As the workplace evolves rapidly, professionals are seeking new ways to validate their skills and stay competitive. Microcredentialing programs for associations offer a powerful opportunity to meet this demand, helping members bridge skills gaps, advance their careers, and provide employers with trusted proof of competency. By launching targeted microcredentials, associations can expand their impact, strengthen workforce development, and solidify their role as industry leaders.
College graduates feel the angst too. They weren’t prepared for this rapidly changing job market. And with AI taking over entry-level tasks, they have fewer opportunities to gain the experience needed to advance to higher-level positions.
Everyone in the workforce—and their employers—could benefit from a sure way to learn and validate new skills.
Amidst Change, Microcredentialing Programs and Digital Badges Provide Proof of Competency
Microcredentials help people adapt to this new workplace reality. Earned by completing short courses or modules focused on a single skill or skill set, microcredentials are proof that someone has the specific competencies needed to get or keep a job.
Why microcredentials and digital badges have become popular with learners and employers
Employers appreciate microcredentials because these programs help them bridge the skills gaps within their existing workforce. Microcredentials shorten the learning curve for people taking on new responsibilities or adopting new practices. Employers rely on them to validate a person’s competencies (or lack of them) before hiring, promoting, or laying them off.
Learners save money and time by developing new skills through microcredentialing compared to traditional degree programs. At the end of a microcredentialing program, they receive a digital badge: verifiable proof of the skills they acquired. Because digital badges are shareable on LinkedIn and job boards, they’re visible to the learner’s professional network and potential employers. Badges include metadata with information about the curriculum, issuing organization, issue date, and more.
Learners can also build skills over time by progressing through and earning a series of “stackable” microcredentials, which are often a path to more advanced credentials.
Leverage your association’s industry advantage
Colleges and universities have jumped on microcredentials as a source of revenue and relevance amidst declining enrollments. However, associations have an advantage in the microcredentialing market.
How Associations Can Lead the Microcredentialing Market
You have an established reputation as a trusted authority in your industry—an immense asset in a society that no longer holds many institutions in high regard. Because you have the ear of learners and employers in your market, you are more likely than a higher education institute to attract their interest in your microcredentialing programs.
Frequent member and market research helps you understand the workplace changes affecting your industry and the training needs of professionals and their employers.
Invite employers to serve on an advisory council that helps you identify skills gaps, map out career and learning pathways, and design microcredentialing programs tailored to their needs. When employers are involved in program development, they’re more likely to support their employees’ participation.
Position microcredentialing programs as a workforce development tool that helps employers attract and retain talented employees. On your association’s job board, highlight job seekers who hold your credentials and jobs that require or give preference to your credentials.
Once your microcredentialing programs have a few years behind them, survey industry professionals and employers to find out what difference credentialing makes on performance, hiring, compensation, and promotions. Use this benchmark data, if positive, in marketing campaigns.
Address employers’ concerns about microcredentials
In the past few years, the employers’ view of microcredentials has swung from negative to positive. In a survey conducted by UPCEA and Collegis Education, 95% of employers view their employees’ microcredentials favorably.
Building Employer Trust in Your Microcredentialing Programs
To alleviate employer concerns about the quality of your microcredentialing curriculum, educate them about the integrity and quality of your programs. On your website and in targeted marketing campaigns, describe:
- Who was involved in program design (employers like them!)
- How the program aligns with employer needs
- Which skills are taught
- How skills are assessed
Show employers how to determine the validity of a person’s digital badge, for example, how badges should appear and what kind of metadata to look for.
Position your association as a talent pipeline. Collect employer testimonials about the impact of your microcredentials on their onboarding and training efforts, and on employee productivity and promotability.
With quarterly updates (newsletters and virtual roundtables), educate human resources professionals about your education and credentialing programs. Ask for their feedback on existing programs and emerging or unmet needs.
Promote your association’s value as a training partner who:
- Shortens the learning curve and speeds up onboarding
- Supplements in-house training
- Improves employee performance
- Helps identify candidates for hiring and promotion
Associations play a central role in validating skills and issuing microcredentials that advance careers.
Expand your audience with microcredentialing programs
Microcredentialing programs reduce the barrier to professional development for people who can’t afford to invest in degree programs or whose employers don’t offer sufficient professional development budgets. With these programs, you’re making education and credentialing more accessible to all.
Reaching New Learner Demographics Through Microcredentials
These programs also appeal to people who don’t have the time to commit to a degree program, such as parents, caregivers, and those who spend long hours on the job. Learners can spend time on self-paced programs when it’s convenient. Plus, the end is always in sight.
Help people make a successful case for their employer’s financial support by offering a justification letter template on your website. In the letter, emphasize the involvement of employers in the program’s design.
In your career center, promote microcredentials as a quick, affordable way for career changers, people reentering the workforce, and military vets to gain marketable skills. Offer self-assessments to help jobseekers validate transferable skills and identify skills they’re lacking. Position microcredentialing programs as a way to explore and get up to speed in a new career.
Microcredentials appeal to recent graduates and early-career professionals because of their online, modular, entry-level curriculum. Younger generations are also fans of digital badges that they can earn and share along the way. Promote microcredentials as “what they didn’t teach you in college.”
Supplement introductory programs with career guidance on workplace relations, office protocols, networking, etc. Host group mentoring meetings where learners connect with peers and experienced professionals. Offer these perks to members for free, but charge non-members.
Microcredentials aren’t only for industry newbies. Mid- and late-career professionals benefit from specialized microcredentialing programs that teach them skills related to new technology (like AI) and emerging industry issues. The National Association for Healthcare Quality offers microcredentials to professionals who want to deepen their expertise in specific domains. They recently launched a new microcredential focused on health data analytics and have seven more in development.
Final Thoughts: Why Associations Must Act Now
In the past year alone, changes in the workplace have prompted people to gain new knowledge and skills. Because the pace of change will continue to accelerate, associations must have the capacity to quickly develop microcredentialing programs that help industry professionals and employers stay competitive. If you need a partner to help you design these programs, let’s talk. Email us at contact@hiapti.com.