In HR Dive’s Mailbag series, we cover HR professionals’ questions about all things work. Have a question? Send it to [email protected].
Q: How should employers track expiration dates for worker credentials, deadlines for employee training and more?
A: Employers largely lean on their HR information systems to keep tabs on employee credentials, but the process varies depending on the exact type of credential that a given employee possesses or needs in order to maintain their employment.
Josh Bersin, an HR industry veteran and CEO of the Josh Bersin Co., told HR Dive in an interview that there are three categories of credentials employers typically track:
- Academic credentials, including college degrees
- Professional licenses, such as commercial driver’s licenses and nursing licenses, that are granted by licensing boards and must be renewed annually or by a certain deadline
- Advanced professional credentials, a broad category encompassing anything from completion of a course to attendance of a bootcamp
While licenses are often included in company databases for compliance reasons, advanced professional credentials may not be, Bersin said, given that many are not prerequisites for performing a given role. Exceptions include credentials granted by companies for their employees.
Specialized software platforms exist for managing these requirements, but most HRIS systems “have reasonably good tracking of these kinds of things,” Bersin added. Databases are important not just for reminding employers of the deadlines for license renewal, but also for knowing which employees may be assigned to specific jobs or tasks.
And while tracking and notifications are fairly standard features, HR teams also need to account for how the certification is completed. Bersin gave the example of certain pharmaceutical licenses, which often have in-person components.
The issue also can be complicated when an employer makes changes to a process that requires certification from a regulatory or professional body. If a pharmaceutical manufacturer changes its process for making a given drug, and that process differs from the one on which employees have been trained, then both the process and the employees may need to be recertified, Bersin said.
Several entities have come forward with a goal to be the “end-all-be-all licensing database for everyone on the planet,” but Bersin said he is skeptical of such claims, in part because licensing is industry-specific and subject to the requirements of a given jurisdiction.
“It’s never worked because it’s very complicated,” Bersin said.
As in other areas of HR, artificial intelligence could assist in making tracking certifications easier, he noted. For example, the tech may be used to help consolidate lists of applicable licensing laws into a database, though Bersin said employers should be aware of accuracy concerns.
A dream future scenario may be to be able to deploy an AI-enabled capacity planning and workforce scheduling system that provides HR departments an up-to-date roster of which licensed workers are available to work on a given project.
Bersin offered the scenario of an HR person staffing the construction of a data center project. The practitioner needs 500 construction workers, 35 of whom must be licensed electricians in the state of Texas. The practitioner is tasked with determining whether additional employees must be hired or contracted for the project.
“That’s a perfect application of AI,” Bersin said. “Capacity planning and resource planning is good for AI because these are yes-no answers that can be figured out.”
Similarly, AI may be useful for building a roster of employees who are interested in obtaining credentials that allow them to advance in their careers or obtain higher-paying work. Ideally, he said, the system can identify who wishes to be certified in what, which staff would be on hand to certify them and how to schedule the process.
