⬇️ Inside this issue:

• How digital credentials could reshape healthcare (and who's already testing it)

• You’re not behind on LERs—Madelyn explains why you're right on time

• What the global banking system can teach us about interoperability

INTERESTING READS

⛑️ UBCO is rolling out a new credential designed specifically for health-care leaders.

🎓 Micro-credentials can help campuses work smarter, not harder.

💸 Behind the headlines, the President’s budget could undermine workforce investments.

👶 Calling HR: How to support parents as summer drags on.

HEALTHCARE

Could LERs save your life one day? What digital credentials could actually do for healthcare

Let’s state the obvious: the U.S. healthcare system is buckling. From staffing shortages and clinician burnout to fractured infrastructure and poor data interoperability, the cracks are showing. And while debates rage over policy and insurance, a quieter transformation could be the fix we didn’t know we needed: Learning and Employment Records (LERs).

LERs, digital records of a person’s skills, credentials, and experiences, aren’t just for tech bros and career switchers. They might just be the key to solving some of healthcare’s most urgent workforce problems.

The labor shortage isn’t going anywhere

By 2036, the U.S. is expected to face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians. Meanwhile, one in five nurses plan to leave their jobs by 2025. Policy reform and educational incentives help, but they don’t fix the core issue: the way we train, credential, and mobilize talent is wildly inefficient.

LERs offer a more streamlined solution. With a portable, verifiable digital record of training and certifications, healthcare workers could move between roles, institutions, and even states without the friction of waiting weeks for transcript validation or license checks. Some states are already testing this out, and the impact on hiring speed could be massive.

Coordinating credentials across institutions

A single healthcare worker might earn credentials from several institutions, complete clinical hours in multiple locations, and pursue ongoing training on the job. Right now, all that info is siloed in paper files, scattered registries, or not documented at all.

LERs create a shared, centralized record. So instead of a traveling nurse in New York re-verifying everything they did in Nevada, their credentials can move with them. Organizations like ProLocums and EveryCred are already working toward this vision. It’s a win for worker mobility and a win for employers desperate to fill shifts.

Reducing burnout and wasted potential

Burnout isn’t just about long hours; it’s also about misalignment. Workers are often over-credentialed for some tasks, underutilized in others, and boxed into roles that don’t reflect what they’re capable of.

LERs offer a clearer picture of what someone can actually do, unlocking smarter staffing decisions. A medical assistant who’s picked up telehealth skills? Their LER could signal that to supervisors and be redeployed more effectively, even if their title hasn’t changed yet.

Making opportunity more equitable

LERs are also a powerful tool for equity. The healthcare system leans heavily on allied health professionals, nearly 70% of the workforce, many of whom didn’t follow a traditional four-year degree path.

By capturing skills earned through apprenticeships, community college, on-the-job learning, or certification programs, LERs give employers a way to recognize talent that’s been hiding in plain sight. And they open the door to clearer career mobility for the workers who keep hospitals running every day.

Real-world pilots

This isn’t theoretical; some institutions are already putting it into action.

At the University of Louisville, pre-health students are earning digital badges tied to core competencies and lab experience, helping them bridge the gap between coursework and clinical readiness. The university is also expanding digital badges across campus to support employability and student success.

Meanwhile, Bioscience Core Skills Institute (BCSI) is embedding microcredentials directly into bioscience education. They’ve trained Certified Evaluators in 27 states and created scalable, standards-aligned credentials that reflect real-world skills, making hiring in the biotech field faster, fairer, and more accurate.

The bottom line

The U.S. healthcare system doesn’t just need more workers, it needs better ways to support and deploy them. LERs won’t fix every issue, but they could be the infrastructure upgrade that helps the system breathe again.

And who knows? One day, an LER might be the reason the right person is there at the right time to save your life.

TECHNOLOGY

Capture what only you can explain, then never explain it again

If you’ve explained the same task for the third time today... you're not alone.

Whether it's onboarding a new hire, documenting a tricky workflow, or answering yet another “how do I do this?” Slack message, traditional instructions just aren’t cutting it, and recording training videos? Who has the time?

You spend all that effort walking someone through it, only to do it again tomorrow.

That’s where Guidde comes in.

It’s your go-to teammate for capturing and sharing process know-how, without repeating yourself.

✅ Build clear, step-by-step video guides in under 5 minutes

✅ Auto-generate voiceovers, visuals, and captions, no editing tools needed

✅ Create a searchable library so FAQs stop flooding your inbox

✅ Scale training across teams without burning out your experts

Guidde makes it easy to turn your team’s know-how into lasting, visual training that sticks.

No more explaining. Just sharing what works.

👉 Start using Guidde and make knowledge transfer a no-brainer.

