Bridging the Growing Skills Gap With Verifiable Badges

Technical skills, just like business skills, are evolving at a dizzying rate, with deep effects on the world of work. These skills—which help companies power AI advances, build cloud computing infrastructures, and create meaningful customer experiences from data—have a limited lifespan of just two and a half years, meaning staying up to date is more critical than ever. The pace of industry change combined with how quickly skills become outdated is straining companies as they attempt to remain competitive in an already challenging macroeconomic environment. In fact, an astonishing 87 percent of leaders report significant skills gaps within their organizations.

To address these talent pressures, 98 percent of leaders are embracing a skills-based organizational model that emphasizes continuous and agile employee skills development and prioritizes relevant job skills rather than academic qualifications alone. Through this approach, leaders can gain a holistic view of their employees’ skills, proficiencies, and gaps. They can then create ongoing learning opportunities to bridge skills gaps and empower employees to demonstrate expertise by earning industry-recognized certifications and verifiable badges.

To help these companies complete the transition to a skills-based organizational model and keep pace with innovation, Udemy is introducing a new Integrated Skills Framework. The framework also provides a digestible way for leaders to understand the fundamentals of skills-based talent management: assessing their company’s internal skills landscape, identifying critical skills gaps, and helping employees demonstrate their earned skills. Udemy’s latest product releases focus on this last part of the framework. Why? According to enterprise leaders, one of their most significant challenges is the inability to assess and validate their employees’ skills against industry norms and standards. This is where recognized skills validation in the form of certifications and badges can help.

Can verifiable badges help your organization bridge the skills gap? Read more here.

Kelly Schwarze is senior content marketing manager for Udemy.