Jaques F. Vermeulen
Helping Organizations Build High-Performing Teams Through Learning, Operations & Capability Development
Learning & Development | Learning Operations | Talent Development
I build learning and operations systems that scale - 840+ learner cohorts, multi-site HRIS rollouts, and 90% fewer audit discrepancies.🌍 15+ Years | 🌏 3 Countries | 🎓 M.Ed. | 🏆 70+ Certifications | 💻 APAC Remote-First📍 Currently in China | Relocating to Lipa City, Batangas | 13(a) Permanent Resident | No Employer Sponsorship Required
ABOUT
Building capability is more than delivering training, it's about creating systems that help people perform at their best.Throughout my career across South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and China, I've worked at the intersection of operations, HR, learning, and leadership. Whether leading automotive departments, implementing HR systems, or designing learning programs for multicultural teams, I've consistently focused on one outcome: helping organizations improve performance through people.Today, I specialize in designing scalable learning ecosystems, operational frameworks, and compliance-focused training that enable distributed teams to work confidently, consistently, and efficiently.Rather than viewing Learning & Development as a support function, I see it as a strategic business capability that drives operational excellence, strengthens employee engagement, and supports sustainable growth.My experience combines operational leadership, talent development, cross-cultural communication, and governance, allowing me to bridge the gap between business objectives and workforce capability.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
🌍 15+ Years of Leadership Experience🌍 International Experience Across South Africa, Saudi Arabia & China🎓 Master of Education (M.Ed.)🏆 70+ Professional Certifications👥 840+ Learners Supported👨💼 30+ Employee Teams Led📈 12% Department Profitability Improvement✔ 90% Reduction in Warranty Audit Discrepancies🔐 Cybersecurity & GRC Certifications
▶️INTRODUCTION VIDEO
WHY ORGANIZATIONS HIRE ME
Organizations don't hire Learning & Development professionals simply to deliver training, they hire them to improve performance.I help organizations:
✔ Build scalable onboarding programs✔ Design structured Learning & Development strategies✔ Standardize operational processes✔ Improve compliance readiness✔ Develop multicultural and distributed teams✔ Strengthen employee capability✔ Implement HRIS platforms and people operations✔ Align learning initiatives with measurable business outcomes
The result?Learning that improves performance, strengthens compliance, supports business growth, and creates lasting organizational capability.
Core Capabilities
Learning & Development
Learning Strategy
Learning Operations
Leadership Development
Instructional Design
Capability Building
Learning Technologies
Operational Excellence
SOP Development
Process Improvement
Workflow Optimization
Performance Management
Operational Governance
Business Process Design
HR & People Operations
Talent Acquisition
HRIS Administration
Employee Relations
Onboarding
Performance Management
Workforce Development
Compliance & Governance
Security Awareness
SOC 2 Readiness
ISO/IEC 27001
NIST CSF
Risk Management
Internal Controls
EXPERIENCE
English Instructor | Qihua Bilingual Academy | China | Aug 2024 – Present
Applying instructional design principles at scale - building, delivering, and iterating structured learning programs for a cohort of 840+ learners across 24 weekly sessions.
Designed differentiated curriculum content for groups of 30–35 students across multiple proficiency levels, translating broad learning objectives into structured, session-by-session delivery frameworks.
Built and maintained a learner performance tracking system covering progress benchmarks, academic records, and reporting outputs for a high-volume cohort - the same data discipline that drives effective corporate training evaluation.
Applied behavioral management and engagement frameworks to maintain delivery consistency and maximize learning outcomes across all sessions.
Collaborated with a cross-functional teaching team to standardize instructional practices across the school's bilingual curriculum, improving cross-team delivery alignment.
Project Manager (HRIS & Curriculum Development) | Shane English | China | 2022 – 2024
Led a dual-mandate role combining people systems implementation with curriculum redesign across a distributed three-site school network.
Directed full-cycle implementation of the HR.my HRIS platform for a distributed team - digitizing personnel records, streamlining onboarding and offboarding workflows, and reducing administrative overhead across 3 locations.
