Peer learning is a core tenet of the National Fund’s work. We believe that there is power in sharing experiences, resources, and practices with one another in a cohort setting. That is why the Activating Industry Leaders team leads the Activate Employers Community of Practice, a peer learning group primarily centered around discussing dynamics and practices related to workforce intermediaries’ relationships with employer partners.

In the first six months of 2025, this community of practice covered great topics led by very impressive employers and workforce professionals who were kind enough to share their expertise. Here are a few highlights we’re excited to share with you!

Journey Maps as Training Tools

What better way to learn than by developing a tool? That’s exactly what our partners at the Hawai’i Workforce Funders Collaborative thought of when it came time to create a project for their summer intern.

Using the National Fund’s Career Navigation Journey Maps as a guide, the intern interviewed four local healthcare professionals about their career journeys and created maps to show Gen Z jobseekers that not every journey is linear. Not only did she learn about career journeys, but she also strengthened her interview and project management skills during the process

Increasing Equitable Workplaces Through Human-Centered Design

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a principle that emphasizes shifting power dynamics to center worker voice and values the perspectives of people closest to the problem. That’s why HCD is so effective for creating solutions that get to the root challenges that companies face.

In March we were joined by a healthcare employer from Connecticut, a restaurant owner from Ohio, and their local workforce partners to discuss lessons they’ve learned and successes that came from using an HCD approach in their work, including:

• How shifting some decision-making to frontline employees can help executives, doctors, and other leaders focus on the challenges that require their full attention.
• How ensuring diversity across experiences, roles, and authority in the HCD team can drive stronger solutions.
• How a whole-scale change approach through HCD can ultimately improve a company’s financial performance while also creating new economic advancement opportunities for its workers.

Check out this  blog to learn more.

Exploring Fee-for-Service

One topic that continues to come up is fee-for-service opportunities. There’s a wealth of valuable expertise in the workforce development field with respect to training employees, developing apprenticeships or career pathways, or improving workplace dynamics. Historically, many of these services have been subsidized by federal and state governments and well as philanthropy. As the funding landscape remains uncertain, workforce providers are increasingly thinking about how to develop effective business models for their services.

We were joined by the owner of a heating and plumbing company and a healthcare employer to shed some light on which offerings may help employers fill gaps in their internal workforce programs and strategies to effectively make the case for investment to business leaders. Employers emphasized the basics: return on investment data, the smart use of pilots, understanding sector operations and nuance, and strategies to scale and sustain successful interventions. Overall, knowing your audience and building trust are major factors in successfully securing a fee for service opportunity.

What’s Next?

There are still six more months to the year, which means there is a lot more ground to cover. That includes a public webinar, Job Quality and the Childcare Crisis, on August 19, 2025 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. Here’s a summary of what we’re planning to discuss:

For many parents of young children in the US, childcare is prohibitively expensive, costing nearly as much as their rent or mortgage payments. This makes childcare a workforce issue in multiple ways, as companies struggle to keep parents who are otherwise in their prime working years on payroll.

In this webinar, we’ll explore the tangled challenges of childcare and workforce from multiple perspectives. We’ll hear from childcare workers and administrators who are trying to make jobs in their sector more rewarding and worthwhile. And we’ll also hear from employers who are innovating in the childcare space, including offering subsidized care for their employees, and organizing across municipalities and states to solve this challenging problem for good.

More information will be available soon, so be sure to watch your inbox for updates.