Over 100 SkillSets help employees develop exact skills needed for their role

By Shwetabh Mittal, Senior Director, Product Management

This past year, as the pandemic forced companies to move online, digital transformation that may have required years took mere months. According to the World Economic Forum, the double disruption caused by automation and the pandemic are likely to change 40% of core skills for workers by 2025. To remain competitive, improve employee retention, and reduce hiring costs, more business leaders are realizing the need to invest in their talent.

To help companies prepare their teams for digital transformation amid rapid change, we created Academies. Academies help businesses target the exact skills their employees need to develop for their job function. Following a successful Data Science Academy pilot in 2020, we designed solutions for Cloud and Software Engineering to help businesses drive data, digital, and technological literacy through targeted skill development.

Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of Academies for all Coursera for Business customers. Starting today, technology and learning leaders can provide immediate job-based learning plans that develop target skills across their organization.

Academies are powered by more than 100 SkillSets, which provide data-driven content curations in a learner-friendly interface. SkillSets efficiently chart a tailored learning plan for any employee, whether it’s data literacy courses for the marketing team or Natural Language Processing projects for engineering. With skill scoring, SkillSets also make it easier to understand the results of your upskilling programs and quantify the impact of data and digital literacy initiatives. 

“Coursera was the missing critical piece to our three-stage Analytics Academy, which helped pull it all together by offering the best and most relevant advanced analytics courses in the market.” 

–Ankush Agarwal, Director of Analytics, Exelon Utilities

Within SkillSets, a given skill is assigned a target score between 0 (a true beginner) and 500 (the highest level of proficiency and mastery). Program administrators can adjust target scores to suit the differing skill needs of each role. Learners are then presented with a set of dynamic, data-driven course recommendations that tie to their skill goals. When a learner successfully completes a course assessment, the corresponding skill score increases.

Academies and SkillSets can help equip employees with the right skills to thrive in their roles amid rapid digital transformation. Transform your company’s talent today with Coursera for Business.

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