Learner Employment Records (LERs) in Action: Testing a Digital Credential System in Colorado and Key Lessons Learned
Across Colorado, employers, workforce leaders, and education partners are working toward a shared goal to ensure that the skills learners gain translate clearly and efficiently into economic opportunity. Today, that connection is often unclear. Traditional transcripts list courses completed, but they rarely show validated skills. Employers struggle to verify competencies, and students who transfer between institutions can lose credits or repeat coursework.
One emerging tool in this effort is the Learner Employment Record (LER). LERs are digital records that document an individual’s skills, competencies, and credentials in a portable, verifiable format. As funders and states increasingly focus on skills-first strategies, LERs have become a central concept in national conversations about workforce mobility and credential transparency.
Through fiscal sponsorship support from Colorado Succeeds, Colorado participated in the national SkillsFWD initiative, a multi-state effort to test skills-based digital credential infrastructure, known locally as ColoradoFWD. The initiative was managed by the Colorado Workforce Development Council and funded by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. SkillsFWD tested how LERs and verifiable digital credentials can strengthen skills-based practices, improve transfer, and accelerate credential attainment.
The findings offer important insights for Colorado’s broader efforts to increase postsecondary attainment and strengthen alignment between education and workforce systems.
Why Learner Employment Records Matter
Traditional transcripts list the courses a learner completed. Employers, however, need to understand what an individual can actually do. LERs seek to bridge that gap by:
- Making validated skills visible and portable
- Allowing individuals to store and share credentials through digital wallets
- Enabling third-party verification
- Supporting stronger employer trust in the quality of credentials
For Colorado Succeeds, this work directly connects to priorities around credit transfer reform and credential attainment. When skills are clearly defined and validated, credentials carry greater value across institutions and into the labor market. That reduces repeated coursework, shortens time to completion, and improves outcomes for learners, while reducing hiring friction for employers.
What Colorado Tested
ColoradoFWD implemented seven pilot sites across healthcare, workforce centers, state agencies, and education partners. The project tested a full LER solution that allowed individuals to:
- Earn verifiable digital credentials tied to specific competencies
- Store those credentials in a digital wallet
- Share credentials with employers or other institutions
- Enable secure verification
The demonstration also focused heavily on clarifying the skills behind each credential. In healthcare use cases, partners mapped competencies to coursework, documented assessment methods, and issued credentials that clearly described validated skills. This focus on competency mapping and verification aligns closely with Colorado Succeeds’ work to ensure that postsecondary credentials signal real value and support seamless transfer.
Five Key State-Level Learnings
A central lesson emerged quickly. Digital transformation must be led by trust, not technology. Job seekers and employers emphasized the need for:
- Clear consent and privacy protections
- Credentials people can easily understand
- Simple, intuitive user experiences
When workflows became complex or digital tools created friction, participation declined. In one direct care demonstration, more than 1,100 individuals were invited, yet only 12 registered and 4 completed the experience.
The takeaway is clear: Modernizing credential infrastructure must prioritize ease of use and clear value for participants if it is to meaningfully support attainment and transfer goals.
Colorado currently lacks a single, unified statewide skills framework. The demonstration surfaced the importance of:
- Aligning shared skill definitions across issuers
- Clarifying how skills are evaluated
- Improving how systems recognize and exchange credential information reliably
For credit transfer and credential attainment, this work is critical. When competencies are clearly defined and consistently mapped, institutions can more easily recognize prior learning, reduce redundant coursework, and ensure smoother student mobility.
Healthcare employers engaged in a 10-month community of practice focused on Primary Source Verification requirements, which are the regulatory requirements to verify credentials directly from issuing institutions.
Employers expressed strong interest in skills-based approaches but emphasized that adoption depends on whether systems:
- Integrate with existing HR workflows
- Reduce administrative burden
- Meet regulatory and compliance requirements
Interest in LERs is growing, but employer adoption hinges on demonstrated value. This insight reinforces an important connection.
Credentials that reduce duplication and accelerate onboarding increase employer engagement. Employer engagement, in turn, strengthens the labor market value of credentials earned through Colorado’s education system.
Ninety percent of Colorado’s local workforce boards participated in the Skills-first Local Workforce Board Challenge, and workforce centers issued 158 credentials during demonstration testing. Designing the systems with frontline workforce staff proved essential. Staff engagement increased buy-in, surfaced usability challenges, and positioned workforce centers as trusted guides for learners navigating digital credential systems.
For Colorado Succeeds, this reinforces the importance of advising systems and workforce intermediaries in supporting credential attainment and transfer.
The ColoradoFWD team successfully tested two digital wallet solutions, but connecting the solutions to existing state systems proved more complex than anticipated.
Assumptions about vendor readiness and whether systems could integrate successfully did not fully hold. The experience underscored the need for:
- Clear governance structures
- Defined technical standards
- Alignment to Colorado’s broader workforce strategy
- Demonstrated vendor capability to deliver at scale
Before LER functionality can scale statewide, infrastructure readiness and cross-agency coordination must be strengthened.
What This Means for Colorado’s Attainment & Transfer Agenda
The SkillsFWD demonstration did not reach the original scale targets, and integration with state infrastructure remains in progress. Yet the project laid important groundwork. Most importantly, it reinforced that skills visibility and credential portability are foundational to economic mobility.
For Colorado Succeeds and its partners, the path forward includes:
- Refining a statewide governance model for skills and credential data
- Strengthening the employer value proposition
- Continuing low-risk, hands-on demonstrations to build understanding and buy-in
- Improving system accessibility and user experience
- Aligning LER efforts with Colorado’s workforce strategy
For employers, this means clearer signals of skill, faster verification, and reduced administrative burden. For learners, it means fewer lost credits and stronger recognition of prior learning.
As Colorado works to increase postsecondary credential attainment and improve transfer outcomes, Learner Employment Records offer a promising solution. When credentials are transparent, portable, and trusted by employers, learners move more efficiently from education to employment.
Colorado has built a strong foundation. The next phase will focus on deepening coordination, strengthening governance, and ensuring that every credential earned in Colorado translates into verified skills and meaningful opportunity.