Micro-credentialing is an excellent way to bring needed skills to your business.
It can make a slightly imperfect job candidate into the ideal job candidate in record time.
Best of all, it is faster, more affordable, and more reliable than more traditional credentialing methods.
Micro-credentialing is being leveraged by top-performing businesses across all industries and markets.
That means that if you don't implement this innovative way to upskill your workforce, your business is likely to lose its competitive edge in the coming years.
Here, we will discuss how to make the rubber hit the road when it comes to making micro-credentialing work for your organization and turn this surprising new up-skilling method into a reliable skill-building resource.
We know that every business organization needs to develop the skills of its teams to remain competitive, and we know that micro-credentialing is the way to do that, at least at this time.
The question is how to make it work for you.
The first step will almost always be to identify what skills your organization needs to onboard.
There are three general ways to approach this question: the human, the technological, and the social side.
Naturally, there are more ways to identify skills and competencies than the three we have mentioned.
But these can get you started thinking along the right lines.
Anyone can find useful skills and assign Micro-Credentialing tasks to employees.
The trick is to do it in a way that is both scalable and that ensures the skills learned won't just be learned long enough to pass a test and get credit.
Therefore, we need to look at the process a little more closely.
Whenever possible, it is best to go about the implementation of Micro-Credentialing in a deliberate, controlled, and most importantly, measurable way.
The good news is that any good micro-credentialing platform or service will have much of this framework set up for you.
The key is to choose the right micro-credentialing service provider, platform, and package for your company, your business model, the needs of your team, and your industry/market.
To choose a platform that works best for your organization, you may need to engage with a consultation service.
Whether you do or not, the key is getting the skills you need and none of the skills you don't.
Further, you need the learning to be delivered compellingly and effectively.
We mentioned these, but they can withstand repeating.
If the program breaks your budget, it won't do you much good, since you won't be able to operate even with all the skills you may gain.
Of course, if your data security is compromised, micro-credentialing can quickly become a minor concern compared to data damage control.
Any good micro-credentialing platform will take robust steps to secure your critical information.
They will also be open and up-front about their costs, giving you a complete and accurate estimate of the total end-to-end cost of your micro-credentialing needs.
Choosing a well-organized and supportive provider for your Micro-Credentialing needs will all but ensure that you have everything you need to take on the skills you need to succeed.
Most often, your most important task is to make sure you work with the best service available.
What is it exactly that a good micro-credentialing support team does?
First, you should have two micro-credentialing teams, one internal and one brought to you by your micro-credentialing platform of choice.
The one brought to you by your selected micro-credentialing platform will bring the support you need to your internal team.
From there, your internal micro-credentialing managers will disseminate this support to your community of workers/learners.
They will:
Naturally, it isn't ideal to pick micro-credentialing courses on a whim.
You need to make sure they will deliver value once complete.
Here are some important steps to follow.
A little research should reveal whether the credential you are considering will hold real value for your organization.
Next, draft an explanation and description of how your micro-credential will meet that demand.
Run it across peers and team members.
Your argument should be compelling and logical, and there should be real-world examples of it.
Divide up the credentialing process into the smallest units possible.
Learners should feel accomplished as frequently as possible.
This is because the feeling of success triggers physical changes in the brain that we need to learn new skills and keep them.
Use video, audio, text, games, tasks, and any type of medium you can to teach your learners.
Some learners may use all of them. Some may just use what they need.
The more channels you make available, the less likely it will be that some people will get left behind because their learning style is not represented.
Testing should be as simple as possible.
Multiple-choice questions are the gold standard for online training modules.
You can make them more reliable by using more of them rather than making any single test more complex.
For deep-seated psychological reasons, learning works best when we do not aim for it to end.
Therefore, making micro-credentialing a permanent practice keeps your teams in a mindset in which they are ready to learn.
Of course, this is also important if you want your teams to remain competitive in the foreseeable future.
Creating value always takes effort, which means resistance to it is always present.
When it comes to training a workforce, that resistance may come in the form of obstinance.
Internal resistance can be expected to some extent, even if it's just a mild lack of enthusiasm.
You can overcome this by making participation mandatory, but there are better ways as well.
You can incentivize with rewards and recognition.
Perhaps the cheapest way to incentivize active participation is by posting results so that your people will take on a spirit of competition.
Tech trouble is an ever-looming problem.
For this, the best solution is to have internal and external tech support.
You want an IT team that understands how micro-credentialing integrations should work.
You also need to work with a platform that will support you throughout the process.
The most important way to keep micro-credentialing affordable is to know your budget constraints and insist that your provider offer a package that will remain within them.
In addition to this, you can select free and low-cost learning resources to supplement those offered.
Follow all the steps discussed above with a mindset and an intention of promoting workforce development.
In so doing, you will develop and maintain a competitive edge in your industry, an edge that is rapidly becoming necessary rather than optional.
Sources