About This Resource

This session was part of the 2025 Enhancing Workforce Success: Strategies for Lasting and Inclusive Employment CE Week series

Series Overview

This Continuing Education Week is designed to equip employment social enterprises and workforce development leaders with practical strategies to drive participant employees’ success. 

Throughout the series we will cover key topics related to this success journey, from skills development to long-term economic mobility. Each session will focus on both program development and operational implementation. And, along the way, we will provide tools to strengthen workforce programs and support employee growth. 

Topics include:

• Defining employee success for focus populations and applying human-centered design principles to the participant employee experience
• Equipping participant employees with skills, credentials, and support to attain high-quality employment
• Creating strategies for a supportive and engaging workplace that fosters participant employee growth and retention
• Establishing a strong workforce foundation by identifying core strengths and then key partnerships for strategic collaboration

This series is designed for employment social enterprise leaders, and more specifically, workforce development professionals, program managers, and HR teams seeking to enhance outcomes for their participant employees.

Session Description

This engaging and interactive session explores how to tailor your Employee Success Program to best support your focus population. You will learn how to define employee success, apply human-centered design principles, and develop a supportive and effective participant employee experience. Through reflection, case studies, and practical tools, you will gain strategies for aligning employee success programs with the unique needs of your workforce.

Facilitator:
This session is facilitated by REDF Sr. Manager Rony Cepeda-Mekosh, who you may remember from past CE-week, Accelerator, and Community Retreat sessions — we hope he’s a familiar face! Rony believes deeply in the power of venture philanthropy and ESEs to drive innovation and create stronger, healthier communities. 

Session Goals & Key Takeaways:

By the end of the session, you will have:

• Increased awareness of employee success programs and practiced designing an employee success program for a specific focus population
• Gained familiarity with employee discovery methods and how to view employees as customers within a product-market fit framework
• Used a practical tool to identify and document goals for supporting your focus population through your program model

This session is ideal for:

•  ESEs who are new to employee success programs and want to build a strong foundation
•  Staff who are new to the ESE field and want to understand effective employee support strategies
• ESE staff and workforce development professionals looking to refine their employee success programs

Below is the session recording and accompanying materials