Using digital badges for employer outreach

Using badges for outreach activities is a forward-thinking approach for employers to reward and incentivise engagement with activities that act as a gateway to their organisation or wider industry. These badges empower recipients to see what might be viewed as a small achievement in a broader industry context, and gives them an opportunity to publicly display their involvement.

Using badges in this way creates an invaluable opportunity to meet current and future workforce demand by identifying emerging talent and addressing critical skills gaps within their industry, providing an avenue to recognise and nurture essential skills, attitudes, and values that align closely with the needs of their sector.

By incorporating digital badges into employer outreach activities, organisations position themselves as committed to shaping the future workforce while building awareness, goodwill and stronger connections with individuals, communities, and educational institutions.

1. Introduction 2. Use cases 3. Top tip 4. Exemplar badge 5. Download 6. Customise 7. Platform choice

Use cases

Issuing badges to participants that engage with employers is a great way to introduce and document relevant skills and attitudes during outreach activities such as:

Workshops
Presentations
Quizzes
Work experience and Internships
Workplace tours
Open days and taster sessions
Career fairs and industry events

Top tip

To provide the most relevance to the sector / industry and give badge recipients an additional layer of credibility when they share their achievement, consider branding the badge image with a recognisable employer logo.

Exemplar badge

Future Construction

Description
Earners of this badge have demonstrated construction industry potential while participating in a community skills taster day. They have successfully shown their ability to be a future construction professional.

Criteria

Earner has demonstrated real industry potential for construction by showcasing highly valued skills and attributes while participating in an interactive building challenge. They have successfully collaborated with others to complete their project and ensured clarity in the project’s purpose and objectives.
Earner has developed a strong understanding of what makes a successful construction project, including how planning and teamwork contribute to efficiency, how attention to detail ensures quality, and how problem solving can overcome on-site challenges.
Earner has demonstrated desirable attitudes and behaviours for the construction industry, including being able to work productively and harmoniously with a range of team members, showing adaptability in new environments, and maintaining a strong commitment to high-quality outcomes.

Tags

Alignment
The RSA Badge Standard – Explorer
For foundational skills or introductory achievements. Reflects initial exposure to a subject or skill (e.g. teamwork, digital literacy). Encourages engagement and exploration without requiring extensive prior knowledge.

This badge works as an example of an activity where the recipient has developed technical skills while also exploring some valuable attitudes that are desirable to employers. Its alignment with the RSA Badge Standard provides an avenue for a recipient to learn about their achievement in a broader context and how they might progress these skills in future endeavours.

This format could be adapted to cover a wide range of sectors and industries where individuals engage with employer activities that act as a gateway to industry, serving as a potential first step in a career journey.

Download and customise this badge

Want to use this badge? Click the link for an Excel spreadsheet containing all of the badge data, ready to be copied and customised.

Download badge template file (.xls)

To use an exemplar badge and make it your own:

Download the spreadsheet and customise to your needs.
On your digital badge issuing platform of choice, create a new badge and input the badge data from the spreadsheet.
Edit and adapt the data to suit your needs.
Publish the badge / make it available for issuing.

Adapting an exemplar badge

While all badges that follow the Open Badge Standard will contain the same core components, different issuing platforms can label and format them differently and often have different approaches to applying settings and attributes to a badge.

Don’t panic – the excel file contains all the information you’ll need to build the badge on your chosen issuing platform (full list of Open Badge platforms) and come readily formatted with instructions for three popular issuing platforms: Open Badge Factory, Navigatr, and Credly.

Consider these badges as templates – it is always recommended to ensure your badges are adapted to your needs and tailored to be relevant to your recipients. This will ensure that your badge is meaningful and valued by those you issue it to.

Examples of customising an exemplar badge to fit your needs could include:

Expanding on the information to add specific detail about an activity you will issue the badge for.
Adjusting language to suit your organisation’s brand.
Adding a location.
Removing any elements you feel are not relevant to your badge recipients.

Platform choice

The platform examples provided in our exemplar badges are intended to help illustrate how a set of badge data may require adjusting to fit the issuing platform being used. Which badging platform you choose will depend on the on your individual use case and the functionality you require. The Digital Badging Commission does not endorse any particular badging platform. A full list of Open Badge platforms is maintained by 1EdTech.

If you represent an Open Badge platform and would like to be included in our exemplar files, please provide us with an excel sheet containing our exemplar data mapped to your system and we will add you to the download files.