Reflections on Deloitte Digital Connect — Governors for Schools

Deloitte Digital Connect — a programme developed by CAST in partnership with Deloitte — is designed to help participants explore ways to improve their services through the power of digital technology.

As the second cohort of the programme drew to a close in May 2023, we caught up with some of the participating charities to discover what they had learned, their key breakthrough moments and the advice they’d give to anyone embarking on a similar programme. In the next of our series, David Scurr, Programme and Partnerships Lead at CAST, chats to Ashley Callard from Governors for Schools.

Hi Ashley; it would be great to have a bit of background about who you are and what your role is?

I’m Ashley Callard, the Communication and Engagement Manager at Governors for Schools. I work part-time and job-share with Louisa Hann. Our roles involve overseeing all communication and engagement activities across various platforms to promote the organisation’s mission and vision.

What motivated you to take part in Deloitte Digital Connect?

My team and I have been using a basic, off-the-shelf website for years, and it lacked the expertise needed to help it grow and improve. We’ve had the same website templates for years and we just didn’t feel that we had the digital skills and confidence to be able to update them and bring the website in line with evolving organisational needs. Also being quite new in the role, I didn’t have a lot of digital experience. So when we learned about Deloitte Digital Connect through Deloitte (our corporate partner), we saw it as an opportunity to get knowledgeable support and guidance to improve our website.

How did your website project evolve over the course of Deloitte Digital Connect? Was there a breakthrough moment for you?

We always knew that we wanted to focus on the website and utilise digital technology, with a focus on accessibility and usability. Initially, we were mainly concerned with navigation and aesthetics. However, through Deloitte Digital Connect I started learning more about user research, user journeys, and user-centred design which made me realise that we needed to go deeper than just the surface-level aspects of the website, and look at our whole user journeys.

Without going through user research, we would just think internally about what our users need — and make assumptions. We didn’t do any user research at the time, so the programme helped us shift the focus to encourage the team to invest more time in the value of doing research with our users and other stakeholders.

Putting some of this learning into practice, we identified some important issues with our website. For example, it highlighted the accessibility issues on our website. Our website didn’t align with our charity’s values of being flexible, inclusive, and supportive. The website was designed for a ‘typical’ person with no accessibility needs. Through expert support on the programme I was able to develop different personas using our website.

From doing user research and looking at user journeys, we realised that these changes should also apply to our social media strategy. For example, we weren’t using alt text correctly, considering hashtags and colour actions. We pivoted to make changes that were applicable and usable for our social media work as well.

Of the support activities you took part in through the programme, which did you find most useful — and why?

I found several support activities useful, including the mentoring support, the peer sessions and the Resource Hub. The one-to-one mentoring and subject matter expert support from Deloitte were really helpful. I also found the updates from yourself [David] and Ellen at CAST helpful in keeping me on track. And the extra resources shared through the online resource hub, such as an email course on user research (provided by Catalyst), were a great help — it was particularly useful for me since it was easily digestible and had clear actions I could take, and the summary at the end was helpful as well.

Can you share more on how the support you received from Deloitte volunteers helped?

I was matched with Paul, a Deloitte subject matter expert in web design. At the time I felt lost in terms of how to make the necessary changes to improve the website’s accessibility. However, meeting Paul and hearing about his experiences with accessibility from a digital perspective was empowering. It made me feel less alone in my journey.

I was also matched with Phoebe, a Deloitte mentor. She has also been incredibly generous with her time, helping us stay on track with our project roadmap and providing guidance on different accessible technologies. She suggested adding macros to documents and looking at different web engines, and even helped us add widgets to WordPress for text-to-speech functionality. Having someone with more knowledge in the digital space to validate our ideas has been invaluable, especially for someone like me who is not experienced in this area.

Did your experience in the programme change you as a communications professional at all?

Yes, my experience in the Deloitte Digital Connect programme has changed me as a communications professional. It’s made me more confident to have a go, and I now feel empowered to do so. It’s really made me more confident to take a seat in that digital space!

Being part of the programme has also helped me realise that we’re all learning and you just need to do it. Once you get started, things become easier.

What one bit of advice would you give someone else wanting to join the programme?

Block time out in your diary. Use as many resources as you can. Ask lots of questions and be open to feeling vulnerable. And by that, I mean, be open to the potential fact that your practice may not be where you want it to be. And that’s okay. And even if it’s bad, you’re on the journey, you’re making it better.

If you’d like to access some of the resources mentioned by Ashley, we’ve made over 100 digital resources available to everyone. Take a look at the Deloitte Digital Connect open access resource hub for an overview of user research methods, guides to digital accessibility, digital strategy and plenty more!

Applications for the third cohort of Deloitte Digital Connect will open by October 2023. Please email deloittedigitalconnect@deloitte.co.uk to be alerted as soon as applications are open.