There's a growing awareness that business has a major role and responsibility in tackling digital exclusion. We support corporate clients to run programmes that make a difference.
What we offer
- Our clients range from major financial institutions to global tech consultants.
- Our work usually supports a wider digital inclusion piece. Companies come to us with different priorities, ranging from engaging employees with volunteering to taking their customers with them as they become "digital first".
- We've found that every company we work with uses our products in different ways for different ends. Most start with Inspire, some then combine it with the Digital Champions Network.
- The process usually starts with a detailed consultation stage as we work together to ensure the project is closely aligned to organisational goals and structures and can be implemented to maximum effect.
- Wherever you are with your digital inclusion offer, we can help!
Priorities for Corporate Digital Inclusion
Our clients usually come to use with one or more of these drivers. These can change and evolve as the programme grows:
- Corporate Social Responsiblity: companies can create coherent strategies based round digital inclusion that are aligned to their business goals and to the skills, interests and values of their staff.
- Employee Supported Volunteering: a solid ESV programme is a good employee differentiator. A digital inclusion based one leverages existing skills that can be put to good use quickly, and create a purposeful, long lasting legacy.
- Digital Service Transformation: we see this on both demand and supply side. This is important for all organisations but particularly ones like financial institutions with a responsibility to ensure their clients and colleagues can use their increasingly digital services.
- Environmental Social Governance: digital inclusion can deliver the social value commitments in public service contracts and create a strong foundation for change.
We co-created Inspire with Capgemini. As a tech-based organisation they knew they had a responsibility to tackle the digital divide and had always offered digital volunteering opportunities. But they realised their digitally-savvy staff often didn't understand the scale and depth of the issue. Inspire has been instrumental in:
- Raising awareness of digital inclusion, helping staff understand digital literacy as something everyone can contribute to via networks they already have.
- Providing a foundation for a wider volunteering programme helping everyone from beginners to coders.
- Scaling up volunteering commitments in a way that fits into busy diaries.
- Engaging staff and improving soft skills, like active listening.
They started with a handful of volunteers and now have more than 1500 registered users. The next evolution is to maximise the impact of volunteer pledges, and scale up the programme with Champions helping co-workers to be Inspire-d.
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
Digital Inclusion and ESG
In 2022, we started working for Capgemini as part of the Sellafield Six social impact programme, that empowers neighbourhoods to create transformational change. Let's Get Digital, West Cumbria offers free membership of the Digital Champions Network to local community organisations, which we co-ordinate with an on-the-ground Project Manager. The project is doing brilliantly and in Spring 2024, we started on a similar Capgemeni-funded project Let's Get Digital, Durham.
All employees have 5 paid days of volunteering a year, but the organisation was struggling to create meaningful opportunities that met employee expectations, had impact and didn't require days of training. 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, we created a pilot graduate project that evolved into a volunteering scheme rolled out across the business.
They used Inspire as a foundation to underpin their inclusion piece. Employees could volunteer to help friends and family, or deepen their commitment by joining the Digital Champion's Network and volunteering in the community, at opportunities co-ordinated by Virgin Media O2 Business, often with their clients or community partners.
Working closely together, we've supported them to:
- Raise awareness of the issues across the board
- Build skills capability in staff to confidently help others with digital skills.
- Create a successful, flexible and scaleable employee volunteer programme in under a year...
- Which aligned to the values of their employees and their business goals.
- And strengthen their ties to community and to clients via genuinely impactful volunteering.
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
The UK's largest long term savings and retirement business. We created a wide-reaching strategy and programme for colleagues and customers. The journey involved:
- A pilot of Inspire with a cohort from across the business and a bespoke version of the course with company-specific content and design.
- Tailored Digital Champions Network content for staff in customer facing teams.
- A Community Learning Event at their head office in Edinburgh.
- A branded Digital Skills Hub with test of concept by our brilliant friends at Community Clear Web.
Once tried, tested and in place, we handed it on to regional partners to deliver.
NFU Mutual is a long-established, award winning insurance company specialising in the rural and farming sector. It has embarked on a journey to offer customers a range of digital self-service options to complement its existing channels, meet customer expectations and make doing business easier.
- Business drivers: streamlining business processes, response to customer demand for digital.
- ESG drivers: reduce carbon footprint, promote digital inclusion for stakeholders
We are in the early stages of developing a programme which includes:
- Flexible strategic support to develop digital inclusion and skills capacity through an iterative approach.
- A logic model and evaluation framework to underpin the aims of the programme, identifying beneficiaries and establishing measures of success.
- Content development to align Inspire-style digital inclusion training more closely to NFU Mutual’s business and organisational model.
As a pioneer in health care, improving outcomes for patients is core to Roche’s purpose and they want to address the unmet needs of diverse patients and communities by working on advancing inclusive research and health equity.
Digital inclusion is a key component of promoting better health outcomes and we’re supporting Roche in a pilot phase to test out a Champion approach by:
- Providing first-step digital inclusion awareness training through Inspire.
- Providing second level, CPD accredited training on the Digital Champions Network for colleagues who can commit to digital skills volunteering in the community.
- Matching their Champion volunteering capacity with digital health focussed volunteering opportunities with our public and community sector clients.
What is Digital Inclusion?
Working in Public Private Partnerships