IMPLEMENTATION

The 5 stages of LER implementation, and why you’re not behind

It was just two years ago that I became immersed in the world of Learning and Employment Records (LERs) through my role at SkillsFWD. I had spent years in the workforce development space, so concepts like skills-based hiring, digital credentials, and credit for prior learning were familiar.

I was aware of LERs as tools to help connect people to career pathways aligned with their skills and goals, but I didn’t fully understand what it meant to implement one, or how far we still had to go.

What I quickly learned was that, at the time, the promise of LERs was largely theoretical. The vision was compelling: modernize outdated systems and make it easier for people to access opportunities aligned with their skills.

But in practice, implementation was just getting started.

Two years later, this space has evolved quickly. Several projects have established robust end-to-end LER demonstrations within their communities, and more teams are taking the leap into implementation.

However, I hear from people all the time who are curious about digital credentials and LERs but worry they’re late to the game. Even SkillsFWD grantees, who are actively building and testing new models, have told me they fear falling behind when they face inevitable challenges that lead to delays or pivots.

Here’s the truth: if you’re thinking about LERs at all, you’re ahead of the curve.

Because in the grand scheme, this is still new terrain. Those who are leading the way are learning in real time, figuring out how to align partners, define use cases, and create tools that work for real users.

From my front-row seat observing grantees and other early implementers, one thing is clear: there is no one-size-fits-all approach to LER implementation.

Each project is shaped by its own context, ecosystem, and priorities. Yet, despite the variation, we’ve seen consistent patterns in how successful projects tend to unfold. These insights have informed what we now call the phased approach to LER implementation. It’s a flexible roadmap grounded in real-world practice.

5 stages of implementation

This approach outlines five common stages of implementation. While teams may move through them in different ways, spending more time in one phase, circling back to earlier steps, or layering in new activities, the key is intentionality.

What matters is taking the time to engage users, align stakeholders, and build trust before jumping to technology. That foundation is what makes systems scalable, sustainable, and impactful.

LERs aren’t just about issuing digital credentials or building technical infrastructure. They’re about transforming how people access, share, and use their learning and employment data to open real opportunities. That transformation requires ecosystem coordination, user-centered design, and ongoing collaboration.

A snapshot of what’s possible

That’s why we built the LER Project Showcase. To provide a snapshot of where things stand and a window into what’s possible. The site features dozens of real-world projects, examples of end-to-end use cases, and a growing directory of organizations shaping this work. While it doesn’t capture every effort happening across the ecosystem, we hope it makes the work more visible and more approachable. Most importantly, we hope it helps people see that there’s space to contribute and shape what comes next.

We see this launch as just the beginning. The Showcase will continue to grow, featuring more projects and reflecting how this work evolves. (P.S. You can submit your own project here)

If you’re exploring how to bring LERs into your own context, know this:

You’re not late. You’re right on time.

WORKFORCE TIME MACHINE

How banks came together to save global finance

By the 1970s, international banking was like sending smoke signals across a financial jungle. Slow, error-prone, and vulnerable to fraud. With globalization booming, the stakes were high: companies needed faster, safer ways to move money across borders.

Enter SWIFT, a cooperative of banks that launched a global messaging network. By adopting a shared framework for how financial institutions exchange information, now known as ISO 20022, SWIFT created a secure, interoperable system that made cross-border payments smoother, safer, and smarter.

The magic wasn’t in the tech alone, it was in the alignment. Banks rallied around a shared enemy (inefficiency and fraud) and a shared goal (global trust and speed). The result? A transformation that powered modern finance and proved that even fierce competitors can collaborate when the upside is big enough.

Key Drivers of Interoperability

• Standards and protocols: A common framework gave institutions a shared “language” to work with, share data verifiably, and understand one another.

• Public-private partnerships: Banks, regulators, and standards bodies co-created the ecosystem, ensuring that critical stakeholders were well represented and their unique perspective was operationalized.

• Market demand: Global trade, digital banking, and regulatory pressure made it non-negotiable, focusing on a solutions-oriented approach that yielded measurable dividends and ROI for invested parties.

Lessons for LERs

• Anchor your systems in clear, shared rules, think “universal language for credentials” that everyone can understand.

• Foster ecosystems where employers, educators, and governments co-invest in adoption.

• Position LERs as essential infrastructure for global talent mobility, not just another tech layer.

🕰️ Have a historical connection to suggest? Send us your recommendations for how we can learn from history about interoperable innovations, workforce solutions, and other vital education.

BY THE NUMBERS

The US job market may be running low on gas

The economy added 73,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday, lower than economists’ expectations. The unemployment rate slightly rose to 4.2 percent, up from 4.1 percent the month before.

_{Source: NY Times}

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