Small Business Leaders, Tell Us How You Use Tech in HR

At JFF, we’re promoting skills-based hiring as a way to reduce workforce inequities, and small businesses can help us do that by telling us how they use technology to recruit talent.

We believe that, compared with existing human resources (HR) practices, skills-based approaches to hiring and recruiting can make pathways to good careers more broadly accessible to a wider segment of the workforce because they focus on what workers can do, not on the degrees or credentials they’ve earned.

We also believe that technology will play a key role in making it possible for employers to embrace a skills-based mindset by enabling the development and adoption of IT systems that support digital learning and employment records (LER), which are essentially digital resumes with secure, verifiable, and readily accessible records of people’s skills, educational experiences, and work histories.

And this transition won’t be possible without the involvement of small businesses, which have accounted for 65 percent of new job creation in the United States since 2000 and currently employ approximately 48 percent of all U.S. workers.

WHAT IS AN LER?

A learning and employment record, or LER, is a comprehensive digital record of a worker’s skills and competencies. LERs can document learning wherever it occurs, and they may include records of people’s credentials, degrees, and employment histories.

And this transition won’t be possible without the involvement of small businesses, which have accounted for 65 percent of new job creation in the United States since 2000 and currently employ approximately 48 percent of all U.S. workers.

Help JFF Build an LER Ecosystem for Small Businesses

In an article published on LinkedIn, Sharon Leu shared details about an effort she is leading as an JFFLabs Executive in Residence to promote the development of an LER-friendly ED to HR IT ecosystem. As part of that initiative, her team is conducting a survey to learn how small businesses use technology to recruit and hire workers so we can understand the challenges they would face in adopting LER technologies and embracing skills-based hiring and recruiting practices.

If you’re a small business leader or an HR decision-maker at a small employer, please take a few minutes to complete our survey.