client and this building, and then lead the rollout so they actually stick. That means working closely with the site lead and the operational leads, understanding where the gaps are, and making sure the training reaches every part of the team, not just the people guests see first. Beyond the program itself, you are responsible for the day-to-day standard of how this building feels. That means coaching the managers who run the teams, having honest performance conversations when the standard slips, and making sure every person on site, whatever their role, understands what good looks like and why it matters. This is a high-profile account and the client will notice. Adapting a program for a specific building and client is not a clean process. Some things will land well; others will need to be reworked after the first session. You will be working across colleagues, vendors, and client contacts who have their own priorities and do not report to you. And you will be managing the training calendar while also being pulled into the day-to-day of a live operation. That tension is part of the job. The upside is real. This is a high-visibility account with genuine room to make your mark. The work you do here, the standards you set, the managers you develop, the culture you help build, will be noticed. If you want a role where your judgment matters and the client can feel the difference you make, this is it. A TYPICAL DAY MIGHT LOOK LIKE You spend the morning reviewing last week’s feedback with the site lead; not just the scores, but the specific moments behind them. A recurring complaint traced back to a back-of-house team that had never really been brought into the hospitality conversation; you spend time with the relevant manager figuring out what the training should look like and how to deliver it. After lunch you are adapting the next workshop module, the central version is good, but it needs to reflect how this client works. The afternoon is a Quarterly Business Review where you present what the program is doing, what it is not doing yet, and what you are changing. You end the day by writing up the coaching notes from the morning, so the conversation does not live only in your head. WINNING IN THIS ROLE MEANS The training program is running well, good participation, real behavior change, and a structure that holds even when you are not in the room. The site lead and the operational leads run a stronger team than they did before you arrived, and they can name specific conversations that changed how they work. The clients you support notice the difference, not just in the teams they see, but in how the whole building feels, and say so in QBRs and NPS responses. The standards you set are understood and held by the whole team, not just the managers, and not just the guest-facing staff. When something goes wrong, your name is the first one that comes up, because leadership has learned you will read it fast, own a solution, and communicate clearly until it is resolved. YOU’LL LOVE THIS ROLE AND SUCCEED AT IT IF You are a hospitality person first. Not because it is on your resume, but because you cannot walk through any part of a building, lobby, back office, service corridor, without reading the temperature in seconds. You have spent years in places where the standard applies to everyone, not just the people guests see first, and you carry that expectation everywhere you go. You have a genuine interest in developing people. You have taken individuals and teams from disengaged to proud, including people who never thought of themselves as part of the hospitality team. You understand that a culture only holds if it reaches the people working behind the scenes, not just the ones at the front of the room, and developing those people is the part you would do for free. You instinctively codify what works. Once you have done something well, your instinct is to write it down, so it does not depend on you being in the room. You have done this before — turned experience into something teachable that others can use. You thrive when influence matters more than authority. You get things done across functions, vendors, and client stakeholders who do not report to you. You do not wait for a reporting line to take ownership. You are comfortable at the executive level. You communicate up with clarity and appropriate brevity. Senior leaders trust you quickly because you tell them what is true, not what they want to hear. You are energized by a challenge that has not been done here before. Taking something that exists on paper and making it real inside a specific building, with a specific team and a specific client, is the kind of problem you find genuinely interesting. THIS MIGHT NOT BE THE RIGHT ROLE FOR YOU IF You want to be the one running the floor rather than the one developing the people who do. This role is primarily about building other people’s capability. You need to be handed a program and just deliver it. A big part of this job is taking what exists centrally and making it fit, which requires judgment, not just execution. You are primarily an L&D professional without deep hospitality operations experience. The credibility this role requires comes from having worked the floor, not from having designed the training for it. You find it frustrating when the work you put in gets handed to someone else to run. Some of what you develop here will become part of how the team operates independently of you, and that should feel like a win. You have managed buildings but not experiences. If your background is property or facilities management without direct hospitality operations, the daily rhythm of this role will feel unfamiliar. What You Bring We hire for skills over pedigree, but the strongest candidates will have: Deep hospitality operations experience. Years leading hospitality operations, hotels, managed workplaces, premium office environments, with at least one meaningful turnaround or launch you can walk us through. You know what good looks like because you have held the standard at every level of the operation, not just the parts guests see. A history of developing people. You have coached managers, run performance conversations, and leave every team more capable than you found it. You have done this at scale, not just one-on-one. Experience building training or standards programs. You have taken a training program or set of standards and made them work in practice, not just on paper. You know the difference between a curriculum that gets delivered and one that changes how people work. Range from the floor to the boardroom. You have collaborated directly with senior client stakeholders and gotten into the operational details, often on the same day. You adjust register without losing authenticity. STRONG PREFERENCES Experience in a role where you were responsible for standards and training, not just your own performance. Experience working across mixed teams, operational, support, and guest-facing, and bringing a consistent hospitality standard to all of them. A history of working directly with C-suite or equivalent senior client stakeholders. Experience taking centrally developed programs and adapting them for a specific team or client context. Comfort building and maintaining a learning management system or equivalent tracking infrastructure. Requirements 5+ years of hospitality or workplace operations leadership, with direct responsibility for team performance and client outcomes, ideally with experience leading both guest-facing and back-of-house or support teams. Experience with training or standards programs, adapting, delivering, and following through on them, not just attending. Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to produce materials that are clear, specific, and actionable for a non-specialist audience. Proficiency with Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint). Based on-site full time in New York City. Compensation Base salary range: $160,000 to $175,000 annually, depending on experience and qualifications. This role is also eligible for a discretionary annual performance bonus. CBRE offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage; a 401(k) with employer match; paid time off; wellness programs; and professional development support. Actual compensation will be determined based on the successful candidate’s skills, qualifications, and experience. LOCATION This role is based full-time at a single client site in New York City. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY CBRE is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. CBRE carefully considers multiple factors to determine compensation, including a candidate’s education, training, and experience. The minimum salary for the Workplace Experience Development Program Manager position is $140,000 annually and the maximum salary for the position is $160,000 annually. The compensation offered to a successful candidate will depend on their skills, qualifications, and experience. Successful candidates will also be eligible for a discretionary bonus based on CBRE’s applicable benefit program. This role will provide the following benefits: 401(K), Dental insurance, Health insurance, Life insurance, and Vision insurance. Equal Employment Opportunity: CBRE is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We have a long-standing commitment to providing equal employment opportunity to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, veteran status, political belief, or any other basis protected by applicable law. Candidate Accommodations: CBRE values the differences of all current and prospective employees and recognizes how every employee contributes to our company’s success. CBRE provides reasonable accommodations in job application procedures for individuals with disabilities. If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request via email at View email address on click.appcast.io or via telephone at View phone number on click.appcast.io (U.S.) and View phone number on click.appcast.io (Canada). #J-18808-Ljbffr CBRE