New capability lets issuers align credentials to recognized external frameworks — O*NET, ESCO, and NACE Career Readiness Competencies — or upload their own taxonomy, so credentials carry authority employers already trust
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Accredible, the world's leading digital badging platform, today announced Skills Frameworks. The new capability lets issuers align credentials to recognized external skills frameworks or upload and manage their own, giving learners credentials that speak a language employers, evaluators, and hiring systems already recognize.
Solving Taxonomy Lock-In So Every Credential Explains Itself
Skills-based hiring is accelerating: 70% of employers now use skills-based hiring practices, up from 65% the year before, according to NACE's Job Outlook 2026. Adding skills to a digital credential is one of the most meaningful upgrades an issuer can make in that environment. Until now, doing so meant working inside whichever taxonomy a badging platform had already chosen, whether or not it reflected how a program actually defines the skills it teaches.
Accredible's Skills Frameworks removes that constraint. Issuers can align credentials to an external standard employers and hiring systems already reference — O\*NET, ESCO, and NACE Career Readiness Competencies at launch, with more frameworks to follow — or upload a taxonomy of their own and apply it the same way. Framework name, source, and authoritative definition appear directly on the credential, giving issuers a credential that carries employer-recognized authority without reshaping their program around someone else's vocabulary. The credential explains itself, without requiring the issuer to be in the room.
"Issuers kept telling us the same thing: they didn't want to restructure their program around a vendor's vocabulary just to give their credentials more authority in the market," said Rochelle Ramirez, SVP of Product at Accredible. "Whether that's a recognized external standard or a framework they've built themselves, the choice needed to stay with the issuer. That's what Skills Frameworks does."
Framework Choice Without Restructuring the Program
Framework adoption is additive, not a migration. Standalone skills, an issuer-uploaded taxonomy, and external frameworks can coexist in the same Accredible account, with different groups using different sources and existing credentials untouched unless an issuer chooses to migrate them. AI-assisted tagging speeds that migration when a group does move to a framework, with every change reviewed and confirmed before it applies.
Skills Frameworks launches with O\*NET, ESCO, and NACE Career Readiness Competencies as available external frameworks, with more to follow, alongside issuer-uploaded custom frameworks with their own names, definitions, versions, and retirement.
According to Accredible's 2025 Skills Frameworks Survey, more than 80% of Accredible issuers already use or plan to use a recognized skills framework, and 65% rate skills alignment as very important to their program's credibility. Separately, a OneTen and Burning Glass Institute study found that firms in the top 10% of "credential fluency" — mapping credentials to roles and embedding them in hiring systems — hire non-degree credentialed workers 11 percentage points more often than firms in the bottom 10%. For issuers, that gap is the argument for framework attribution in concrete terms: credentials tied to a recognized source are credentials employers can act on, not just read.
"While the Wharton name is recognizable, our learners also need digital credentials that showcase the skills, abilities, and habits of mind they develop in Wharton Executive Education programs," said Sherri Place, Director of Instructional Design and Content Strategy at Wharton Executive Education. "Skills Frameworks gives us a way to do that consistently, across everything we issue, so learners don't have to rely on our name to prove it."
Skills Frameworks is available now on Accredible's Connect and Growth plans. To learn more about how it works, read Rochelle Ramirez's blog post.
You can also join Accredible on August 26, 2026 for "Align Your Credentials to the Frameworks Employers Already Trust," a live group demo covering Skills Frameworks, Job Market Insights, and how to ensure a framework-backed skill actually builds trust with the people evaluating it. Register today to reserve your spot.
About Accredible
Accredible is the world's leading digital credential platform, enabling education and training leaders to increase learner engagement and drive program growth. Over 2,300 organizations, including Google, IAPP, McGraw Hill, Rutgers, Skillsoft, and the University of Cambridge, rely on Accredible to manage and measure everything from issuing digital certificates and badges to visualizing learning pathways to spotlighting certified learners. Founded in 2013, Accredible has helped issue and verify over 195 million career-advancing credentials. To learn more, visit accredible.com.
Media Contact
Ryan Greives, Accredible, 1 7655329198, [email protected], https://www.accredible.com
SOURCE Accredible
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