As people’s careers progress, they establish a professional profile comprised of a resume, portfolio, performance reviews, letters of recommendation, degrees, certifications, memberships, and other career achievements. Often, these paper-based items are dispersed and sometimes forgotten over time. However, they are all critical pieces of employees’ professional identities that make them unique in the workforce. Even more important, they represent their skills and competencies to potential or current employers.
What is the answer? Enter the world of digital credentials.
A Digitized, Verifiable Professional Profile
At the foundational level, candidates convert their professional profiles into digitized and verifiable credentials that enterprises access quickly and securely when recruiting or promoting staff. In today’s aggressive labor market, having digital credentials is a competitive differentiator in the workforce. It separates a candidate’s application from random submissions, thus streamlining the selection process and generating cost savings for the hiring enterprise through greater efficiencies.
With enterprises utilizing direct sourcing, talent marketplaces, and other online recruiting platforms and tools, digital credentialing provides a centralized, verifiable means to elevate an organization’s talent acquisition strategy. While a digitized and verifiable professional profile is a game-changer for those candidates adopting the technology, it represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of the potential for digital credentials in both the workforce and the workplace.
Digital Credentialing for Granular Achievements
The future for digital credentials lies in digital badges and certificates — which support many Future of Work objectives. The graphic element of a badge or certificate combined with metadata describing the knowledge and activities required to earn it is innovative for verifying competencies.
Whether it’s an enterprise, university, or professional association, developing its own digital credentials to support advancement and motivation can pay dividends. Credly, a leading provider in the digital credential space, says, “Digital credentials save your organization money on marketing, human resources, and recruiting costs, which has an impact on the financial bottom line.”
Credly highlights the benefits of digital badges and certificates in several settings. Let’s explore some of those implementations and the value they provide employees and job candidates.
Universities Focused on Marketable Skills and Achievements
More colleges and universities are thinking beyond the traditional transcript for their graduates. The goal for many is to help students bridge the gap between academics and employment. Classes and grades lack evidence of actual capabilities. However, providing workshops, internships, and other opportunities to showcase knowledge and real-world execution and earning a digital certificate of achievement, makes students more marketable to potential employers.
Professional Associations Provide Visible and Shareable Digital Credentials
Many associations attract members through credentials, certifications, or educational offerings. Those achievements are often awarded through paper-based certificates that members proudly frame and display in their offices or cubicles. However, times are changing. While a tangible certificate is still an option, it should be complemented by a digital credential that is sharable online. Credly says this serves two purposes: 1) members can share the credential on social media, job boards, resumes, and email signatures and 2) it provides the association with visibility and marketing opportunities by having its digital credential appear on LinkedIn and other platforms.
Enterprises Implement Digital Badges and Certificates to Engage and Retain Employees
As organizations hire permanent employees and contingent workers, having transparency in their complete skillsets is critical to react appropriately to evolving markets and workforce fluctuations. Equally important is employee engagement to attract and retain workers, especially those seeking advancement opportunities. Digital credentialing is playing a major role in those initiatives.
Enterprises are offering their own digital badges and certificates through learning tracks and skill-based activities. Earning a badge or certificate verifies competencies with evidence that the organization can use for talent visibility and career progression initiatives while giving workers shareable online recognition of their achievements.
IBM Goes Global with Digital Badge Program
Few enterprises are doing digital badges as successfully as IBM. The company’s IBM Global Skills Initiative was launched to ensure the global IT workforce was current and competitive in its skills. A decentralized IT structure presented challenges in identifying skilled experts. However, by offering four types of digital badges across learning tracks from foundational to expert level, the company has been able to verify skills and competencies.
Credly shares some of the outcomes from the IBM Global Skills Initiative:
- Powerful data analytics and reporting features that enable IBM to produce global heat maps of talent.
- Linkage with talent acquisition and HR systems to enhance visibility and understanding of employee career planning and progression.
- Ability to track skills at the nano level and make them discoverable to HR and hiring managers in real time.
- Being able to differentiate employees by skills, while seeing a complete view of the individual’s broader competencies and abilities.
The program grew immensely popular among workers, leading to 195 countries represented in the skills registry; 92% of badge earners saying the badge verifies job skills; and 87% of badge earners feeling more engaged with the company and motivated to learn more. In 2018 alone, there were 1,600 different badged activities. This has paid off in IBM’s marketing efforts as well — 200 million social media impressions (or an equivalent of $39,000 per month in marketing value.
According to Credly, “Digital credentials allow a company to create a culture of recognition, rather than just awarding participation trophies for showing up. Digital credentials allow managers to see the achievements of their most dedicated and engaged employees. With access to real insights, companies can make more-informed human capital decisions.”
