Since before the pandemic, but especially now, digital skills have become more crucial than ever for the charity sector. Our beneficiaries have come to expect to be able to access services, information and activities online.
At Scouts we need to stay ahead of the curve with digital skills so that we can respond to change and continue to serve our beneficiaries. We need to become a truly digital organisation.
To help us get there, we want everyone at Scouts to have access to resources and information that will help you improve your digital skills - no matter where you’re starting from. That’s where the Digital Ready framework comes in!
There are lots of definitions of digital, but we like this one the most as it’s short, sweet and straightforward:
“Applying the culture, processes, business models and technologies of the internet era to respond to people's raised expectations.” Tom Loosemore, co-founder of the UK’s Government Digital Services
In other words, this means that isn’t just about creating a website or posting on social media. It’s about changing the way we work so that we can design and re-design services and products so that they’re meeting our users’ (and Scouts’) needs and expectations.
The Digital Ready framework has been created so that you can browse through different digital-related tasks and figure out where you’d like to learn more or improve your skills.
Once you’ve seen an area you’re interested in, simply click through to it and you’ll find a list of related skills for you to learn about. Under each of the skills are resources from a range of reputable organisations, labelled by type of resource and time commitment.
These lists aren’t exhaustive, and you don’t need to learn about everything in order - but they’ll give you a good grounding in each topic and hopefully make you feel more confident about learning more later on.
Here’s a quick video of an example journey through the Digital Ready framework.
For those of you who don’t feel hugely confident about digital yet, we’ve created six introductory guides to explain each of the six ‘Specialist’ skills in the framework. Check them out for a whistle-stop tour to get up to speed with what they mean and how they could be relevant to your in your role at Scouts.
Intro guide: How can I use data more effectively in my role? Intro guide: How to write good online content (including emails, web pages and reports)Intro guide: My work isn’t very digital - how is a digital mindset useful to me?Intro guide: How do I know I’m solving problems or designing processes that actually help people?Intro guide: How can I start testing out some of my ideas with people? Intro guide: What does rolling out a service involve?- Talk to your line manager about the areas you’re interested in. Are there any training opportunities you’d like to explore?
- Talk to a colleague about something new you’ve learned from the framework. Could it help them in their role, too?
- Suggest new topics, resources or training opportunities you’d like to see added to the framework by emailing the Learning and Development team at learning.development@scouts.org.uk. Or perhaps you could run a training session yourself on a particular topic you’re familiar with.
The Digital Ready framework is a work in progress: we’ll be working on it and improving it as time goes on.
Your opinions will help us understand what is working and what could be improved. Please take time to fill in the short pop up survey on the website so that we can make improvements to the framework.
If you need any support with the framework, or to give some feedback on the framework and its resources, get in touch with the Transformation team on digitalready@scouts.org.uk.