Tiered credentials provide a means to demonstrate cumulative proficiency gained through on-the-job experience. They offer a dynamic approach to evaluating professional progression and reflect an individual’s career development.
Not only can tiered credentials offer an entry point to the workforce and a pathway to demonstrate mastery over time, but they can also provide the framework for a supervisory relationship between credential tiers. For example, those with higher credential levels might manage and/or mentor those with lower-level credentials. Achieving a certain credential level might also be required for certain professional positions.
What is a Tiered Credential Program?
A tiered credential program can take several forms:
- A provisional credential with the full credential conferred after the practitioner has demonstrated a sufficient amount of workplace experience.
- A base credential with one or more add-on specialty credentials.
- Multi-level credentials (basic, intermediate, advanced) that build on the foundational material covered by initial domains. Higher-level certifications signify professional focus, commitment, and seniority.
With all these models, practitioners can engage with a competency framework that evolves in alignment with their expected professional development throughout their career.
How Can We Make the Journey Easier?
As a candidate or practitioner, I might ask, “What is my next step? Do I recertify at the current level, or ‘level up’ to the next tier?” How can you equip those candidates and practitioners to make the right choice for their credential journey?
A credential management platform with clear application pathways and a well-designed candidate dashboard can keep practitioners informed about their options and inspired to take the next step.
Enabling practitioners to enter their achievements once and having those achievements appear thereafter on all appropriate certification applications is key to helping them navigate whether to apply for the next tier or recertify at their existing level.
LearningBuilder Tools Minimize the Manual Work of Tiered Credentials
LearningBuilder offers straightforward navigation, innovative features, configurable flexibility, and administrative timesaving functionality. With LearningBuilder’s tools, you can focus on what matters and let the system handle the rest.
Clear, Actionable, and Aspirational Application Pathways
We designed the LearningBuilder user experience to help participants navigate their path to earning credentials with confidence.
If your program offers several credentials that build on one another, you can structure your LearningBuilder candidate dashboard to showcase what lies ahead. When earning a foundational credential unlocks access to more advanced or specialized options, the system can inform candidates of those opportunities. This includes:
- Clear, distinct descriptions of each credential option.
- Straightforward language to explain any prerequisites they must meet before pursuing the next step.
- Well-timed prompts encourage taking action once those prerequisites are satisfied.
Configurability to Implement (and Update) Business Rules
Each of your credential tiers may require different information and documentation. LearningBuilder can accommodate even complex rules and dependencies, as well as grace periods and reinstatements. With forms and file uploads, you can collect everything you need from your applicants and prevent incomplete submissions.
Additionally, LearningBuilder provides the flexibility to update your rules within the system as your program evolves. What if you need to add or alter a credential pathway? We can work with you to duplicate and tailor workflows with LearningBuilder’s low-code configuration tools.
Cycle Management Capabilities
When credentials build on one another, renewal cycles become interconnected with the next credentials’ application cycle. And, a lapsed lower-tier credential may quietly undermine the validity of a higher-tier one, creating headaches for holders and eroding confidence among the employers and institutions that rely on the program. Add in dozens or hundreds of active credential holders, each at a different tier and a different point in their renewal window, and the tracking burden adds up fast.
LearningBuilder was designed to manage those interdependencies and calculate complex eligibility rules and deadlines. LearningBuilder’s Automations Engine can also enforce those deadlines, update a user’s credential pathway, and automatically open renewal applications for credentialed candidates. Plus, our automated communications capabilities ensure that practitioners are consistently reminded of their deadlines, requirements, and next steps.
Automated Activity Allocation
When it comes to both initial credentials and renewals, “application exhaustion” can sometimes be a barrier to entry. Practitioners don’t want to have to track and submit accomplishments repeatedly over the years. And on the administrative side, an influx of activity approvals (especially duplicates) can quickly become an outsized resource drain.
With LearningBuilder’s Portfolios feature, the system recognizes when an activity submitted to fulfill a requirement for one application satisfies the criteria for another, and automatically adds it in both places. That means that when it comes to education, work experience, continuing education, and other activities, a user only has to enter them into the system once. If the next credential level has some of the same requirements as the previous level, the qualifying activities will automatically be “pulled in” and counted with no need to enter them again.
Practitioners can collect and submit qualifying activities at any stage of their certification journey. You set the criteria (time period, domains, etc.) for each requirement. Once they have been submitted and approved the first time, they will count toward any relevant application— now or later. That goes for credential tiers as well as multiple credentials. Suddenly, the prospect of an expanded credential program isn’t as daunting.
LearningBuilder: Beyond the Basics of Credential Management
Whether you’re looking to implement a new tiered credential, add a tier to an existing credential, or just optimize and streamline your program processes, you need a technology partner that expands your vision of what’s possible, not one that limits it.
LearningBuilder is a comprehensive and flexible platform for managing the full lifecycle of your credential programs. We support you with technology that meets your current needs and helps you achieve your future goals, developing features that make credential management easier for everyone involved. If you’re seeking solutions, let’s discuss your program further during an introductory call.