Redesigned curriculum frameworks and standardized instructional quality and delivery consistency across all sites.
Designed and facilitated professional development programs targeting identified skill gaps, directly supporting staff performance, capability growth, and retention across a multicultural team.
Managed recruitment pipelines, compliance documentation, and operational support for both local and international employees.
Academic & Training Operations Manager | Shane English | China | 2018 – 2022
Transformed a 30-member aftersales department through a combination of operational restructuring, compliance enforcement, and targeted workforce upskilling - demonstrating early that training design is an operational lever, not a support function.
Reduced warranty audit discrepancies by over 90% by auditing existing claim workflows, identifying systemic execution errors, and designing targeted compliance training for service and technical staff.
Cut inventory discrepancies by 35% through standardized process controls and team accountability frameworks embedded into daily operations.
Maintained client retention above 90% by integrating customer service standards directly into team training cycles and performance reviews.
Directed full HR operations via ADP HRIS - hiring, onboarding/offboarding, appraisals, leave management, and payroll collaboration for a 30-member department.
Aftersales & Service Manager | Kia Motors / Provincial Motors | South Africa | 2007 – 2018
Kia Motors
Transformed a 30-member aftersales department through a combination of operational restructuring, compliance enforcement, and targeted workforce upskilling - demonstrating early that training design is an operational lever, not a support function.
Reduced warranty audit discrepancies by over 90% by auditing existing claim workflows, identifying systemic execution errors, and designing targeted compliance training for service and technical staff.
Cut inventory discrepancies by 35% through standardized process controls and team accountability frameworks embedded into daily operations.
Maintained client retention above 90% by integrating customer service standards directly into team training cycles and performance reviews.
Directed full HR operations via ADP HRIS - hiring, onboarding/offboarding, appraisals, scheduling, leave management, and payroll collaboration for a 30-member department.
Provincial Motors
Drove a 12% improvement in service department profitability through operational cost-reduction initiatives and process standardization across a 20-member technical team.
Maintained a 95% customer satisfaction rate for service escalations through structured team training and proactive complaints handling frameworks.
Managed ADP HRIS for full HR operations - employee records and onboarding/offboarding in a high-volume environment.
Oversaw recruitment, training delivery, and grievance resolution across the department.
Earlier Roles
Earlier experience in service management and advisory roles in the automotive industry, building strong foundations in customer service, operations, and people management.
Learning Design Portfolio
Practical courses built for real operational challenges
Course 1First 90 Days: A Practical Onboarding Framework
Most companies spend six weeks recruiting, then hand new hires a laptop on day one and wonder why they flounder. This course gives whoever runs onboarding - a manager, team lead, or L&D partner - a practical framework built around three questions every new hire needs answered in week one. Includes a ready-to-use 30/60/90 onboarding plan template and completion certificate.
Course 2Audit & Compliance Basics for Frontline Teams
Audits aren't inspections to survive - they're the result of daily habits. This course translates compliance requirements into frontline discipline, covering what auditors actually check, the habits that stop errors before they start, and how to read an audit finding and turn it into a fix that holds. No jargon. No compliance-speak. Just the habits that keep records honest and audits boring.
Course 3Process Improvement You Can Actually Run
Process improvement doesn't need consultants or colored belts. This course teaches team leads to spot waste and bottlenecks on the floor, run a simple map-measure-change loop, and get their team to actually adopt the change so it sticks. Practical, plain-language, and built to be used immediately on a real process in your own workplace.
WRITING
Stop the Document Dump: A Practical 30/60/90-Day Onboarding Framework
A breakdown of how to turn passive, overwhelming remote onboarding into an active, milestone-driven process that builds confidence, reduces early turnover, and delivers measurable business outcomes.
Insights & Thought Leadership
Why Operational Excellence is Always a Byproduct of Trust
An exploration of modern management philosophy - and why sustainable business growth requires shifting from a culture of rigid compliance to an environment of capability and team autonomy.
The Myth of Control: Why Your Processes Are Bottlenecking Your People
A practical challenge to the instinct of adding more oversight when things go wrong - and why the real fix is always capability, not control. Covers SOP design, feedback culture, and building teams that execute without constant management intervention.
