Learning and Leadership Development

Group of male and female colleagues walking and discussing whilst wearing PPG jackets

Our people are our most important competitive advantage.

We help people develop and succeed at every level of their careers through extensive resources and capability-building.

97%

of eligible employees participated in the performance review process

230

frontline leaders trained through our Essentials of Leadership for Operations Program

23

languages supported through LinkedIn Learning training programs

Enterprise learning needs assessment

PPG launched a comprehensive Enterprise Learning Needs Assessment in 2024 to review existing learning and leadership development programs, identify critical skills and better align our learning portfolio with business goals. Throughout 2025, we leveraged insights from the assessment, including external benchmarking and internal focus group feedback, to refine and prioritize our learning and leadership development programs, ensuring they better meet the needs of our global workforce. We are continuing to develop more cohesive training offerings with a stronger emphasis on critical capabilities, such as strategic execution and people leadership. We plan to continue sharpening our program content, defining skills expectations at every career stage and building tangible growth pathways to support our employees' long-term development.

Building English Language skills with the PPG Language Improvement Program

As a global company that operates in 50 countries, we rely on multi‑lingual talent to help us connect with diverse audiences and operate effectively across markets. PPG’s Language Improvement Program is a global learning and development initiative for employees to develop, practice and improve language skills. The program builds confidence in real-world situations by combining self-paced learning with live interaction and mentoring, allowing participants to strengthen communication skills while continuing their daily responsibilities.

In 2025, the five-month program was organized into three phases: effective communication and collaboration, adaptability and continuous learning and accountability, critical thinking and problem solving. Each phase blended two virtual activities on our language learning platform with one live networking activity, allowing participants to build skills while connecting with peers and mentors across regions.

The 2025 cohort included employees from APAC, LATAM and EMEA, supported by mentors from each region. The program delivered strong engagement and learning outcomes, receiving a combined participant and mentor Net Promoter Score of 95 out of 100. These results show the program helped our employees build the skills they need to grow and contribute at PPG.

Plant-Focused Development Programs

PPG continues to invest in robust development pathways for current and emerging plant leaders through cohort-based programs that blend external online learning and group coaching with internally led opportunities for peer-to-peer learning.

Our Plant Leadership Acceleration Program supports high-potential employees with a structured curriculum designed to prepare them for plant manager roles. PPG also offers an incumbent Plant Manager Development Program, which focuses on enhancing the leadership skills of current plant managers and connecting them with peers from around the world through a comprehensive learning and networking experience.

In 2025, 45 plant leaders from across the globe participated in these programs, strengthening key capabilities, including networking, conflict resolution, financial acumen and operational excellence. These programs are designed to reinforce PPG's growth culture by helping plant managers deepen their leadership skills and enhance the performance and resilience of PPG’s manufacturing network. Participation is expected to grow to 49 plant leaders in 2026.

Frontline Leader Program

Our frontline leaders play a critical role in fostering the workplace culture and learning environment at our sites. PPG's frontline leader program is designed to strengthen our culture of growth and innovation among leaders in manufacturing and distribution roles. The program focuses on core pillars of leadership, people management, safety, quality, continuous improvement and production, providing participants with clear skill frameworks and consistent learning paths. These resources help frontline leaders maintain high levels of engagement, strengthen PPG culture at their sites and drive employee performance.

The frontline leader program continues to serve as a key enabler of operational excellence across our global operations, particularly in areas such as safety and quality. In 2025, the learning and development team held in-person integration sessions at numerous sites, meeting directly with local leaders to discuss existing frontline initiatives and embed the global program into day-to-day operations. We trained more than 230 frontline leaders in the Essentials of Leadership component of this program, including 170 in the U.S. and Canada and 60 in Latin America. As part of this initiative, we partnered with the environment, health and safety (EHS) team to deliver safety training to frontline leaders and their teams, and provided EHS resources in 11 languages.

Delivering more accessible and inclusive training programs

PPG is committed to enhancing the accessibility and inclusivity of our learning programs. We have taken significant steps to ensure our training programs are accessible and meet the diverse needs of PPG employees. Our learning and development team regularly reviews our training offerings to ensure programs are available in multiple languages. We have invested in AI software that has capacity to translate educational content into over 60 languages globally, focusing primarily on the 11 languages most spoken across PPG. We use a third-party software platform to create our eLearning modules, which supports screen reader capability and tab navigation to improve accessibility for people with visual or motor impairments. We have also improved closed captioning to better support hearing-impaired employees and non-native speakers. Together, these changes help ensure that more people at PPG can access the resources they need to succeed and grow in their careers.

Our approach to learning and leadership development

Our approach to leadership development focuses on experience, exposure and education. Read more...

We offer a wide array of development opportunities that include performance and learning plans, extensive on-the-job training, ongoing formal and informal feedback, structured development programs, peer learning opportunities, coaching and mentoring.

PPG’s Corporate Training Governance Council oversees our training programs. The Council consists of representatives from across the business and is focused on ensuring compliance, cost-effectiveness, standardization and alignment with organizational priorities across our training programs. The council provides ongoing oversight to maintain high compliance standards, optimize the effectiveness and consistency of our training, and address gaps or emerging needs.

