Skills and badges let you reward learners for competences they have genuinely demonstrated, not just activities they have completed. By connecting activities to skills, enabling grading, and linking skills to badges, you create a setup where every badge earned is backed by real, verified performance.
This article explains how the full flow works, from setting up your skill categories to understanding what learners see in their badge collection.
How skills are structured
Skills are organised in two levels: categories and skills.
A category is the overarching competence area. For example:
Compliance Regulatory knowledge
Within that category, you define the skills that the category includes. For example:
Understanding applicable laws and frameworks
Interpreting policy documents and legal language
Staying current with regulatory changes
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You can also use a category to represent a single skill with multiple levels, such as Beginner, Advanced, Intermediate, and Expert. This gives you flexibility to model both breadth and depth.
Linking skills to activities
Each skill can be linked to an activity in your programme. When you link a skill to a learning bite and enable grading on that activity, the grading result directly determines whether the skill is awarded.
Here is how to set it up:
Go to Content > Activities and open or create a learning bite.
Enable grading on the activity
Add the activity to your programme
Add your skill after the that activity
Once grading is enabled, the activity moves into a grading workflow. Learners complete the activity, but the skill is not awarded automatically. A manager or reporting manager must review and grade it first. Once they have done so, the skill is awarded
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Grading only works for learning bites!
The grading workflow
Once a learner completes a graded activity, here is what happens:
The activity is finished, but it it not marked as completed.
The learner's reporting manager/manager reviews the submission
The grader marks the activity as passed or failed
If passed, the activity is marked as completed, and the skill is awarded to the learner
If failed, the learner can retry the activity, and the skill is not awarded to the learner
What learners see: skill and badge status
Because grading takes time, learners will see a status indicator on the badge of their skill that reflects where things stand.
Status | What it means |
Pending | The activity has been submitted but has not been graded yet |
Not yet achieved | The grader marked the activity as failed |
Achieved | The grader marked the activity as passed and the skill has been awarded |
Learners can see this status in their badge collection. If a skill is still pending or marked as failed, the badge icon will reflect that, so learners always have an accurate picture of where they stand.
👀 Good to know
If a learner sees a skill marked as not yet achieved, they can redo the linked activity and resubmit for grading. This encourages learners to keep working toward the standard rather than simply moving on.
Why this matters
This setup ensures that badges and skills in your platform represent verified competences. Learners cannot earn a skill badge just by clicking through content. They have to demonstrate the skill, have it reviewed by a qualified person, and meet the required standard.
This keeps your programme credible and gives both learners and managers confidence in what the badges actually mean.
Next steps
Once you have defined your skill categories and skills, you can add them directly to a programme.
For a step-by-step guide on adding skills to a programme, 👉 check out the related article on adding skills to programme.