Understanding the digital skills gap

Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy came of age in the pan­dem­ic. From order­ing food, clothes and oth­er essen­tials on our mobile apps and tablets to con­nect­ing with friends, fam­i­lies and col­leagues via video com­mu­ni­ca­tions, tech­nol­o­gy was con­stant and cru­cial in sur­viv­ing lock­down. 

It may come as a sur­prise then, espe­cial­ly to par­ents of teenage kids, that there is a chron­ic lack of dig­i­tal skills in the UK hold­ing back busi­ness from tak­ing full oppor­tu­ni­ty of the tech­no­log­i­cal shift. 

In 2019, before the pan­dem­ic hit, a report from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty revealed that 88% of busi­ness­es had a short­age of dig­i­tal skills already impact­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, effi­cien­cy, and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

With uni­ver­si­ties and schools closed and work­ers miss­ing out on dig­i­tal tuition in the work­place dur­ing lock­down there are fears that this gap may have widened.

The digital skills gap could hit profits

Accord­ing to a report ear­li­er this year from World­Skills UK, 60% of firms believe that their reliance on advanced dig­i­tal skills will increase over the next five years. How­ev­er, just over three-quar­ters of busi­ness­es believe that a lack of dig­i­tal skills will hit their prof­itabil­i­ty. 

This skills gap, despite those kids with their heads down over Minecraft and FIFA, includes young peo­ple com­ing out of school or col­lege. The num­ber tak­ing IT sub­jects at GCSE lev­el has fall­en by 40% since 2015 with the num­ber tak­ing A lev­els, fur­ther edu­ca­tion cours­es and appren­tice­ships also declin­ing.

But it is not just young peo­ple enter­ing the work­force where the gap is clear, there is also a lack of skills amongst adults re-enter­ing employ­ment or dis­placed from the pan­dem­ic into a new career. There is also a need to upskill those already in employ­ment no mat­ter their age or posi­tion.

Accord­ing to the Lloyds Bank Essen­tial Dig­i­tal Skills report for 2021,  4.9 mil­lion peo­ple in the UK can’t turn on a device and log into any accounts or pro­files they have by them­selves. 

“The focus has to be across the dig­i­tal skills land­scape. It is not just more edu­ca­tion for the young that we need but also adult and fur­ther edu­ca­tion,” says Nim­mi Patel, techUK’s skills, tal­ent and diver­si­ty pol­i­cy man­ag­er. “The gap in skills is also across the whole work­space with 82% of all jobs requir­ing dig­i­tal skills. That is only going to increase.”

What digital skills do we all need?

So, what are these dig­i­tal skills that so much of the UK work­force and our young­sters are miss­ing out on? What do they need to know?

The first stage is the five basic dig­i­tal skills that every­one needs, includ­ing being able to com­mu­ni­cate online, man­age and store infor­ma­tion secure­ly, and trans­act­ing, prob­lem solv­ing and being safe and legal online.

It also includes mak­ing sim­ple use of dig­i­tal devices and func­tions such as nav­i­gat­ing a web­site to access a pub­lic ser­vice or being able to send an email. The Lloyds report revealed that a fifth of the pop­u­la­tion, around 11 mil­lion peo­ple, are dig­i­tal­ly dis­ad­van­taged because they lack these basic skills. 

Accord­ing to techUK, the next stage is dig­i­tal skills for the mod­ern work­place, which is an inter­me­di­ate-lev­el of under­stand­ing. These are the skill sets that use dig­i­tal and tech effec­tive­ly on a day-to-day basis such as being able to use cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment sys­tems and soft­ware effec­tive­ly.

The third stage is high­er-lev­el tech­ni­cal dig­i­tal skills such as geospa­tial data analy­sis or cod­ing as well as dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies includ­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), machine learn­ing and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty.

“This is where the largest skills gap exists in the tech indus­try. Young peo­ple may always be on social media but that doesn’t trans­late over to car­ry­ing out data ana­lyt­ics on these chan­nels,” says Patel. “But we are see­ing gaps across all three stages. Each one needs a tar­get­ed approach to help peo­ple gain the skills they need.”

Changing the mindset around digital training

Patel says moti­va­tion is key to begin address­ing these gaps. “It is hard to con­vince peo­ple that they real­ly require these skills,” she says. “Many busi­ness­es also don’t offer train­ing. They are not doing this as much as they should and could.”

Encour­ag­ing­ly, Patel says the lock­down may have shift­ed atti­tudes both at an indi­vid­ual and organ­i­sa­tion­al lev­el as peo­ple realise the vital role dig­i­tal plays in their lives, the econ­o­my and job oppor­tu­ni­ties.

In a poll at the end of last year, techUK found that 58% of those aged between 16 and 75 want­ed to gain more dig­i­tal skills in the next 12 months. “There is more inter­est both amongst work­ers and busi­ness­es buy­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and start­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions. It is impor­tant that we build pro­vi­sions around upskilling and re-skilling to ensure that we don’t lose this momen­tum,” she says. 

What can businesses do?

Busi­ness­es should iden­ti­fy dig­i­tal skill gaps by look­ing around their indus­try and rivals. What are they doing? How is dig­i­tal help­ing them in prod­uct inno­va­tion or cus­tomer ser­vice? They could then look at cre­at­ing flex­i­ble bite­size online dig­i­tal learn­ing pro­grammes where employ­ees from every depart­ment — not just the IT group in the base­ment — can upskill and retrain at their own pace. To encour­age a cul­ture of dig­i­tal learn­ing, employ­ees could be award­ed inter­nal cer­ti­fi­ca­tions or badges for each course they com­plete.

Employ­ers could also sign­post staff to the Government’s Skills Toolk­it – free online learn­ing cov­er­ing com­put­er skills, dig­i­tal design, cod­ing, and com­put­er sci­ence includ­ing AI. “These online short mod­u­lar ini­tia­tives are so impor­tant as they can reduce the bar­ri­ers to peo­ple learn­ing. It pro­vides an area where you can say here are the tools and we can help you and sup­port you. Just pick one of these and we will give you the time to com­plete it,” Patel says. “The Gov­ern­ment has also launched ‘An Hour to Skill’ cam­paign to encour­age employ­ers to give staff an hour to work on a Skills Toolk­it course.”

In-per­son class­room teach­ing may be more suit­ed to some basic skills train­ing with many employ­ers using a hybrid mod­el. SMEs could also utilise the Appren­tice­ship Levy to bring in more young tal­ent into organ­i­sa­tions as well as new dig­i­tal T‑levels focussing on essen­tials such as under­stand­ing data and dig­i­tal sys­tems.

The need for digital role models

techUK also cham­pi­ons busi­ness­es encour­ag­ing young peo­ple, impor­tant­ly includ­ing women and those from diverse back­grounds, to learn about ‘role mod­els’ who have devel­oped a career using their dig­i­tal skills. 

“Employ­ers are already doing this, going into schools show­ing young peo­ple what a career in dig­i­tal looks like for peo­ple from all walks of life,” Patel says. “Tak­ing a wider view, we need to embed dig­i­tal in every part of the school cur­ricu­lum. It is so cru­cial in every role nowa­days and you don’t need to be Bill Gates to do it.”

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