Digital skills and capabilities will be essential in the new normal, enabling the UK’s economic recovery.
COVID-19 provides an opportunity to change outmoded structures and ensure the workforce has the chance to have the right skills at the right time through a robust data-driven approach.
We can use embedded networks and local knowledge to access and unlock new talent pools. Support is needed for mid-career adopters, late-career switchers, and non-digital natives to catch up with the skills they need. We want to ensure that everyone has a fair chance to succeed, and that our recovery does not cause already marginalised groups to fall further behind.
Re-skilling and re-training
A rush to digital adoption always risks leaving people behind. To support the workforce to become proficient users of digital technology, employers must enable their people to understand which of their existing skills are adequate and transferable, and where the gaps lie. Government must support employers and workers with practical and financial support to fill those gaps to ensure that no one gets left behind, and to ensure that employment and career development opportunities are accessible. Local government must collaborate with business and learning providers, and with tech communities such as our own.
As digital natives adept in technology, we must always be mindful that digital terminology and digital roles can be difficult to understand and hard to find.
We must change the language we use to describe digital jobs so that they are more comprehensible - and less frightening - to those new to digital working.
We must also focus on removing barriers which are preventing workers from upskilling into a digital role, for example, poor domestic broadband or a disability.
Ageism often plays a role here too, and we must learn to view everyone, no matter how far along they are in an existing career, as a potential digital professional.
Adult apprenticeships, short courses and re-training, including code academies and applied software degrees, will be essential to our economic recovery.
We need future leaders who will understand when to deploy digital technologies in the right places for the right reasons, to increase productivity, efficiency, and quality of service.
Provision for future skills and building a talent pipeline. The digital skills of the future are not just about code and gadgets. Building a successful future digital workforce requires a holistic approach that teaches the critical thinking skills needed to understand and exploit digital adoption.
We need future leaders who will understand when to deploy digital technologies in the right places for the right reasons, to increase productivity, efficiency, and quality of service.
They need the business and commercial skills that will complement those digital abilities, and will allow them to implement digital into business plans and roadmaps for growth and expansion. They will also need to consider data ethics, privacy, and responsible uses of technology as cornerstones of their professionalism.
Employers and education providers must ensure that students have the technical capabilities to envision, create, and launch innovative digital products and services. Ensuring that education and industry are closely aligned and that courses and syllabuses are designed in an agile way that can be tweaked and altered as the industry evolves should be a key government priority.
The scope of digital skills activity covers a huge range of delivery mediums and beneficiaries. These things can mean different things to different stakeholders.
We would like to see an agreed set of definitions being used to describe the objectives of digital skills activities:
- Ensuring we have the indigenous technical capability to build innovative digital products and services
This will support our tech sector to grow through the creation of more business as well as a constant supply of technically-trained staff. - The creation of proficient users of digital technology
Across all sectors to ensure that everyone can have the best employment and career development opportunities, while also supporting the businesses which employ them to work as productively as possible. - The development of critical thinkers to understand and exploit digital adoption
Who will know how to embed the benefits of digital technology, across all sectors and business strategies, to increase productivity and efficiency. They will also understand how to support staff to become technically capable and proficient users.
To learn more on digital as an enabler, The Recovery Roadmap Report - developed in association with TechnologyOne - is available for public viewing below.
The Recovery Roadmap Report
The full Recovery Roadmap Report, in association with TechnologyOne, is available for public viewing here.
