Watch our short video that explains leadership in a digital world.

Digital tools can improve your organisation’s capabilities and capacity, but it can be difficult to know where to start. You need to ensure that you have the right skills to use them effectively.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has produced some tips for running a digital skills programme.

• Think strategically
  Combine digital training with existing strategies, this will help you get commitment across the organisation and makes it more likely your programme will succeed. Consider strategic aims when assessing your skills gap and planning training. Content needs to be relevant to your organisation.

• Engage leaders and trustees
  Digital needs to be part of the organisation’s culture. Support from the leaders and trustees is vital as they have the influence and authority for long-lasting change.

• Listen and adapt
  Listen to the feedback, comments, and suggestions from your users. As your programme grows their insight will help increase engagement, attendance, and impact.

• Build confidence
  You don’t need people to become experts, but you do want people to feel confident enough to try something new. Focus your sessions on building confidence by using group discussions, fun and practical exercises, and easy to follow tips.

• Build engagement
  Focus on the people who are engaged and enthusiastic first and use them to encourage others who are less interested or worried about their digital skills. Offer one-to-one as well as group sessions to ensure everyone participates.

• Collect data
  Data will help you review your programme and discover what impact it has. Collecting attendance and evaluation feedback at the end of a session will enable you see what’s working and what needs to be improved.

• Use internal communications
  Use a range of communications within your organisation to remind people about upcoming sessions. This can include email, chat posts, posters or desk flyers. Focus on reasons why people should attend a session and try to use informal language and focus on words such as learning, sharing, confidence, effectiveness and efficiency.

• Plan learning options
  Use your survey to find out how people in your organisation prefer to learn. Include practical exercises, discussions, guides and external resources in your sessions.

• Make it scalable
  Focus on delivering effective sessions and keeping the programme manageable. You can add more as your programme progresses.

• Have fun
  The more approachable and friendly you can make your programme, the more likely you are to engage your colleagues. By using amusing images, quotes, soundbites, and videos you can liven up presentations and it will make learning more appealing.

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has produced a useful tool for you to assess your current digital maturity and how this compares to other organisations. You can start the checkup at digital.checkup.scot