The Title Trap: Why Hiring for Keywords is Killing Real Talent
A direct challenge to keyword-driven recruitment and ATS filtering - arguing that rigid title matching screens out the most capable candidates in favor of the best resume writers. Covers transferable skills, the adaptability penalty, and how organizations should shift toward capability assessment over label matching.
SKILLS & COMPETENCIES
L&D Strategy & Instructional Design
Curriculum Architecture: Designing structured, term-based learning paths and educational frameworks aligned with global delivery standards.
Instructional Design (ID): Developing scalable, multi-modal workforce training programs that translate complex operational controls into practical lessons.
Remote Virtual Facilitation: Delivering high-engagement, interactive training sessions for distributed corporate teams across multiple time zones.
Targeted Capability Training: Bridging the gap between technical compliance metrics and frontline leadership communication.
Core Infrastructure & People Operations
HRIS Migration & Management: Hands-on administration of platforms like ADP and HR.my to streamline digital personnel records and payroll updates.
Full-Cycle Talent Acquisition: Managing remote, international recruitment pipelines and building structured onboarding and offboarding workflows.
Operational Governance: Creating and enforcing practical SOPs and internal controls to maintain organization-wide audit readiness.
Performance Strategy: Implementing transparent appraisal systems and engagement frameworks that drive workforce retention.
GRC, Security & Compliance Training
Security Awareness Programs: Designing internal training initiatives to mitigate human-centric risks, social engineering, and data handling errors.
Framework Implementation: Practical, working knowledge of SOC 2 (Trust Services Criteria) and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 control environments.
Audit Preparation & Evidence Mapping: Documenting internal controls, tracking corporate assets, and organizing evidence against NIST and ISO frameworks.
Data Privacy & Regulatory Compliance: Ensuring day-to-day organizational adherence to international data protection regulations and internal policies.
PROJECTS
Featured Project: L&D Operating Model
A practical, interactive 30/60/90-day onboarding and risk-management framework built in Notion. Designed to reduce ramp-up time, automate cohort operations, and integrate AI-assisted SOPs for scaling remote teams.
Enterprise L&D Operations & Governance FrameworkSOP-LD-OPS-001 | Version 1.0 | September 2026
🎯 The Problem:L&D operations can become fragmented when training requests, content development, LMS administration, vendor management, compliance, and performance measurement are handled independently.🛠️ The Solution:I designed an end-to-end L&D Operations & Governance Framework that establishes standardized processes for:📥 Learning intake & prioritization
📚 Content development & quality assurance
💻 LMS governance
🤝 Vendor management
🔐 Compliance & data governance
📊 Learning analytics
🔄 Continuous improvement🔍 What It Covers:📋 Learning Operations
Request intake & triage
Impact/effort prioritization
Course development controls
Content lifecycle management
🛡️ Governance & Compliance
GRC / security review
SOC 2 / ISO 27001 considerations
Learner-data controls
Vendor security
Audit checkpoints
💻 Learning Technology
LMS governance
HRIS integration
Access controls
Audit logging
Data retention
📈 Continuous Improvement
DMAIC
Root-cause analysis
KPI monitoring
Reporting cadence
RACI accountability💡 Why I Built This:My background sits across L&D, operations, HR, compliance, and process improvement. I wanted to demonstrate what that combination looks like in practice.Rather than creating another training course or instructional design sample, I built an operational framework showing how an L&D function could establish:✅ Clearer governance
✅ Measurable processes
✅ Stronger quality controls
✅ Better accountability
✅ Continuous improvementThe goal isn't simply to deliver training. It's to build the operational system around learning so that it can be managed, measured, improved, and governed.
AI-Assisted HR & L&D Workflows Guide
A comprehensive, no-code automation framework designed to eliminate administrative drag and reclaim 10+ hours per week for small HR and L&D operations. Features engineered prompt templates across 5 high-impact use cases - including automated Training Needs Analysis (TNA), SOP generation, content repurposing, performance feedback, and onboarding sequences - backed by a strict GRC and data privacy framework.
