Business has a major role in tackling digital exclusion and a responsibility to help clients, customers and colleagues with digital skills. It makes sound business sense and digital inclusion is no longer a "nice to have".
What we offer
- Our clients range from major financial institutions to global tech consultants. Companies come to us with different priorities, from employee volunteering to digital transformation.
- We support them draw up strategies and we create practical ways to deliver, ensuring projects are aligned with organisational goals and structures.
- Our learning products are adaptable, flexible and scalable. Every client uses them in slightly different ways for different ends.
- Most start with Inspire to create a bedrock of digital inclusion thinking across an organisation. Some then use the Digital Champions Network. Others want bespoke training content or on-the-ground projects .
- Whatever you're looking to achieve with your digital inclusion offer, we can help!
Priorities for Corporate Digital Inclusion
Our clients usually come to us with one or more of these drivers:
- ESG and or CSR: we help create and deliver initiatives that are aligned to business goals and to the existing skills and values of staff.
- Employee Supported Volunteering: digital inclusion based programmes quickly leverage existing skills, putting them to good use in a meaningful way.
- Social value commitments: as part of public service contracts - be delivered in a way that fits with a business' ethos and has real impact.
- Digital Transformation: important for all organisations who need to ensure clients and colleagues can use their increasingly digital services.
These drivers often evolve and grow. Once digital inclusion is embedded in an organisation, people recognise new opportunities and create products and services that are truly inclusive, efficient and profitable.
Case studies and insights
Digital Transformation
When companies become digital first, they have a responsibility to take their customers and colleagues with them as a basic part of customer service. We work with major public sector organisations (like NHS trusts) who are undergoing digital transformation, and organisations in the private sector, particularly with financial institutions. We provide:
- Advice to draw up plans that grown digital inclusion and skills capacity, underpinned by logic models and evaluation frameworks.
- Training products that deliver across the board at different levels of commitment.
- Tailored content, ranging from free guides on created hubs (for the Phoenix Group insurers) to bespoke versions of our Inspire training course (for NFU Mutual) in their language and branding on their platform.
Employee volunteering
VMO2 Business employees have 5 paid days of volunteering a year, but the company was struggling to create meaningful opportunities that met employee expectations and had real impact without requiring more time training that volunteering. As the B2B arm of the business, they also wanted to align their CSR work with their aims and values.
As part of their "Connect More" programme, they used Inspire as a foundation course. Employees could help friends and family, or deepen their commitment by training on the Digital Champion's Network and volunteering in the community. These were at opportunities co-ordinated by Virgin Media O2 Business, often with their clients or community partners - which strengthened those business connections as well as genuinely helping learners.
The initiative by Virgin Media O2 Business is both on trend and unusual. Nearly all service providers in the UK offer their staff volunteering days, but this is more focused than many ‘me too’ digital inclusion announcements.
Being a good corporate citizen is now seen as a key element of corporate behaviour and strategy, so offering substantial volunteering support for UK local authorities and the public sector makes sense… Digital skills support initiatives are key elements of ESG.
Global Data
November 2022
Combining ESG and CSR initiatives and social value commitments
We’ve worked with Capgemini for over five years on an evolving digital inclusion programme that combines these three elements. As a tech-based organisation they know they have a responsibility to tackle the digital divide. We co-created Inspire with them and it's been been instrumental in:
- Raising awareness and growing understanding of digital inclusion.
- Providing a foundation for a volunteering programme that helps everyone from beginners to coders.
- Scaling up volunteering commitments in a way that engages staff, fits into diaries and improves soft skills.
They started with a handful of volunteers and now have more than 2000 registered users. Inspire graduates can go on to become workshop facilitators and take others through the training, delivering it in-house and externally (like to the 80+ delegates at the Let's Get Digital, Durham event). They also deliver sessions on digital skills and practice to VCSE organisations, as well as more in-depth digital skills and productivity sessions to community learners.
Social Value Commitments
SVCs are legal requirements in UK public sector tendering: the supplier must commit a minimum of 10% of the budget for any central government contract to projects that bring wider benefits to the community.
We run three SVCs for Capgemini under the Let's Get Digital umbrella, in Sellafield, Durham and Newcastle. The projects vary to meet local need but follow broadly the same pattern: a local co-ordinator helps community organisations understand digital exclusion and provides tools to tackle it, including training on Inspire and the DCN.
We work closely with Capgemini to measure the project and consult on how it can grow and improve year on year. And through our work together, we have come to realise what great potential SVCs have to combat exclusion.
We’re using Inspire to amplify our business-wide commitment to digital inclusion and help our people to do something practical about it. Inspire explains the impact a lack of digital skills can have for individuals and how we can use our expertise at Capgemini to help redress the balance.
It’s motivating everyone to get involved and generating great engagement with our Digital Inclusion mission.
It’s all measurable so it’s easy for me to demonstrate impact to the rest of the business. We’ve also learned how versatile Inspire is and are now looking to share it with our clients and supply chain too.
Sally Caughey
Head of Digital Inclusion, Capgemini
The winning trio of ESG, CSR and social value commitments: how to make it work
Some companies have digital inclusion initiatives in each of these areas. But the most effective are those, like Capgemini, who use all three in a complementary way. Combining what's good for your business, your people and your community brings bigger benefits for every part of the trio...
