Micro-Credentials for Corporate Training Programs

As a corporate training professional, it’s your job to create learning experiences that not only improve your employees’ effectiveness but also that interest those employees and encourage retention over time. In recent years, it has become clear that to achieve this, corporations need to deliver high-value content in accessible and easily digestible bites.

As a result, “micro” learning experiences have risen in prominence in the world of instructional design trends and shorter instructor-led training sessions are being used in training events. 

For your corporate training strategy, it’s worthwhile to consider how you can deliver these types of learning experiences. Micro-credentials are the perfect training format to accomplish this, as they’re personalized, accessible, and skills-focused.

This crash course will answer the following commonly asked questions about using micro-credentials for corporate training:

• What are micro-credentials?
• What are the benefits of micro-credentials for corporations?
• How can micro-credentials fit into your organization’s training efforts?
• How can you get started with authoring micro-credentials for your team?

Before your corporation makes any major changes to your training efforts, you need to understand this new course type through and through. This crash course will give you a strong introduction to micro-credentials to get started.

Let’s dive in!

What are micro-credentials?

If you’re like many corporations, you may be experiencing a “skills revolution;” that is, you’re realizing that upskilling your employees is crucial for succeeding in the volatile and rapidly-developing landscape in which many organizations find themselves in 2022. In fact, Harvard Business Review recently published that “58% of the workforce needs new skill sets to do their jobs.”

Micro-credentials are short, stackable courses that your employees can use to develop specific skills. These courses are hyper-focused on a specific ability and generally completed quickly enough that employees can easily fit them into their workloads. This has made micro-credentials the solution to the ongoing need for upskilling and reskilling.

Skyepack’s guide to micro-credentials lists a few fields that can benefit from this type of course, including:

• IT Support
• Project Management
• UX Design
• Cyber Security

This is far from an expansive list when it comes to the possibilities of micro-credentials. These courses can effectively train employees on a wide range of activities, from soft skills like hosting effective presentations to technical skills such as navigating data analytics software.

What are the benefits of micro-credentials for corporations?

Whenever you make major changes to your corporate training offerings, you’ll need to make a significant investment of both time and other resources. There are two primary benefits that suggest micro-credentials are worth the investment, including:

• Improved employee retention. There’s been a noticeable shift in the type of training and other content that learners want to complete, with hyper-personalization taking center stage. With micro-credentials, employees can target their training to align with their personal career goals. Employees will be more likely to remain at your corporation as they’ll see a clear path toward their goals.
• Higher skilled employees. By building a culture of ongoing learning and development, your staff will improve their skills over time. RealHR Solutions’ guide to workplace training notes that “a proficient staff translates into greater productivity and efficiency, fewer mistakes, improved retention rates, and a competitive edge.”

Plus, as we’ll discuss later in this guide, micro-credentials can be developed fairly rapidly with the help of instructional design professionals. This makes micro-credentials a fairly sustainable training method, empowering you to continue creating credentials and meet employees’ needs going forward.

How can micro-credentials fit into your organization’s training efforts?

From the learner perspective, completing a micro-credential involves the following steps:

1. Choose a credential to complete, which will generally be led by the skill the learner wants to develop.
2. Review recorded lectures, seminars, or online learning materials.
3. Complete any corresponding assignments.
4. Pass an assessment or skills test to demonstrate that the knowledge has been acquired.
5. Earn the micro-credential badge or certificate, if applicable.

Once you understand what these courses look like from the learner’s perspective, it’s easier to see how they can fit into your corporation’s training efforts. These are generally two ways to use micro-credentials for corporate training:

Asynchronous Online Learning

This is the most common method of delivering micro-credentials to employees.

Essentially, employees complete a credential fully on their own timeline and as best fits into their schedule, whether it’s in between meetings, after normal working hours, or at another time. The credential materials are delivered as an online course that learners can proceed through at their own pace, to ensure they’re absorbing the information at a pace that’s conducive to their own learning style.

This method works well for required courses, and it’s also perfect for employees who want to go above and beyond by completing non-required courses for their own professional development.

Corporate Training Events

Micro-credentials pair well with corporate training events, especially if you want a large number of employees to complete a credential as part of a larger training initiative.

For example, you could use an event to:

• Kick-off a micro-credential, with employees attending a synchronized lecture before splitting up to complete additional independent training.
• End a micro-credential, with employees taking their final assessment and getting recognized for their achievements.

You could even host a multi-track event that features multiple micro-credential opportunities, and give employees the option to choose which credential they would like to complete. And, because micro-credentials are largely completed online, these strategies work well whether you’re hosting an in-person, virtual, or hybrid training event.

How can you get started with authoring micro-credentials for your team?

If you’re ready to begin using micro-credentials in your corporate training strategy, consider partnering with an instructional design expert.

Just like event speaking, authoring micro-credentials is a skill. Your instructors or other learning and development professionals may not be familiar with this newly-developing type of course. First and foremost, an instructional design expert can train your team on how to author micro-credentials effectively. This will give your team the foundation to continue authoring these courses going forward.

Further, many instructional design partners now use rapid instructional design processes that allow them to bring courses to life more quickly and efficiently than ever before. So, if your team is at capacity and unable to develop the credential materials, a partner could remove that task from your to-do list.

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Employees seek training opportunities that are personalized, accessible, and skills-focused. Micro-credentials are the ideal solution to meet all of these requirements!

Whether you’re using micro-credentials as an asynchronous training tool or as part of a corporate training event, you can still achieve the same employee retention and upskilling benefits. It’s worthwhile to consider whether these credentials would be a good addition to your company’s strategy going forward and if so, to partner with an instructional design expert to create a strong foundation for your new training offerings.