NB – E – Enablers
Overcoming systemic barriers to change
Our Enablers workstreams tackle the most urgent systemic barriers to progress. We help employers understand their digital skills journey and curate practical tools and resources so organisations can act quickly to support working-age adults build the essential digital skills for work.
Helping organisations to understand their journey
The Essential Digital Skills Organisational Maturity Framework helps employers understand and move through the typical stages of workforce digital upskilling.
In 2026, we are curating practical resources (e.g. bitesize ‘what works’ guides mapped to each stage), so businesses can find relevant content quickly and efficiently to accelerate progress and measure impact.
Essential Digital Skills & AI Employability Project
Thanks to significant progress in 2025, we now have a large bank of content to support organisations build the essential digital skills of their people, as well as tools to benchmark progress against peers. A priority for 2026 is curating these resources and making them even easier to access.
Our Tools and solutions workstream, led by Cisco and Salesforce will help steer work to map resources across the different stages organisations typically work through.
Progress so far
Working with the business community and other stakeholders, we made significant progress in 2025, prioritising work to identify and solve systemic barriers to progress.
Tools & solutions
The Essential Digital Skills & AI Employability Project is a government-funded proof-of-concept bringing together FutureDotNow’s South-West regional work and Not in Work workstream. Co-led with Cosmic and Accenture, it is testing the impact on employability of providing jobseekers with essential digital and AI skills.
Accreditation and badging
The workstream on accreditation and digital badging is being led by our partners at City and Guilds. Early focus is on prototype testing as part of the Essential Digital Skills & AI Employability Project, and exploring linkages to the Digital Badging Commission led by FutureDotNow Strategic Partner Ufi VocTech Trust.
A future-fit essential digital skills framework
n early 2026, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology announced they would be taking on stewardship of the Essential Digital Skills Framework. This is an important progress point.
Our work to influence the future shape and adoption of the framework continues.
FutureDotNow’s work is both essential and impactful. Thanks to their Economic Impact, Learning that Clicks and Ripple Effect reports, the NHS has been able to make a strong, evidence-based case that includes essential digital skills as a key pillar for the first time. This will enable the UK’s largest employer to bring much needed attention and action to address this critical skills gap in our current and future workforce and for the people we serve.
James Freed,
Deputy Director, The NHS Digital Academy
