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 designing and sustaining values-centered elements of the participant employee experience in ESEs, which can increase participant employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention. You will learn the definitions of and key mechanisms behind amplifying participant employee experiences by fostering high-quality connections, belonging, and mattering in the workplace. Then, using examples from effective ESEs, we explore three ways to operationalize these concepts in practice: continual feedback loops, breaking bad news, and reducing friction in the design of the participant employee experience. You will walk away with a design template to quickly put this new learning into practice at your ESE.

Speakers:

This session features participant and coach perspectives and testimonials about building and sustaining a quality participant worker experience in ESEs, and will be facilitated by Dana Emanuel (she/her). Dana is New Moms’ Senior Director of Learning and Innovation. Having previously led New Moms’ employment social enterprise, Bright Endeavors, and served as a coach in New Moms’ workforce development program. Dana now co-develops and facilitates training for colleagues and peer human service providers/ESEs with coaching and program design strategies. 

 Session Goals & Key Takeaways:
By the end of the session you will have:

• Learned new definitions and research-backed mechanisms for strengthening high-quality connections, belonging, and mattering in the workplace
• Explored methods for putting these values-based concepts into practice through feedback loops, breaking bad news templates, and design edits to the participant worker experience
• Designed a brief “road test” to put one of these new concepts into action in your ESE immediately after the session

This session is ideal for:

• ESE staff who partner directly with participant workers
• ESE managers and leadership staff who have supervisory responsibilities and/or influence program design, policies, and materials development
• HR professionals in the impact space who want to incorporate research-backed methods for improving workplace culture

Below is the session recording and accompanying materials

About The Hub @ New Moms

New Moms believes in sharing what we’ve learned. Through The Hub @ New Moms, we train and consult with peer organizations, foundations, and social enterprises nationally using our Executive Skills Coaching strategies and best practices to create equity-driven change.