In today’s business environment, where competition is fierce and skills gaps are endemic, employers face an ongoing challenge of identifying workers with in-demand skills. This task is exacerbated by the growing trend of individuals pursuing non-traditional methods to acquire new skills, making it more difficult than ever to recognize the right talent.
An effective solution: digital badging, a great way to showcase and verify new knowledge and skills. Digital badges are portable, data-rich representations of demonstrated skills and certifications. They can offer learning and development (L&D) leaders a meaningful way to develop their workforces’ skills, as well as promote internal mobility inside the organization. As employees earn digital badges, learning leaders can gain more insight into high-potential employees and look inside their talent pool, rather than this competitive labor market.
A Win-Win for L&D and Employees
Digital badging can motivate employees to take autonomy of their L&D and to look inside the organization for new career opportunities. This, in turn, can help learning leaders maintain sustainability in the organization, close skills gaps and promote a continuous learning culture.
In this article, we’ll review some of the benefits of digital badging programs and how they can help L&D leaders support a learning culture and close pesky skills gaps.
Reskilling for Career Mobility
Digital badging programs can be an effective reskilling initiative. When new positions open up within the organization, learning leaders can reference employees’ badges to qualify them for advancement in the company. This can be a great approach to identifying potential leaders, for example. It can also provide workers with a way to reskill and learn new tasks and functions outside of their current role so they can fulfill a new one inside of the organization. This not only helps close skills gaps, but also gives learning leaders an efficient way to fill open roles and jobs inside the organization.
Consider this example:
Let’s say the organization is expanding and needs an information technology (IT) support specialist for the new IT department. To prove proficiency, the L&D manager requests digital badges from employees. Employees can then earn a CompTIA A+ badge, for instance, to demonstrate a proficiency in baseline security skills for IT support roles: detect and remove malware, address privacy concerns and troubleshoot core service challenges. This can help learning leaders fill the position using their own talent pool.
Improving Employee Retention With Learning
Skills training, (i.e., upskilling and reskilling) has become an imperative as workers continue to seek opportunities for growth and development inside their company. A digital badging program can help L&D leaders retain these workers and increase the likelihood of them staying within the company long term. According to The University of Phoenix’s Annual Career Optimism Index 2022, research shows 68% of workers say they would stay with their employer through their career if the employer made an effort to upskill them, and 65% said they would stay throughout their career if the organization made an effort to reskill them.
A Gallup study found that employees who recently participated in an upskilling program can see an average increase of 8.6% in their salary ($8,000 on average higher than those who did not participate). In the same study, 48% of workers said they would switch to a new job if the employer offered skills training opportunities.
Best Practices for Implementing Badging Programs
Learning leaders who require an extra hand (e.g., teams of one) can partner with a training provider for digital credentialing — leveling up organizational learning initiatives in the process. Outsourcing the platform can provide learning departments with more bandwidth to focus on personalized training, thus increasing employee engagement in a future-ready workforce.
Learning leaders who partner with third-party venders can simplify the badging process and ensure optimal program performance. For example, Credly offers an end-to-end solution for issuing and managing digital badges, making the process for creating and monitoring a badge program easy and streamlined for HR and L&D professionals.
L&D leaders should also consider how to package the data from employees’ accomplishments and make it visible. For example, badges built on the Open Badges 2.0 can allow professionals to embed badges in emails, on their LinkedIn profiles and across other social media platforms. And after completing a course on LinkedIn Learning, a badge is added to the employee’s profile.
Building a Capable Workforce With Digital Badging
In-demand skills continue to change as our world of work and business needs evolve. The lack of talent and widening skills gaps are a persistent problem many organizations face. Micro-credentialing and digital badging can be an effective initiative to bridge skills gaps and enable individuals to acquire and demonstrate new capabilities. Learning leaders should take advantage of a digital badging program to deliver upskilling and reskilling opportunities, close skills gaps and maintain a sustainable and future-ready organization.
