Digital is changing our lives, our jobs, how we run our businesses and manage our money. This means that having the digital skills, motivation and confidence to use the internet safely is becoming essential for life and work. Our research focused on essential digital skills for three groups: people managing money on low incomes; unemployed people and people in low-paid jobs seeking progression; and sole traders or owners of micro businesses. This report draws on our findings and existing evidence and presents recommendations for how we can enable more people and businesses to participate fully in a digital economy. We believe this will help achieve a fairer society and a more inclusive economy.
- Embed digital inclusion in all major initiatives for jobs and skills, financial inclusion, and small business support. Digital should be an integral component, not a ‘bolt-on’.
- Promote the benefits of the internet especially for people on local incomes and those seeking work. Some of the biggest economic opportunities lie in motivating micro businesses and sole traders to embrace digital.
- Provide free essential digital skills support for everyone who needs it, prioritising those who are constrained by poverty. Governments at all levels need to use their devolved powers to ensure adult skills policies deliver a genuinely inclusive and effective offer. This means:
- Recognising that effective support is wider than digital skills; it is about digital motivation and confidence and developing people’s ability to apply digital skills for life and work.
- Supporting ‘trusted faces in local places’ as the best way to reach individuals and businesses who need support the most.
- Ensuring support keeps pace with digital trends, online safety, skills for the future of work, and digital financial skills.
- Support holistic approaches to digital capability that understand the wider needs of individuals, foregrounding digital skills in relation to social inclusion and education. Services should be person-centred, flexible and motivational, taking account of the interactions between individual factors, personal circumstances and external factors.
- Harness the power of peers to build skills and motivation, whether through peer support in communities or local business networks. When people share their stories of how digital has benefited them, this can motivate others.
- Encourage employers to support basic digital skills, especially for low-skilled staff, using resources available online and in communities. We need to find better ways to engage and support people in low-paid jobs, with low digital skills, who want to progress.
- Use digital inclusion to catalyse collaboration locally. Stronger strategic leadership by local authorities with comprehensive strategies for digital inclusion are needed. Co-ordinated pathways of support make it easier for people to get the support they need to progress.
