Digital badges, for displaying on email signatures and LinkedIn, will soon be available to people who complete one of seven Ara professional development workshops.

Ara offers affordable and flexible business development workshops to businesses and individuals to help upskill staff and improve business performance. Businesses sending staff to these workshops recently asked Ara’s business development team for a way to help acknowledge that their staff were improving their professional or cultural capabilities.

"The digital badges are a great way for employees to proudly display what they’ve achieved in their professional development journey. They’re also a way for employers to demonstrate their commitment to supporting continued learning for their staff," says Jan Connelly, Business Development Manager at Ara.

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Digital badges are a way to record all the skills people develop that might not be obvious from formal qualifications that they have. Since they’re in a digital form, they can be easily shared with employers or potential employers, or on social media.

Badges are digital images, loaded with information about what people have learned or achieved. They’re smart-certificates!

Because Ara has an existing relationship with eCampus who already offers digital badges, creating digital badges for Ara courses was relatively straightforward.

"Working with eCampus, within the Te Pukenga network, to create the badges was a simple and enjoyable process. We knew what we wanted and eCampus had the technology to make it happen quickly. The team are excited to start awarding badges to our workshop participants," says Connelly.

Businesses with staff who’ve completed badged workshops in the last year will be offered badges in retrospect.

Badges will be available to anyone who completes one of the following professional development workshops:

• Everyday Te Reo
• Intro to Te Reo and Tikanga Māori
• Intro to the Treaty
• Practical leadership for new leaders
• Less is more - modern business communication
• Dealing with difference - team management and conflict resolution
• Building buy in - sales culture and business reputation.

Information on digital Ara workshop badges can be found here on eCampus’ website.

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