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The voice of Scotland’s vibrant voluntary sector

Published by Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

TFN is published by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Mansfield Traquair Centre, 15 Mansfield Place, Edinburgh, EH3 6BB. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Registration number SC003558.

Are you prepared for the fourth industrial revolution?

This opinion piece is about 4 years old
 

Lynne Somerville on the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution

Is your organisation digitally prepared for the future?

With the fourth industrial revolution upon us, it’s vital that your business has a digital strategy.

The digital skills gap the UK is facing needs to be tackled head on by employers as it is essential to our future economic growth, innovation and internationalisation.

However, despite moves by the government to increase the number of skilled staff in the workforce, growth in demand for digital skills across all sectors of the economy means the skills gap is continuing to widen too.

It has been shown that businesses who are embracing digital technology are far more likely to engage with customers, are developing new processes to enhance and streamline their service, are far more likely to develop new products, and are able to in turn sell their products and services to a local and global market place, 24 hours a day and at a reasonably low cost.

Lynne Somerville

The digital skills gap the UK is facing needs to be tackled head on by employers

Lynne Somerville

Businesses now don’t have the comfort of putting off either upskilling current employees or recruiting staff to manage their digital presence. It is only a matter of time before such an oversight will impact on a business’s bottom line. It can be as simple as having a person manage your website and/or social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc) in order to interact with your customer base and convert leads to sales.

The Scottish Digital Participation Charter invites employers to commit to promoting digital participation amongst its staff. Employers are asked to commit to five key pledges to ensure staff the opportunity to develop essential digital skills in order to support Scotland in meeting future economic growth and to drive innovation.

Assistance is available to employers via Skills Development Scotland (SDS) Training Partner, The TELL Organisation. TELL delivers a fully funded Digital Marketing Diploma by way of upskilling current staff or by finding suitably qualified candidates via the free candidate selection service offered to employers.

For further information on how TELL can assist your business contact Lynne Somerville on 01389 72655, 07921 677842 or via [email protected]

Lynne Somerville is business development coordinator at TELL.