L&D technology platform Bridge has expanded its suite of learning and development tools to include an upskilling platform, Skills Plus. This latest addition to the Bridge toolkit, which includes an LMS, a performance management system, and employee engagement software, combines a substantial in-built skills library with AI-powered skills and learning recommendations.

Skills Plus provides learners with the information and opportunities they need in order to upskill in line with the latest skills requirements for both current and future job roles. The platform also automates the skills tagging process by scanning large quantities of courses and assigning one or more skills drawn from the 32,000 options within the skills library from Lightcast, a leader in labor market analytics.

Akash Savdharia, Bridge's Vice President of Talent Solutions, said, "Once upon a time, career trajectories were fixed, inflexible, and always pointed in an upward direction. Skills Plus is built around the idea that plenty of skills can be applied horizontally, allowing for a culture of multidirectional internal movement and helping employees define their own unique career journey.

At the same time, skills requirements for any role are always shifting in line with new practices, technological breakthroughs, and industry changes. That's why Skills Plus gives employees an understanding of how the existing skills sets measure up against the latest needs for their current roles. This allows organizations to proactively fill skills gaps with the help of AI-powered recommendations that keep every employee up to date effortlessly."

"Lightcast's skills library is continually refreshed from more than 50,000 online job sources," said Bruce Evans, Executive Vice President at Lightcast. "Our database of more than one billion current and historical job postings makes Lightcast skills both more in depth and more up to date than any other source."

Skills Plus also allows learners to connect with colleagues who are interested in the same skills, either as learners or as people willing to help teach that skill to others. This feature allows employees to form collaborative skills communities and identify mentors willing to help with skills development.

The launch of Skills Plus is the latest in a recent string of innovations and updates across the Bridge suite of employee development tools. The platform's performance management system is now available as a standalone product, while its advanced content authoring solution, Gomo, has been upgraded to allow course designers to publish their work directly to Bridge.