Leadership development

When filling leadership positions, we balance internal promotions and external hiring to leverage the skills already present across the enterprise while bringing new talent and unique ideas and experience into the company. We provide development opportunities across PPG so our people can grow into effective leaders and advance in their careers.

Highlights of our structured leadership development programs include:

Essentials of Leadership: Essentials of Leadership (EOL), focuses on developing leaders and managers across the organization. We offer a general program for people leaders across the business as well as an industrial version tailored for frontline leaders. Each version connects educational content to real-life examples and scenarios based on where teams are located in the business. EOL provides new leaders with the right mindset, skills and tools to lead more effectively, which ultimately builds engagement from participants and their teams. The program is delivered in six modules by virtual or in-person sessions. EOL's structured curriculum ensures global alignment and consistent guidance for developing managers and supervisors.
Emerge: The Emerge Leadership Development Program helps guide our future executives through a nine-month program. Participants are nominated for participation based on exemplary performance in a people leadership role and potential to grow into a larger-scale role. The program consists of two in-person workshops, facilitated sessions focused on peer coaching, mentorship, networking, and leadership meetings that focus on Business Acumen, Commercial Excellence, and Operational Excellence. Participants complete a group capstone project to apply their learning to real business challenges.
Leader as a Coach: The Leader as a Coach program aims to develop coaching capabilities in our senior people leaders. Over three months, participants in the program learn how to enhance trust with their teams, improve their coaching skills, increase their confidence as leaders and ultimately drive better business performance.
ONE PPG Mentorship: Any employee at PPG can access our online One PPG mentoring program. The program aims to support insightful, respectful connections. Prospective mentors are asked to take a series of eLearning courses to understand what good mentorship looks like, and then set up a profile with their qualifications. Employees interested in signing up as mentees can search through profiles and select the right mentor to support their personal development.

Learning and skill development

We invest in learning and skill development initiatives to ensure our employees are properly trained, productive and engaged at every stage of their careers. Our global learning strategy is focused on delivering training to the right people, at the right place and at the right time. We leverage our performance management process to ensure our employees discuss with their managers and document their growth goals every year. This allows them to explore new projects, leverage existing programs, tools and resources to develop individual needs and interests, and, in turn, develop organization-wide capabilities. Our ongoing offerings include a range of virtual facilitator-led workshops, self-paced external learning platforms and Evolve, our Learning Management System (LMS) available through Workday.

When employees complete an instructor-led course, we ask them to respond to a brief survey on their experience. We calculate net promoter scores (NPS) based on these survey results and review any programs that fall short of our expectations. We also hold focus groups with program participants to understand the strengths and weaknesses of our programs. These feedback mechanisms give our dedicated training team an indication of how we can improve our suite of training modules over time.

Highlights of our ongoing internal training programs include:

Developing sales capabilities: We offer a suite of virtual training modules and virtual instructor-led sessions based on our best-in-class sales training programs. Employees in our sales organization can take the Selling Skills program to learn how to develop rapport with clients, close sales and retain customers. Managers are encouraged to take courses on professional sales coaching to help develop their teams. This allows us to provide our sales organization with a development process to effectively hire, develop and reward sales employees.
Supporting professional development: We offer all of our employees access to virtual career growth workshops to support their professional development. The workshops guide employees through the process of creating a career development plan and preparing for effective conversations with management about their professional growth. We also provide training to our people managers to ensure they understand how to support their teams, including best practices for empowering their staff and giving useful feedback.
CliftonStrengths Workshop: This online assessment measures employees' talents in each of the 34 CliftonStrengths themes, representing what people do best, ultimately enabling them to hone their strengths. Participants have the ability to learn about their individual strengths, their co-workers' strengths and their team's strengths through a series of interactive exercises. Teams using a strengths-based approach demonstrate more confidence, higher engagement and are more likely to achieve their goals.
360 feedback: Used to assist leaders in understanding their strengths and weaknesses, this tool gathers feedback from key stakeholder groups on how they lead and manage. As a result, participants are more aware of their strengths and development opportunities and how their self-perception could differ from how they are viewed by others. The tool was built to ensure that managers are embodying and living our culture every day.
Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i): PPG utilizes EQ-i to measure workplace performance and leadership effectiveness within the context of emotional intelligence. The tool looks at five areas: self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal, decision making and stress management. The report also provides a detailed interpretation of how effectively employees are using the EQ competencies and how, by balancing these competencies, they can improve wellbeing, workplace and leadership performance, interpersonal relationships and communication.

We supplement our internally managed training by providing access to external learning platforms. Examples of the resources available to our employees include:

Learn@ Library: Learn@ Library is an internal hub that connects PPG employees to a curated range of external training and development resources. It helps employees easily find and access learning opportunities that support their growth, skills development and career progression.
LinkedIn Learning: LinkedIn Learning is the world’s largest learning platform and offers over 16,000 expert-led courses on leadership, technical skills, business acumen, technology and more. PPG employees can learn any time, earn course certificates and receive personalized learning recommendations.
Busuu Language Learning: Busuu provides PPG employees with access to learning 14 languages through personalized learning paths, self-guided lessons and live conversation classes with native speakers. Busuu enables continued collaboration and learning across PPG for all of our global employees at any level, any time.