TL;DR: Employer Branding Academy, part of Universum, runs a digital course in employer branding leading to certification. Diplomas used to be built by hand from an Illustrator template, saved as PDFs and emailed one at a time, which left the product owner waiting on colleagues who had the tools and asking them for every correction. She now uploads the list after each monthly certification session and sends the whole group in one sweep, and a participant who wants their own name corrected does it themselves.
Eva Carlson is product owner for Employer Branding Academy, known as EBA, which is part of Universum. The academy runs a full digital course in employer branding that leads to certification, and Carlson works on both halves of it: the product itself, its creation and its updates, and every individual going through the training.
By finishing the course and then building something out of it. The last step is a final project: a short case for the participant’s own organisation, carrying a plan, a strategy or an idea they could put into practice, drawn from the concepts the course taught them. Meet EBA’s base requirements and the participant is officially certified.
Certification sessions run monthly. Shortly after each one, Carlson uploads a list of everybody certified and the diplomas go out together. Towards the end of the session she also tells the participants about TRUE and what to expect. That part used to be a promise she could not reliably keep.
A queue, and not one Carlson controlled. The design existed and EBA held the data, so neither of those was the constraint.
“Before TRUE we had to create the diplomas manually based on an Illustrator template, save as PDF, and email them one by one. I depended on other colleagues who had the tools to do it for me, and in between I needed to ask them to update names, resend, and so on. It took extra manual and turnaround time. More admin.”
The bottleneck was access to a tool, held by somebody with their own work to do. Every typo in a participant’s name turned into a request to a colleague, and every request carried a turnaround that had nothing to do with how quickly Carlson could have fixed it herself.
Carlson stopped waiting, and so did the participants. She can create and update documents without going through anybody, and a graduate who spots a mistake in their own name fixes it without going through her.
“With TRUE I do not need to depend on or wait for anything to create or update documents. With a few clicks I can automatically get them all out quickly in one sweep, and if a participant wants to update their name on the diploma, for example, they can do it themselves.”
Eva Carlson, Product Owner, Employer Branding Academy
A person who can correct their own name on their own diploma is not a support ticket. That single change removes the most common reason anybody contacted EBA about a diploma at all, and it removes it for the participant as well as for Carlson.
Less fiddly, and safer for the design, which are two separate gains arriving together. The template stays put, and the details that used to be edited by hand are picked from a list instead.
“You avoid all the fiddly work. The template is there, and where we need to change a logo or a signature you can pick from a drop down. That way you also avoid the kind of mistakes that can happen to the design or the template when you update certain details by hand.”
Eva Carlson, Product Owner, Employer Branding Academy
Hand editing a template does not only cost time. It slowly wears the template down. A logo dropped in at the wrong size, a signature nudged out of place, and one month’s diplomas go out looking not quite like the last month’s. A drop down cannot do that, which is why the consistency holds without anybody policing it.
A way to ask the graduate one question. Carlson wants diploma recipients to be able to tick whether they would act as an ambassador and talk about their experience. EBA gets approached by people considering the course who want to speak to a former participant first, and the box would tell her who to send them to.
EBA publishes its course on its own site, where it lists the blockchain verified diploma among what a participant gets: Employer Branding Academy. It has also launched several formats for taking the course, including a self paced option and a scheduled version with group calls. On the credential side, see how to issue micro credentials. Its parent organisation has a case study of its own: Universum.
EBA is part of Universum and runs a comprehensive digital course in employer branding that leads to certification.
By completing the course and a final project: a short case for their own organisation with a plan, strategy or idea they could use in practice. Meeting EBA’s base requirements makes the certification official.
Manually from an Illustrator template, saved as PDFs and emailed one by one. The product owner depended on colleagues who had the tools and had to ask them to update names and resend.
In one sweep. Shortly after each monthly certification session the product owner uploads a list of everyone certified and sends the diplomas together, and a participant can update their own name themselves.
A way for a diploma recipient to tick that they are willing to act as an ambassador, so EBA can refer prospective participants to a former one.
Every organisation on these pages started with the same question. Give us thirty minutes and we will show you what your own documents would be worth.
Book a callNot sure where to start? Let us help!
Trusted by leading organisations worldwide
