Digital skills for employability

In August 2023, the Department of Education is launching Digital Functional Skills qualification in schools. This aims to equip students with the digital skills they need to be prepared for the digital working world. However, there are a number of roadblocks that make this approach not necessarily fit for the prime objective. The purpose of […]

The purpose of the Digital Functional Skills, set out by the Department of Education

“The skills approach considers tasks and activities which are authentic and relevant to today’s workplace and everyday life. These tasks and activities require students to make connections between the skills areas set out in the content, therefore awarding organisation specifications should encourage teachers to emphasise the interconnectedness of these skills areas – for example, that being safe and responsible online is a consideration across all the other skills areas – and to consider the use of online delivery.”

However, if you review the subject content, it primarily focuses as an IT function, not core job skills such as coding, digital marketing and social media.

It includes:

Data entry
Navigating websites
Using the internet safely
General office skills

Although these are absolutely important skills, this approach fails to include tangible job skills that can help ignite a passion for digital and support the person in whatever career they choose to take.

Digital Skills For Employees, Business Owners and Self-Employed

Digital skills such as digital marketing, design, web development and analytical skills can all help a person get a job in the industry, or start their own business with the capabilities to create and maintain their own presence online. All of these skills are useful in whatever function or industry you choose and overall make a person more employable.

Digital for Equality

Not only do digital skills offer employability, there should also be a significant focus in ensuring that people from less advantaged backgrounds are able to access and benefit from digital skills. This shouldn’t be confined to children but also anyone, enabling social mobility for those looking for alternative work opportunities.

For those who can’t or don’t want to attend university for whatever reasons, digital skills could help broach economic inclusion, social mobility and equality. Digital skills, access to the internet and a device to work on, can enable a person to access more opportunities. This could include remote working and flexible working, which could enable more people to more easily carry out caring responsibilities, reduce travel costs and the costs associated with working in a physical office space.

Earning Capability

Digital jobs are much more likely to pay well, offer flexible working and provide better benefits than many traditional job roles. This can also benefit those who have barriers to traditional 9-5 jobs, including caring responsibilities, restrictions to travel such as lack of access to public transport or a personal vehicle and mental health conditions that can cause disruption to the traditional work cycle.

In 2019, a UK government report revealed that around 82% of all jobs in the UK list digital skills as a requirement. The report also demonstrated that digital jobs have a salary which is 29% higher than the average job, as an example, a person working in digital could earn £37,000 vs £28,000 a year in an alternative industry.

Adapting Your Hiring Process

In order to move the dial in terms of the diversity we see within the digital sector, employers need to remove the mindset that the best candidates are from degree educated backgrounds. In fact, some people may choose to leave education immediately after their GCSEs but the brilliant thing about school leavers is that they are essentially a blank canvas, so long as they have drive and enthusiasm, the rest can be taught.

They also need to understand that not everyone will walk into a job, especially junior roles, with all of the skills you would like. But that’s okay! There are a plethora of resources, both paid and free, that you can utilise and integrate into daily work schedules, to help them learn and then apply skills to live client work.

Job adverts

Use inclusive language and don’t frighten people off with terminology such as ‘expert’ – there will be plenty of people who are in fact ‘expert’ at what they do, but they may not wish to label themselves as such. You could put off some great people through just putting the ideal candidate on a pedestal before you’ve even met the talent.

Internal Mobility

Mobility within your business is also important. You may hire someone with the intention of them fitting into one department, but if other skills begin to reveal themselves and a natural flair for other disciplines, there’s no sense in trying to stem that ability. Being prepared to pivot people based on their skills makes your business more dynamic and ultimately can result in happier people doing the jobs that they are both good at and enjoy.

Success Measurement

Measuring success also needs to pivot, to be more aligned with what actually works and brings in results. For example, you can’t always measure the success of a website by the number of visitors. Those visitors may not all be qualified customers or even interested in the site content.

Instead, consistent high quality visitors who spend time on site and move through the marketing funnel, would be a more successful result, even if this is overall less visitors. The same is true for an employee. Quality over quantity should always be at the forefront of performance.

Focus on Potential

Moreover, diversity within your workforce brings a range of people, with different lived experiences. This allows products, solutions and services which consider a range of viewpoints. Within this you can better meet the needs of people from a variety of backgrounds including their socio-economic status, access to resources and their personal requirements. This allows you to work towards correctly social under-representation within the digital industry and the other industries you work with. Moving away from the idea that ‘one-size-fits-all’ is paramount, instead looking at a candidate’s potential is much more realistic.

Skills-Based Hiring

This approach prioritises a candidate’s abilities and aptitude, rather than looking at how many years of experience they have or the level to which they have attended education.

Certificates and grades become significantly less important, instead, identifying the existing and potential skills within an individual are pulled into focus. This highlights the importance of interviews which make a person feel comfortable and encourage them to express themselves, revealing more of their natural talents than a standard Q&A structure.

Post-Recruitment Process

It’s important to support those new or unfamiliar with the digital industry, to understand the access to resources that they have. There are an abundance of free resources, which people can utilise, even become accredited, which can massively increase their employability.

Support

For all recruits that come through on job applications, you could set up an automated email that also sends them links to useful resources that can help them in the future. Even better, if you can take the time to arrange some group zoom calls to help upskill your prospective candidates, you may see them apply for roles later down the line, with an improved skill set and demonstrating the ability to self discipline and manage their own professional development.

Feedback

Alongside this, although not always feasible, feedback can be really critical for those new to the industry so that they can make adjustments for future applications or interviews.

Link to interview tips
Resource library
Skills based hiring

Culture

Inclusive culture that is welcoming is vital. Making sure that your whole workforce is aligned with what is and isn’t acceptable, how to communicate with one another and basic social skills that can reduce the risk of offence being caused or people feeling uncomfortable. People should be enabled to express their identity in a safe environment, ideally resulting in happier and more productive employees.