Approach

Now that you've got a solid understanding of digital exclusion and how it affects the people you support it's time to start developing your approach. You should now have a good idea of what will work best for your organisation. Are you going to focus on helping people build their digital skills and confidence? Wil you start a device lending library? Are you providing public access connectivity?

Key actions

• Be a digital leader
• Build support for digital inclusion across the organisation
• Embed digital inclusion in your organisational policies and strategies
• Measure and review your impact

Be a digital leader

You don't need to be a Chief Executive or a Director to be a leader. Leadership is about your own qualities and attributes, and being able to bring people along with you. Embedding digital inclusion is a change management process, and it will have obstacles and resistance along the way. We sometimes refer to these leaders as 'Digital Motivators'.

Cross-organisation support

It's crucial that there is support from senior management for digital inclusion work. Time to make use of your business case! Having a clear business case can help make the case for your approach and any resources (financial, human or otherwise) that you might need. Having a 'Digital Trustee' on your board can really help this process.

Resistance is more likely to come from other parts of the organisation. Change can be difficult for some people, and this can be exacerbated when it's 'digital'. As a Digital Motivator, you'll need to think about how you bring people along with you. We've seen success where organisations set up a short-life-working-group to help guide this process. Involving people in the design of your approach can help embed digital inclusion more effectively and it's also a great way to influence the direction of your approach based on their own experiences of frontline delivery.

When you are ready to begin delivery start small and start with the enthusiastic. Good news stories and early wins will help you tell the story of digital inclusion and build momentum.

Policies and strategies

Digital inclusion will have a greater likelihood of being embedded if it's reflected in your organisation's policies and strategies. This will look differently for each organisation, and require cross-organisation collaboration, but here are some examples we've seen:

• A digital inclusion strategy! Why not have a standalone strategy that sets out your ambitions?
• Risk assessment policy: risks exist in digital spaces just as they exist in physical spaces. Risk assessment policies and frameworks should be reviewed to consider online harms and safeguards.
• Staff learning and development: does your organisation have a strategy to support digital upskilling? Are there opportunities to undertake digital skills learning during work time?
• Job descriptions: how often are job descriptions reviewed? Do they reflect the digital age we now live in? Is there support during induction to help address any digital skills gaps, especially for people who have been out of the workforce for while.
• IT and data security: technology is only secure if the people using it are supported to do so confidently. Consider workforce digital skills in relation to 'being safe, legal and confident online' and 'handling information and content' in the Essential Digital Skills framework.

Impact

We have a whole section on Impact. But before we get there, it's important when you're designing your approach to digital inclusion that you think about impact, and the stories, that you want to be able to tell. We often forget to do this part until the end of a project lifecycle, but it's best to plan it from the start. Think about the changes you want to make, for the people you support, your workforce and for the organisation. Make sure you've got the systems in place to be able to collect the data and stories you need to do this throughout delivery. These stories are a vital tool in bringing the rest of the organisation with you and maintaining support.