Hear from James about how his essential digital skills training is benefitting himself, his colleagues and the people he serves.
James is the manager of Wimborne Library in Dorset. His story first appeared in ‘The UK workforce digital skills gap: Why closing it matters and a roadmap for action’.
I was one of the first people to attend the embedded digital champion training offered by Dorset Council.
It involves completing online modules focused on essential digital skills. The aim of the training is to improve your skills and give you the confidence to support the people you help in the community.
For me, the training has been an enormously useful thing. It’s improved our library’s offer to the public. It was a great learning experience. And it was a great eye opener too.
Now, I’m a great deal more responsive and more aware of people’s digital needs. It’s become so much more apparent how much assistance some people need with the digital aspects of their life, and how excluded they feel if they’re not able to access digital successfully or confidently.
“Now, I’m a great deal more responsive and more aware of people’s digital needs.”
The training has also made me a great deal more confident about helping people with any digital problems they may be facing.
Obviously, I don’t have the answer for everything. But the training taught me a progressive and empathetic approach when speaking to customers, so I feel more confident in trying to find the answer together.
The development of my essential digital skills has also had a knock-on effect on the rest of the
team at the library.
We all have increased general awareness of the digital needs of people coming through
our door. And obviously these needs can be very wide and varied, because it can be literally anything that comes through a library door in terms of an enquiry.
On top of this, the team is now much more inclined to share new knowledge about digital or technology, so it benefits us as individuals, our team and the wider public as well.
Dorset Council is a signatory of the Workforce Digital Skills Charter, committing to collective action to close the essential digital skills gap in the UK workforce.
For more on how cross-sector employers are building suessful digital skills programmes and boosting the digital capability of their workorces,see the ‘Learning that clicks’ report from FutureDotNow.
