Workforce digital skills

• I can log in remotely to my email and other work-related communication tools  
• I can use my organisation’s email address book to send emails to colleagues and use the ‘cc’ and ‘bcc’ options when required 
• I can use digital communication tools such as Teams and Slack to communicate colleagues 
• I can use digital collaboration tools such as Sharepoint and Google Docs to collaborate on work with colleagues 
• I can use video-conferencing tools such as Zoom and Teams to communicate with internal and external colleagues 

• I can access salary, contract and job role information online, including password protected payslips  
• I can submit requests for annual leave, record absence from work or submit expenses claims online  
• I can complete e-learning and online training courses required to do my job 
• I can complete and submit online forms in relation to my job role 
• I can upload documents, files and images where relevant 

• I can follow my organisation’s IT policy when sharing, storing and handling information 
• I can log in and access online systems and databases remotely
• I can use my organisation’s cloud-based storage to securely save and retrieve information
• I can synchronise, store and share work-related information on different devices
• I can update privacy settings on my documents to change access permissions 

• I can use the internet to find solutions to work-related problems  
• I can use applications such as Excel or Google Sheets to collate and analyse information 
• I can use applications such as PowerPoint and Google Slides to present information  
• I can use online productivity tools such as Trello to plan out projects and create action plans 
• I can use online information to find and use media and accessibility settings on my device 

• I can identify and report suspicious communications such as phishing emails 
• I can keep the information I use to access my online accounts secure, using different and secure passwords for websites and accounts
• I can use privacy settings and follow my organisation’s social media policy
• I can check if online information is true or false
• I can follow my organisation policies on backing up data and updating software 

Before you start, it's important to get an understanding of why you're doing an audit. In addition to the reason driving you to take this forward, there are other benefits that might be helpful for you to consider:

• Establish a baseline: By understanding the digital skills gap in your organisation you're better placed to identify priority areas for learning and development plans. You can administer the audit in another 12 months and demonstrate the change in workforce digital skills.
• Understand workforce motivation: Depending on how you design the questions in your audit, you can establish not just what the skills gaps are, but also what the workforce is interested in learning about. This can help you establish some quick wins when you get to putting an action plan in place.
• Better adoption of new technology: Understanding skills gaps, and skills strengths, will help make the deployment of new systems or IT solutions more seamless as you'll have a better idea of the training needed to support successful adoption.
• Show funders you're a modern organisation: Demonstrate to potential funders that you're a modern charity that understands the role of digital in service delivery and that you're taking steps to ensure your workforce are capable of digital service delivery.
• Improve outcomes for people you support: A significant proportion of people using our services will be digitally excluded, missing out on the benefits of the digital world. A digitally skilled and confident workforce is a key component of supporting digital inclusion and supporting better outcomes for the people we work alongside.
• Minimise organisational risk: Our systems are only safe if our workforce know how to use them. Human error is a huge risk when it comes to digital, either through vulnerability to phishing attempts, misuse of digital information sharing or unprofessional behaviour on social media. Empowering people to build digital skills and confidence helps minimise some of these risks.

Here are some of our top tips and considerations for designing a workforce digital skills audit:

