Harnessing Your Skills Data: Recognition and Representation of Workplace Skills

What are the steps that lead to an organisation’s ability to produce personal evidence? How can organisations capture, aggregate and manage their skills data in an automated way? How can they bring to light underutilised dark data’ hiding in their existing systems? And how can they align learner performance data to industry recognised definitions and frameworks? 

This whitepaper details the what, how and why education providers of all types can participate fully in the burgeoning Skills Economy and prepare their learners for the future world of work.

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Harnessing Your Skills Data
Recognition and Representation of Workplace Skills 

Executive Summary

The pandemic accelerated change in many industries, including - and some might say particularly - in education. Now it’s time for us to ask the inevitable question - what next? What will the education of tomorrow look like in relation to the workforce of the future? How has this contributed to the sharp demand for skills-based education - and rise in skills-based hiring practices? How will skills become more visible and accessible to educators, learners, and employers?

As the use of advanced technologies becomes pervasive, employees will need not only new skills, but also entirely new ways of thinking about work. To actively address the skills gap, business leaders must empower their people to develop a diverse skillset that includes ways of working, business acumen and interpersonal “power skills” like collaborative leadership and communication (M. DePrisco, 2022). Amidst the undeniable reality of talent shortages, a growing number of companies have reconsidered degree requirements, and started evaluating applicants on their demonstrated skills and aptitudes, rather than on their level of academic attainment (The Burning Glass Institute, 2022). According to Naomi Boyer, Executive Director of Digital Transformation at Education Design Lab: “The need to adapt, evolve and enhance opportunities for companies to respond to not only hiring but upskilling and reskilling their workforce requires significant foundational change, which is supported by a skills-based approach. Visibility of skills is key to matching the potential workforce with employers seeking talent.” (Evolllution, 2022)

When an individual’s skills are visible, validated and aligned, their quality as a candidate becomes clear. A strong signal-to-hire is sent to potential employers or HR managers seeking to fill talent gaps, that the candidate has, and can show proof of, their fit for the role. This directly serves the needs of learners and employers. Bridging the gap between learning and earning is in sharp focus for educators across the globe. We want to make the learn-to-earn journey as frictionless as possible. To effectively communicate solutions, skills data and the Skills Ecosystem need to be understood. In this whitepaper, we will work through four key aspects of skills visibility:

1. Skills visibility challenges - looked at primarily from the lens of the educator, but with an eye to understanding the needs of both the learner and potential employers
2. What needs to be done to offer skills recognition - what are the steps we need to take to recognise and appropriately represent skills? Not just what needs to be done, but how it can be done and why it matters
3. The evolving Skills Ecosystem - what is the Skills Ecosystem and who are the key players in it? How does Credentialate bring skills data together in one elegant solution?
4. The learn-to-earn journey - each of our platforms - Credentialate, openRSD and openEQUELLA - play a part in the learn-to-earn journey. How do they work in tandem to deliver skills visibility outcomes?

This whitepaper is designed to serve as a launchpad, a place to acknowledge the challenges, outline the journey and key steps along the way, introduce specific and effective tools that recognise skills and provide a framework you can act upon. It is our hope, that from this starting point, the vision of the Skills Ecosystem will continue to progress and that your organisation will be positioned well to participate in it.

Download Whitepaper

Click the button below to download the PDF of the Edalex Harnessing Your Skills Data Whitepaper 2022 - Recognition and Representation of Workplace Skills