Re-inventing
Workforce Credentials

Workforce credentials are verifiable, tamper-proof, privacy-preserving proofs that workers can present digitally to demonstrate:

• Who they are,
• What they can do,
• What they are allowed to do,
• And whether they are currently compliant with rules and regulations.

They replace slow, fraud-prone checks of paper certificates, plastic passes, and scattered databases with fast verification that can work both online and offline and across employers, staffing agencies, worksites, regulators, and auditors.

Modern workforce credentials typically cover four categories.

• Identity proofs that prove who they are.
• Skills and qualifications that prove capability.
• Compliance and safety proofs that prove required training and certifications and those are valid and up to date.
• Mandates that prove authority: that a person is permitted to act on behalf of an organization in a specific context (role, task, location, time-window, etc.).

Why workforce credentials now

The labour market is moving toward skills-based matching, where the traditional CV is augmented or replaced by a “skills passport” highlighting transferable skills, ideally based on a uniform taxonomy, and a “skills wallet” that puts the individual in control of their own data.

At the same time, regulated industries and safety-critical workplaces need higher assurance, better enforcement, and simpler renewals than paper and plastic can provide: replacing physical certificates and access passes with validated, smartphone-held credentials that can easily be verified for authenticity and validity.

In Practice

Hiring and onboarding can shift from manual document collection to automatic verification and validation of the required claims (e.g., qualification level, expiry date, right-to-work status), speeding up pre-employment screening and worker planning and placement, while reducing fraud risk.

Dispatch and work assignment can use mandate credentials to prove “acting on behalf of” for a worker, subcontractor or staffing agency, and to time-box authority for a project and location.

Mandates can also authorize a person to sign contracts or approve requests on behalf of an organization, optionally limited by scope and thresholds (for example, approvals up to a specified amount).

Site access can require a combination of skills/qualifications and mandates, and can be validated online or offline depending on connectivity constraints.

Regulatory audits and enforcement can verify authenticity and validity in real time, with immediate recognition of revocations or suspensions.

How Sphereon supports Workforce Credentials

Sphereon provides the credential “plumbing”, the digital infrastructure to issue, hold, and verify workforce credentials across organisations and systems, including selective disclosure, status checking, and trust/governance integration.

This supports skills credentials, digital licences/certifications, mandates, and access workflows, while keeping individuals in control and enabling organisations to enforce policies and compliance.

It can be delivered as a full platform solution with Sphereon VDX (as SaaS or deployed sovereign in your own environment), or embedded into existing Apps and business IT systems using Sphereon IDK and EDK.