• Forms: Use tools you already have access to e.g. MS Forms of Google Forms, both of which can export your data to a spreadsheet for analysis. In addition to your digital forms, consider some paper versions if part of your workforce don’t have access to a work device, don’t use digital in their day-to-day work or are likely to struggle with a digital form.
• Core questions: We recommend sticking to the 5 skill areas in the Essential Digital Skills framework. You can amend the different tasks under each skill area if you need to, but it’s best to keep it closely aligned if you intend to compare your results to the annual Lloyds Consumer Digital Index. One of the most effective ways of amending the different questions is to provide relevant examples that include the platforms you use at work e.g. MS 365 or Google Workspace apps. We've pulled the core questions into this Word document for ease of use.
• Responses: The bulk of your audit should be closed questions, and this will make the data interpretation a lot easier. For each individual task/question you want to understand if respondents can or cannot do this task. At SCVO we usually include a 'partial' option to give a bit more flexibility for respondents who have some confidence/knowledge but can’t fully execute a specific task:
  • I can do this
  • I can partially do this
  • I can’t do this
• Additional questions: For each task/question we also include the option ‘I’d like to learn more’. This will provide valuable insights to what your workforce are interested in learning about, which can be valuable for your learning and development planning. You may also wish to include a couple of additional questions, potentially free text options to get some additional insights. We recommend you limit this to no more than two or three additional questions. These questions might focus on learning styles and how people want to develop their digital skills e.g. peer learning sessions, video content, written guides etc.  For larger organisations you may want to include some options on which team/department people work for, so long as this won't identify anyone (see notes on 'anonymity' below).

Designing a survey is one thing, but you need to make sure people complete it. Here are our top tips for getting a higher return:

• Name: Give it a positive name. We're referring to this as an 'audit', which isn't necessarily the language you'll want to use when you send the survey out. Consider more positive names like 'Digital Confidence Checker' or 'Digital Skills Spotlight'.
• Completion time: The survey should only take 10 minutes to complete, as long as you don't add too many extra questions! Communicate the length of time it will take to complete when you send the survey out.
• Anonymity: It's essential that you understand that a lack of digital skills can be embarrassing for people, especially when we so readily assume that everyone knows how to do things digitally. Making the survey anonymous will help return rates and give those with lower digital skills more confidence to complete it. No one wants to tell their employer they lack skills in something! Make sure you've edited the settings on your form so that it doesn't capture email addresses on submission or any other identifying data. When you issue comms to launch your survey make sure you let people know that it's anonymous.
• Buy-in: Good return rates may also depend on how well the organisation is bought into this. In bigger organisations you'll want to ensure managers of different teams are supportive and will encourage their teams to complete the survey.
• Be proactive: In some organisations you may need to take the survey directly to people, especially those working in satellite locations of lacking access to their own device. Consider loading the form onto a tablet and doing some outreach to engage with the wider workforce.

Now that you've collected your data you're probably wondering what to do with it?

• Lloyds Consumer Digital Index: Head over to the Lloyds Bank website and get the latest version of the Consumer Digital Index, published every year. This will have the data you can use to compare your organisation's results to the UK and Scotland averages.
• 'Having' workforce digital skills: The definition of 'having' workforce digital skills means an individual person can do at least one task in each of the 5 skill areas. Interrogate your data to establish what percentage of your workforce meets this threshold and compare to the UK and Scotland averages.
• Dig deeper: Beyond understanding how many people 'have' workforce digital skills, there's more depth to understanding the skills gap in each skill area. Explore how many people can do all the tasks in each skill group, and where the biggest gaps exist. You can then start to compile a list of the tasks that most people struggle to do.
• Trends: Start to explore the any trends emerging from your data, especially in relation to the national dataset in the Lloyds Consumer Digital Index. Which skills groups and individual tasks are low, and which tasks are people most interested in learning about? If you've asked for the department/team are there any emerging issues here in relation to specific teams?

Now that you've analysed your data and made sense of what it's telling you it's time to share it with the rest of the organisation.

• Report: Create a report to outline the key insights from your survey. Frame this in a positive way to help reassure people who may have been apprehensive about completing it. Highlight the strengths and opportunities to take forward. Here's a sample report that we created in Canva.
• Learning and development plan: Embed the insights in your organisational learning and development plan for the year, prioritising areas that scored lowest and areas that had most staff interest.
• Learning in practice: think about the best way to support digital skills learning, and use the insights from your data if you asked a question about this. Consider online communities with work-based Digital Champions that can champion different apps or platforms that you use. Contextualise learning through the different platforms you use.
• Think ahead: You'll want to do a follow-up survey next year, so remember that how you use the results this year will determine how much buy-in you get next year!