Digital Credentials Offer a Tool to Assess Rapidly Changing Skills

Technology changes faster than anyone could have imagined inthe not-too-distant past. Global trends, corporate changes, and other shiftingsands mean that, for many workers and in many industries, the shelf life ofemployee skills is shrinking rapidly; a 2014 Deloitte survey put it at 2.5 – 5years for technical skills.

The demand for rapid adoption of new skills poseschallenges: Individual workers fear that their skills are becoming obsolete andworry about upskilling. According to a Pew Research Center study, 54 percent ofadults in the American workforce “say that it will be essential for them to gettraining and develop new skills throughout their work life in order to keep upwith changes in the workplace.” An additional 33 percent said that such trainingwould be important but not essential. Training isn’t the only area whereemployees are in a predicament; as they acquire new skills, they need averifiable means to showcase those skills.

“The shelf life of skills is changing rapidly, yet the toolsthat we normally or traditionally provided to learners to record their skillshave been rather blunt instruments. They’ve tended to be left behind whenpeople move jobs, or move companies, or change from an educational environmentto the workforce,” said Jonathan Finkelstein, founder and CEO of Credly, a company that provides tools forcreating, issuing, and managing digital credentials.

Managers and executives also face new challenges. They mustconstantly assess their employees’ skills, anticipate what skills will beneeded, and ensure that employees and candidates have those skills or gettraining. Instructional designers need to anticipate demand for skills andcreate training before the lack of skills becomes a drag on a company’sbusiness.

Historically, academic degrees and professionalcertifications have been used to assess or verify employees’ skill sets. Thesemeasures are still valid in many fields but can be cumbersome in somefast-changing industries. They also may fail to capture skills that employeesacquire on the job.

One solution is the growing range of digital credentials.These badges and credentials offer alternative paths to assessing, validating,and describing skills. Credly’s recently announced partnership with DigitalMe, a UK-based digitalcredentials company, will expand the use of these credentials throughoutEurope.

“Not only are we seeing the development of more agile andflexible ways for people to learn and upskill, but also assessments thatproduce artifacts that people can showcase and use in real time and that areportable even as their context changes,” Finkelstein said. “We’re reallyhelping organizations contribute to or mint a form of currency that helps thelabor market operate.”

Pros and cons

Digital credentials offer many advantages. Such credentialsare:

• Flexible—Digital credentials can beissued within a company or by a school, a training provider, or a professionalassociation.
• Adaptable—Credentials can be created orupdated as new needs and areas of expertise emerge, and they can be used in anyfield or for any topic. Assessment might be based on eLearning, online orwritten assessment, observed performance, or other criteria defined by theissuing organization.
• Portable—Individuals who earn acredential can display the badge anywhere and take it with them to their nextjob. “Individuals wind up with a denomination of a credential or currency thatactually speaks the language of employers who are trying to hire based onskills,” Finkelstein said.
• Efficient—“There’s no gatekeeper; onceyou’ve earned it, it’s verified. It’s traceable and verifiable back against thesource or the issuer, so there’s no need for any kind of interveningauthority,” Finkelstein said. “The credential can be validated against theissuing authority without going through the registrar’s office or asking yourformer employer to release your training records.” Verification is at thediscretion of the organization that issued the credential, Finkelstein said,but most are willing to provide verification.

They’re not a perfect solution, of course. Digitalcredentials have their limitations, including:

• A badge or other credential is only as good asthe organization—and standards—behind it. Meaningless “participation” badgesalready proliferate on some sites; a badge proclaiming that someone has“attended” or “participated in” a seminar or conference, or even “presented”there, does not actually establish that individual’s knowledge of a topic or abilityto do anything. Other credentials reflect rigorous training andassessment or are issued only when a person meets specific performancecriteria. At first glance, it might not be easy to differentiate these.
• Links can disappear. A brief examination of thebadges displayed on the profile pages of two Credly executives, for example,revealed several broken links to “supporting evidence.” Roadblocks to verifyinga job applicant’s digital credentials could seriously undermine the ability ofthose credentials to vouch for an applicant’s skills. 
• In-house credentials lack standardization. Accreditingbodies exist, in theory at least, to ensure that an academic degree meetscommon criteria—number of hours of instruction, rigor, etc. When corporationsdefine the terms of their badges, the rigor and depth will vary greatly. Forinternal job needs, promotions, or compensation, managers looking atcredentialed employees are comparing like to like. But when badge-holders arecompeting for their next jobs, there will be no way to compare the skill setsof candidates whose badges were awarded by different internal processes atdifferent companies.

These drawbacks are not insurmountable. For example, Credlyis helping organizations ensure that the badges they issue conform with industry-alignedor national or international standards, Finkelstein said.

He cited the example of the Colorado Community College System.“They issue credentials that are aligned to the National Institute for MetalworkingSkills, or NIMS, or to the American Welding Society (AWS). So when an employeris looking for people with a specific set of individual or discrete skills, andthey want to make sure that they have been assessed against national orinternationally accepted standards, the credentials bear that information.”

Credentials can also carry work samples, Finkelstein said,such as a writing sample or video that shows the badge-holder performingassessed skills. This gives them additional weight as a marker of the bearer’sability.

What’s clear is that digital credentials are continuing toevolve to fill a need—a need for assessing fast-changing skills—to the benefitof both employers and employees.

References

Brown, Anna. “Key findings about the American workforce and the changing job market.” PewResearch Center. 6 October 2016.

Deloitte Consulting AG. “Human Capital Trends Switzerland 2014.”

Mullock, Katharine. “A New Initiative: Adapting to Changing Skills Needs.” OECD Skills and Workblog. 30 March 2016.