New partnership enables the global growth of digital credentials, connecting learning to opportunity in the modern labour market

US digital credentialing leader Credly teams up with UK and EU based Digitalme to help individuals demonstrate achievements and employers to see every skill, accelerating the use of digital credentials internationally

Digital credential pioneer Credly announced today a partnership with Digitalme, a City & Guilds Group business, to expand the use of digital credentials to recognise skills and talents in the EU. The partnership reflects an evolution in the way achievement is recorded online, empowering individuals to advocate and differentiate themselves with verified, digital evidence – while enabling organisations to find individuals with the right skills to meet their business needs.

The collaboration further expands Credly’s international operations and enhances the technology underpinning the Digitalme platform. As part of this international expansion, Credly has built a dedicated European-based data centre which extends its infrastructure to support Digitalme operations and help organisations based in Europe to comply with EU data privacy requirements.

The ability to digitally frame, capture and verify skills and competencies has become critical as employers seek more trusted, granular insights to inform hiring and talent development strategies. Digital credentials provide an agile, responsive, trackable and cost-effective way to do this. They also give individuals, employers, educators and professional associations a common, standards-based approach to verify skills and achievements through data-rich, evidence-based digital badges. Using the globally recognised open badge standard allows individuals to build a single profile of their credentials, no matter where they are issued from and when.

“Working with hundreds of organisations, ranging from schools to universities and major employers and professional associations, we’ve seen first-hand how digital credentials are fast becoming the global learning currency for recognising and sharing achievements online,” said Chris Kirk, Managing Director of Digitalme. “This new partnership will enable us to scale the impact of digital credentials globally, and provide more relevant and meaningful data points to connect talent with opportunity.”

Under the new partnership, Digitalme will work directly with organisations who enable skills development to help design and implement achievement and recognition systems. This will range from internal workforce development solutions to transnational standards for specific job roles and industry associations.

“Contemporary hiring and talent management requires portable, data-rich tools for communicating industry-aligned skills and competencies,” said Jonathan Finkelstein, Chief Executive Officer of Credly. “Our partnership with Digitalme extends Credly’s international reach through one of Europe’s largest and most respected certification organisations and further demonstrates the viability of digital credentials as the universal currency of competencies. We’ve helped thousands of organisations to issue millions of trusted credentials and we can now work directly with Digitalme to do the same in Europe.”

The Credly and Digitalme collaboration follows last year’s acquisition by the City & Guilds Group of Digitalme, as well as an investment in Credly as part of its New Venture Fund. This places the City & Guilds Group at the forefront of the international digital credentialing movement.

One of the first to deploy digital credentials as a result of this collaboration in Europe is City & Guilds Group business, ILM. ILM is the largest leadership and management awarding organisation in the UK. It assesses and awards employer-recognised qualifications and accreditations to thousands of leaders and apprentices each year. Its new credentialing programme includes the retroactive issuing of digital credentials to individuals holding up-to-date paper-based certificates. It is also introducing the live issuing of badging across several new apprenticeship programmes.

Speaking about the programme, John Yates, Group Director, ILM said: “Digital credentials empower our learners with portable, verified and transparent evidence of achievement, and give employers and training providers much greater flexibility over the delivery and benefits of our programmes. The success of our initial launch to qualified leaders, managers, coaches and mentors demonstrates clearly the demand for a technologically-enabled credential. We are excited to be extending digital credentials for all of our qualifications and accredited courses.”

About Digitalme: Digitalme, a City & Guilds Group Business, offers digital credentialing services to help organisations & individuals realise their potential by making all skills visible.

• Working directly with educators, professional associations, employers and the 3^rd sector, Digitalme help these skills enablers to build, design and issue relevant and objective digital credentials and badges
• Digitalme then supports individuals to better communicate these objective records of achievement and career progression across the web so organisations can see every skill and connect them with career opportunities
• Digitalme and Makewaves – European pioneers of the use of the Mozilla Open Badge standard – were acquired by the City & Guilds Group in June 2016 to create a new dedicated digital credentialing services business
• Organisations already working with Digitalme in issuing digital credentials, include: hundreds of Schools and Colleges; World Chefs; O2; Siemens; Coventry University; the BBC; ILM; JISC and the NHS.
• Open Badges is a global, open digital credentialing (certification) standard for the recognition of formal, informal and non-formal development

About the City & Guilds Group: The City & Guilds Group’s purpose is to help people, organisations and economies develop their skills for growth.

Backed by a Royal Charter, the City & Guilds Group has more than 135 years’ experience in making sure that people are prepared to contribute to successful businesses and thriving economies.

The City & Guilds Group partners with more than 200 companies to develop the skilled workforces that they need, and invests in learning technologies to help people learn whenever and wherever they can.

The City & Guilds Group is made up of City & Guilds, ILM, Kineo, The Oxford Group, Digitalme and e3Learning:

• City & Guilds develops programmes of vocational learning, learning technology, certification and assessment, to support colleges, training providers and governments.
• ILM helps individuals, education providers and businesses improve the standards of leadership and management through qualifications and accredited training. ILM awards qualifications to over 95,000 managers across the world every year.
• Kineo is a global workplace learning company. It offers a fresh approach to elearning management systems and managed learning services.
• The Oxford Group provides bespoke management training, leadership development and executive coaching to the world’s leading companies.
• Digitalme designs credentials, using open badges, to recognise individuals’ skills and talent. It works with employers, training providers and over 2,000 schools across the UK.
• e3Learning specialises in online workforce management and elearning.

Combined, the City & Guilds Group operates in over 100 countries, through 10,000 training centres, delivering qualifications in 26 different industries.

About Credly: Credly is a leading digital credential service provider, helping the world recognise lifelong achievement with the most popular platforms for verifying, sharing and managing digital credentials and badges. The enterprise-class system allows organisations to officially verify skills and competencies; distribute portable and secure digital credentials and open badges; and gain actionable data and insights. Thousands of education institutions, industry associations, employers and workforce development programs use Credly to make achievements visible.