Unlocking Digital Potential: 5 Strategies for Boosting Staff Engagement with Digital Skills
So, you want to help your staff or volunteers learn new digital skills but don’t know where to start? Or perhaps you’ve tried already and hit a wall? Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered! This isn’t easy stuff, but we’re here to help.
We recently conducted a research project with organisations piloting our Digital Skills Framework (more on this below and here). Our goal was to understand the successes and challenges in upskilling staff and volunteers.
For this research, we conducted five user interviews and held a workshop with six organisations, each represented by two or three people. In this article, we’ll share the key themes and strategies we discovered that can foster a thriving learning environment.
Not a Magic Bullet
All the organisations we spoke to had a framework to work with — a list of skills, tasks, and curated resources for staff and volunteers to learn new skills. Yet this isn’t a cure-all: many weren’t seeing the engagement they’d hoped for.
I liken digital skills to a CRM project: without consistent use, results are patchy. If you don’t explain how people should use it and integrate it into current workflows, it’s unlikely to be adopted. Just as you’d set a CRM strategy to ensure success, you need to think strategically about engaging your staff with new digital skills.
It won’t happen overnight, but read on for tips to start nudging your staff, colleagues, and volunteers towards digital mastery.
Encouragement, permission and curiosity
First and foremost, we learned that senior leaders and colleagues in HR roles play a crucial role in encouraging, and perhaps more importantly, giving permission for staff to take time out of their busy days to learn new skills.
But it takes two to tango. Individual team members themselves also need to be curious and want to learn.
Unfortunately, engagement with digital skills resources and tools is a challenge across all of the organisations we heard from. Often it’s a question of time, capacity, lack of confidence to get started or even, in some cases, resistance that stands in the way of people learning new skills.
The case for upskilling
This graph shows how the AI tool ChatGPT reached critical mass adoption (considered at over 50% in the US) in just 10 months — in comparison to the internet which took 17 years.
In this faster-than-ever changing landscape, as employers it’s our responsibility to support individuals to understand that learning new skills isn’t just a nice to have — it’s now essential, both for them personally and professionally, and for the organisation. With 54% of the UK workforce currently missing essential digital skills, we simply can’t afford to fall any further behind.
“The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills. Everything else will become obsolete over time.”
Peter Drucker
5 strategies for encouraging engagement with digital skills
- Communicate the benefits of new skills
To get people truly excited and motivated, it’s imperative to articulate the benefits of digital skills clearly to staff and colleagues in terms that resonate with them. The levers or drivers will vary depending on the individual, but may include one or a mix of:
- Individual Empowerment: How might we help them understand that digital skills can transform personal and professional lives, enhancing daily tasks, boosting confidence and saving time?
- Career Advancement: How might we communicate that new skills open doors to new roles and responsibilities, leading to career growth and higher pay?
- Organisational Growth: How might we demonstrate that an up-skilled workforce is more efficient, innovative, and adaptable to change, driving the organisation forward and, most importantly, fulfilling its charitable mission?
2. Having key stakeholders on-side
This may seem a bit of a no-brainer, but it’s still worth mentioning: getting senior and other key stakeholders involved and on-side is a positive condition that can help to send the right message to staff about the organisation’s intention to up-skill.
Some examples of this in practice are:
- Leading by example — what new skills can your CEO or leadership team learn and share in the next few months?
- Giving permission for teams to spend time learning and exploring new skills and putting them into practice. For example, all staff could spend 1 hour a week learning a new skill or tool.
- Setting expectations of what an ‘upskilled’ organisation looks like and how you’ll get there as a team of individuals with different skills, confidence levels and ambitions.
Importantly, working closely with colleagues with HR or Learning and Development responsibilities is vital to create a joined up approach to digital skills and can help to avoid duplication of effort and resource.
“Senior stakeholder engagement isn’t just about informing decisions; it’s about co-creating the future.”
Simon Sinek
3. Provide support for managers
We heard that when managers encourage their teams to learn new skills and give them permission to do so, staff felt more enabled and likely to pick up new skills.
As such, managers are a crucial group of people to involve to boost new skills learning in your organisation. Finding ways to communicate to managers the benefits of learning digital skills for their staff, and for their team’s performance, can make all the difference. Consider how you can best support your managers to support their teams with digital skills; some of the following might be helpful.
4. (Lightweight) processes and frameworks to formalise learning
Formalising digital skills learning and practice is helpful as it provides some structure for learning, sets expectations for staff and serves as a reminder to keep at it as an organisation. Some examples we heard were:
- Incorporating digital skills into your Professional Development Plan sessions or 121 management check-ins
- Adding a snippet about digital skills into all of your current and new job descriptions as standard practice. It doesn’t need to be complex; it can be quite broad, but by adding this in you’re signalling the importance of digital skills in your organisation. Some very basic suggested wording: Demonstrates curiosity and willingness to learn about new digital and workplace skills.
- Visiting colleagues and teams to deliver some training or information on a specific tool or skillset
- Adding digital skills as a standing item on your team meeting to share progress, tips and tools amongst staff
- Regular lunch and learns for staff to share knowledge and tips on specific skills and topics
5. In sight, in mind
We mentioned that all of the organisations taking part in the research struggled with engagement with digital skills resources and tools. Keeping digital skills and their importance at the front of everyone’s mind is a huge challenge, with so many competing projects, objectives and new tools to keep track of.
By introducing some of the processes in point 4, teamed with frequent reminders about digital skills, you can keep them alive, visible and remind staff of their strategic importance to the organisation. Some of the charities we spoke to use the following tactics:
- Regular comms via all-team emails or messaging via Teams, Slack or similar.
- A regular ‘spot’ during team meetings to discuss new skills or highlight a specific skill or resource
- Sharing examples of how other organisations are using new digital skills and tools
In short, the digital world is always changing, and to keep up, we need to stay curious and keep learning. By integrating the strategies we’ve talked about into your organisation’s daily routines, we can better handle the challenges of digital change, now and in the future.
“The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
Dr. Seuss
Let’s continue to learn, adapt, and grow together. If you’d like to share any strategies that have worked well for you, or to chat about anything digital skills-related, please get in touch with tori@wearecast.org.uk.
Interested in learning more about the Digital Skills Framework?
In collaboration with the Scouts Association, we have co-developed a digital skills framework over the last couple of years. We’ve been piloting it with a brilliant and diverse group of charities that are seeking to improve the digital skills of their teams and volunteers.
The framework isn’t currently available more widely while we test it, but we hope to get it live very soon. We’re currently seeking funding to develop it and scale it to more organisations. Watch this space!
If you’d like to find out more, drop me an email on tori@wearecast.org.uk or you can sign up and get notified when the framework is ready to launch here.
