Use this page to understand which digital skills your organisation needs to work on first. And how to find out about digital skills among staff, volunteers and other colleagues.
There are four methods for gathering insight listed below. Three are quick and easy for any size of organisation to use. Surveys are more relevant to organisations with larger numbers of volunteers or staff.
You can assess digital skills using:
Take 10 minutes during team meetings to discuss digital skills. Find out which ones people have learned recently. Try exploring these questions:
We recommend a short, one-hour online workshop. It’s vital that this session takes place in an exploratory, non-judgemental atmosphere. That helps people to be honest about their skills levels.
Share documents or links before the session. Choose which feels most relevant to your teams and easiest for you to use. Recommend that people taking part focus on both the life skills and the workplace skills in each list.
Find more information on this below.
Speak to a range of staff about how they are using digital. Common challenges and opportunities will surface. We recommend at least 5 interviews, asking:
You may see some patterns in the results, for example areas where staff need support with digital. If you are in a large organisation you can use these to help you plan what to measure in more depth as part of a digital skills survey.
Use the techniques in this article to help you plan your questions.
Surveys can be very helpful for gathering data across your organisation. They're also an opportunity to find out about digital behaviours and motivations.
You can ask:
Find out more about how to carry out a digital skills survey.
Get an idea of what good use of digital skills looks like.
There are best practice examples in the skills principle in The Charity Digital Code of Practice.
Note on using the document: scroll down the page to best practice and select small charities if your turnover is up to £1m. Select large charities if your turnover exceeds £1m.
You’ve got an understanding of what digital skills your colleagues have. Now you need to plan your organisation’s goals and how to use digital skills to reach them.
One way to do this is to write a vision statement for digital skills.
You can also take your digital planning to a deeper level. Create individual perspectives on what good looks like.
You’ve completed your research and identified what success looks like. Now you can prioritise. You don’t have to do it all at once. Decide where to focus your efforts to keep improving bit by bit.
Here are some easy steps to follow.
Last reviewed: 02 March 2021
Help us improve this contentGet regular updates on NCVO's help, support and services