Organisational approaches to enable digital capability

By Jane Mooney, Professor of Educational Development and Digital Capability at The University of Manchester.  

Essential for everyday life, digital capability is a foundational component of digital equity and an organisational cornerstone for digital transformation.  This Digitober, I’m delighted to share some considerations to enable and promote organisational digital capability, based on transferrable practice from The University of Manchester’s strategic implementation of digital skills support for students and staff.  While the linked resources relate to the education sector, they can be adapted to your context where helpful.

How is the organisation’s leadership enabling and role-modelling digital development?

Implementing a digital capability agenda necessitates the allocation of resource, including time to accommodate continuing development, making senior support critical from the outset.  Further considerations for the senior team include understanding their own skillsets and continuing digital development needs.  

Does everyone understand what is meant by digital capability in your context?  

The value of a shared language in enabling understanding around what digital capability means to individuals and the organisation cannot be underestimated.  For example, within the Further and Higher Education sector, Jisc’s Building Digital Capability Framework is widely applied, providing a useful starting point that can be further adapted and used as a basis for conversations, as well as informing job descriptions and educational design.  Self-assessment tools, such as the Jisc Discovery tool, can also develop understanding while signposting further support for individuals and, when providing an organisation-wide view, can assist in the identification of gaps in development provision and workforce planning.

How is digital development facilitated and recognised within your workplace?  

Annual survey data published from the education sector reports on the importance of providing opportunities for digital development and recognition.  What are the opportunities throughout onboarding, induction, progression that development could be supported and enhanced?  Can recognition be incorporated within existing structures or schemes?  At the University, we introduced industry-recognised certifications for students and incorporated recognition into promotion criteria for staff.  Another recurrent finding is of the value of peer support: how is / could this be scaffolded within your workplace?

How is digital wellbeing promoted?  

We know our use of technology within digital and physical spaces can affect our wellbeing.  These briefing papers can provide some conversation starters when considering how digital wellbeing is discussed and factored into daily considerations – from procurement to meetings and managing expectations around communications across multiple platforms.  What ‘ground rules’ setting conversations can you have with your colleagues or team?

How is the digital experience being evaluated?

What feedback are you routinely seeking and how are the lessons learned being applied within the workplace and business?  At the University, we introduced annual surveys to standardise evaluation of the student and staff digital experience and share data with stakeholders.  Taking an organisational approach to evaluation can progress your roadmap to digital transformation.  

Cross-organisational collaboration, bringing together colleagues and students from across the University to ensure relevant areas were included in conversations and activities, was essential to our implementation.  As we have seen with the rapid rise of generative AI, digital development needs will continue to evolve at pace.  

A final consideration is where does the responsibility sit for continuing to drive digital capability across your organisation?