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Jeff Salin

You were inspired by reading part one of this article, and you’ve decided to try micro-credentials at your organization. Congratulations! You understand the value in creating micro-credentials, but now you need some guidance to move forward. Part two will help you create a badge framework and promote micro-credentialing at your organization.What Badges Should Our Organization Create?Begin by answering some fundamental questions:What do we value in our employees?What skills do you want to recognize now and in the future?Are these badges for fun, compliance, or to measure the development of certain skill sets? (You can have all of these.)Will you be tying these badges to competencies? Do you have competencies mapped for each role?Will you need to create different badges for different departments? How will you differentiate among the badges?Will you share these badges across multiple courses?Are you using meta-badges that consist of multiple badges (also known as stacked credentials)?7 Badging Best PracticesKeeping in mind your answers to the above questions, consider these seven tips:1. Tie the badges to the core competencies that your organization needs.This is where most organizations miss the mark. Instead of creating meaningful micro-credentials based upon the performance of key skills benchmarked to competency frameworks for specific roles, they create a series of fun badges that don’t get recognized because they aren’t tied to professional development.2**. Create badges based on completion, measurement, progress, and experience.**If you only issue badges when someone answers on a discussion forum or completes a course, then you’re missing out on the never-ending nature of learning. Your badging system should recognize different levels of mastery. Add indicators like stars to demonstrate progression. Provide lower-level badges based on progress and demonstrated measurement of lower-level (Bloom’s) tasks, such as quiz completion. Graduate your employees to higher levels based on continued experience.3. Create badges that represent organizational values as well as technical skills and durable skills like the 4 Cs (collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking).Think about the skills gaps you’ve identified in your organization and consider ways to reward individuals who are making the effort to improve themselves in key areas. Remember that most of these badges will need to be manually issued, so you’ll want to involve leaders in their administration.4. Don’t give everyone the same badges.One thing we all know from our gamification theory is that there’s power in scarcity. Make badges that are specific to departments and roles so that employees can aspire to maximize their talents. Using these credentials as currency in the workplace helps create career pathing and incentivize professional development.5. Create meta-badges that are challenging to earn.Any skill needed in the workplace is made up of multiple competencies, and your micro-credentials should reflect that. Meta-badging, or stacked credentials, is a more complex way to structure your badging that requires multiple badges to earn a meta-badge. Imagine after you’ve received badges for communication, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration that you receive a Super 4C badge that demonstrates your interpersonal genius.6. Create a variety of badge types, not just micro-credentials.Badges can motivate and incentivize and they don’t all have to be based on competencies. I’m proud of the badge I earned from D2L last year for my contest-winning chili. I’m not going to share this with the world, but it incentivizes me to participate more in company functions when I know there’s a little reward and recognition at the end. If badging isn’t at least a little bit fun, it may not provide all its possible value.7. Start small, test, and expand.Don’t begin with a massive rollout of 100 badges. Start small. You’ll find it easy to set up (you can use a table template in a word processor to help you plan), but it’s easier to test the efficacy of the badge types that resonate with your organization if you have a smaller set and test group.Micro-credentialing has the potential to make lasting change in your organization and empower your employees to take control of their careers. For more information on micro-credentials, IMS Global is the consortium responsible for Open Badges stewardship. Their website is a great resource to help you advance your strategy for credentialing. I’ve also found openbadges.org to be a good primer for starting.Best of luck with your credentialing strategy, and please share your success and questions.Want to find out about badging in action? See how Kaplan Financial gamified accountancy courses with points, badges, and leaderboards, boosting engagement and performance.

Addressing the Skills Gap With Micro-Credentialing: Part 2

Micro-credentials are a representation of a competency or achievement earned through participation, progression, completion, and demonstration of learning.

Addressing the Skills Gap With Micro-Credentialing

In a recent blog post on ChiefHRO.com, Jeff Neal addresses the increased attention to employee training needs in the President’s proposed 2015 budget.Jeff Neal is a senior vice president for ICF International, and formerly served in the Obama Administration as chief human capital officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and chief human resources officer for the Defense Logistics Agency. The ChiefHRO.com blog posts federal government HR and management news and insight.According to Neal, “For far too long federal agencies have looked to the training budget as one of the first places to cut (after travel) when budgets are tight. Training cuts are among the most shortsighted of the budget cutting options. They trade small savings today for a lack of capability tomorrow.…The renewed emphasis on training in the 2015 budget is a good sign that the dark times for employee training may be coming to an end.”However, Neal reminds readers that for this emphasis on training to succeed, there needs to be more sharing on what works in federal employee training. Unfortunately, one key shortcoming in many training programs is evaluation of their effectiveness.” If more training programs were accompanied by proper evaluations, we would learn far more about ‘what works’ and what does not. That would lead to far better use of training dollars and better outcomes,” writes Neal. Read the complete blog post at http://chiefhro.com/2014/03/04/finally-a-new-emphasis-on-training.

Jeff Salin

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