The power of collaboration

A great session with the FutureDotNow Senior Leaders Council yesterday morning. We had a packed agenda given the breadth of work currently taking place across the coalition and heard from numerous Senior Leaders on digital initiatives, both within their businesses and in partnership with others.  

Asda and Nationwide shared useful experiences relating to their trailblazing programmes to boost employee, customer and our collective digital capabilities. They will be working closely with the FutureDotNow team and coalition partners to continue to develop these programmes, sharing learnings with the wider coalition. Indeed we discussed how these programmes could be shared more widely with business's supply chains, liaising with existing organisations like "Be the Business".

What's the motive?

One fundamental challenge with our collective campaign to boost the nations digital skills has been motivation, or perhaps put more precisely, understanding needs and opportunities; in short "motive". Oliver Wyman shared some excellent research on what motivates us to learn new skills and we’ll be piloting their findings with our coalition members in the coming months as well as sharing their research across the coalition.

The scale of the task has been well heralded for a while, not least through the Lloyds Banking Group Consumer Digital Index (CDI) which has consistently highlighted some 17 million of us who are yet to acquire what are increasingly being called the Essential Digital Skills, namely, the ability to communicate across the internet, to search and transact online; all vital skills in the 21st century. Lloyds Banking Group will be issuing their CDI 2020 on 21 May. Whilst progress is being made in reducing the number of people still digitally isolated, we have much more work to do, not least given the pace of change. Jan du Plessis, BT's Chairman, shared some of the consumer feedback from BT's latest campaign with ITV, helping us all with some essential digital tasks. And of course, given the impact of Covid-19, we all recognised how social distancing restrictions have impacted our lives and made access to digital services so important. Indeed, as we discussed briefly yesterday, as we look forward to "new normal" we need to consider and anticipate how life and work are going to fundamentally change in the light of what we are experiencing at the moment. Arguably how we fully embrace technology in a truly inclusive way has become event more important.

DevicesDotNow

Finally, Liz Williams MBE, FutureDotNow's CEO, shared progress on the national campaign #DevicesDotNow seeking to fund and supply devices to UK households isolated in today’s digital world. Nearly 2 million households don't have access to the internet, in part due to lack of devices and connectivity. This campaign, supported by DCMS, but driven by businesses and charities across the country is seeking to address this, at least for the most vulnerable.

My thanks therefore to the Council and equally importantly all FutureDotNow's fellow 83 organisations making up the coalition. Do join us for Digital Week May 18-22 for a series of interactive coalition sessions and together let's share what we have.