Feature Highlights:
•📊 Operational ROI: ~75%–85% reduction in task completion times across key workflows.
•⚙️ 5 Prompt Procedures: Copy-paste prompt templates engineered for immediate team deployment.
•🔐 GRC & Privacy Guardrails: Non-negotiable protocols for data anonymization and human-in-the-loop review.
Learning Operations Dashboard - Tracking Capability, Not Just Completion
Most L&D teams measure training success by completion rates. This dashboard measures what actually matters: whether capability transferred to the job.Built in Excel with five integrated sheets, this framework tracks the gap between training completion and on-the-job application - the single metric most L&D functions ignore entirely. It answers the questions leadership actually asks: Is this program working? Where are people getting stuck? What is this investment worth?WHAT IT INCLUDES:📊 Executive Dashboard - live KPIs including completion rate,
application rate, completion → application gap, time-to competency, cost per learner, and audit readiness score
📋 Program Tracking - program by-program performance across all active training initiatives with auto-calculated status flags💰 ROI Calculator - translates training costs into monetary value using real performance improvement data. Includes three verified use cases: 900% ROI on compliance training, 483% on process improvement, 300% on onboarding redesign🔍 Waste & Bottleneck Analysis - identifies where learners fail assessments, where time delays accumulate, and where rework costs are hiding📥 Data Input Template - monthly data entry with dropdown validation, auto-calculations, and a full SOP so any L&D administrator can maintain it without training🔑 Key Insight: A 15%+ completion → application gap is a red flag that training delivered but capability didn't transfer. This dashboard makes that gap visible before it becomes a performance problem.
Project TRUST: SOC 2 Compliance Initiative
📄 Policies
📊 Risk Register
✔ Controls
📈 Evidence MappingOutcome
Developed a structured SOC 2 readiness framework that helps organizations strengthen governance, document controls, and prepare for external audits.
SilverGate TalentHub: Recruitment & Onboarding Optimization
📄 Interview Guides
📄 SOPs
📄 Onboarding
📄 HR DocumentsOutcome
Created a standardized recruitment and onboarding framework to improve hiring consistency, candidate experience, and compliance.
IT Asset Inventory & Risk Mapping (Horizon Innovations Inc.)
A structured IT asset inventory and risk mapping project aligned with NIST cybersecurity principles. I documented key assets, mapped risks, and outlined controls to support stronger internal controls, more informed risk decisions, and better audit readiness.
CERTIFICATIONS
(Partial List – 70+ Earned)
All courses include completion certificates and are designed for immediate workplace application.
Process Improvement & Quality Management
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Professional Training - EDUCBA
Instructional Design & Corporate Training
Instructional Design Foundations & Applications - University of Illinois
Train the Trainer Professional Program - Boston University
Advanced Remote Workforce Operations & Digital Facilitation
Postgraduate Specialization in Language, Literature, & Education
Strategic Operations & People Leadership
Human Resource Associate Professional (aPHRi) - HRCI
Human Resources Analytics - University of California, Irvine
HR Management & Leadership Specialization - Macquarie University
The Manager's Toolkit: A Practical Guide - University of London
The Art of Negotiation - University of California, Irvine
GRC & Cybersecurity Frameworks
Master SOC 2 Implementer - Scytale
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Information Security Associate™
Information Systems Auditing, Controls and Assurance - HKUST
Google Cybersecurity Professional & Cisco CyberOps Associate
SSE Expert & SASE Advanced Security - Cato Networks
Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) - ISC2
CONTACT
Let's Build Better Learning TogetherI'm currently based in China and relocating permanently to Lipa City, Batangas, Philippines.As a 13(a) Permanent Resident, I can work locally without employer sponsorship and am actively seeking fully remote APAC and global opportunities in Learning & Development, Learning Operations, Talent Development, Enablement, and Organizational Development.Whether you're scaling a global learning function, strengthening compliance, or improving workforce capability, I'd welcome the opportunity to discuss how I can help.📧 Email: [email protected]
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jaques-vermeulen-24665611