Salesforce’s recent Future of Work Survey highlighted the importance of digital skills, with U.K. workers ranking them as the most important skill for success in both the current and future labor markets. Despite this, over a quarter said that they weren’t confident in their digital skills. Respondents blamed this poor level of digital confidence on a lack of accessible training, with employers seldom doing enough to provide employees with the skills they need.

What’s more, the general awareness of the importance of digital skills among the working-age population was not shared among the workforce of the future, as schoolchildren ranked digital skills as just the 7th most important thing they would need to thrive in the 2030 workplace.

A wide range

In a recent article, I argued that such investments should not only be in high-end skills, such as coding or cybersecurity, but also in basic digital skills to allow people to participate in modern society. Indeed, it’s estimated that millions of people in the U.K. currently lack the digital skills required to thrive in the modern world.

For instance, research from the University of Birmingham highlights how financial exclusion remains high among poorer people across the country, due in large part to poor digital skills. The report reveals that while more people have access to bank accounts than ever before, the remaining unbanked population continues to face significant problems in a society that is increasingly cashless.

It’s a challenge that Everton in the Community, the charitable arm of the Premier League football club, is trying to address head-on with its community-based Digital Skills Lab, which aims to tackle the widening digital skills gap across society.

The project is run in one of the most deprived parts of the U.K., with the Liverpool City Region ranking highest for relative deprivation for income, employment, health and disability indices, with half of households in North Liverpool living off an annual income of less than £15,000 as a result of just 59% of working age adults being economically active. This is compounded by the fact that 40% of these adults have no qualifications, which is roughly double the national average.

Building confidence

“A key part of what we’re trying to do is build confidence among people that this is something that is accessible to them and that they can take advantage of,” Michael King, Sports Development and Education Manager at Everton in the Community, told me. “Too often people can think that they’re not able to learn new things or that they’d be made to feel stupid if they tried, but everyone on our course is in the same boat so it helps to build confidence in themselves.”

Building this confidence is often a vital first step, as a report from the U.K. government highlighted the numerous psychological barriers that prevent those with less education from engaging with education as adults.

Those with fewer qualifications, to begin with, would often cite barriers such as a lack of confidence, lack of interest, and a sense that they’re too old. The report found that the single biggest predictor of later participation in education is earlier participation. In other words, if people enjoyed learning at school and found it interesting and engaging, then they are more likely to carry that on into adult life.

The pathway to success

Research from University College London reminds us just how important these skills are to progressing in one’s career. The researchers found that when we acquire new skills, that’s the most reliable indicator of a rise in our income, with the scale of this rise differing depending on the stage of our career we’re at and the type of skill we’re acquiring.

What’s more, people who complete their training before entering the job market are not only unemployed less often but also seem to secure higher wages than those who acquire skills on the job.

They found that so-called “routine-manual” skills were most effective at driving wage, and indeed productivity, growth in the early stages of our careers, but once we’ve got a relatively basic set of skills, the impact of these skills drift towards zero.

Then so-called “cognitive-abstract” skills take over as they take longer to acquire but also have a longer impact on our earnings. Indeed, these skills typically endure throughout our careers. It is this fundamental difference that tends to result in workers in predominantly cognitive sectors earning more than those in predominantly routine sectors.

Building soft-skills

Developing these kinds of soft skills is often difficult in online learning environments, and the Everton in the Community project believes that the face-to-face nature of the program will help participants to develop not only self-confidence but teamwork and determination.

The facility will also provide a social glue for the local community. Research from the University of Cambridge argues that this is often crucial to helping deprived communities.

The researchers argue that 25% of any funds allocated for “leveling up” should be spent on “social infrastructure” that will allow people to interact with their local communities and generate a sense of local identity.

Social infrastructure

The authors say that these investments are just as important as more widely publicized physical infrastructure schemes, such as the High Speed 2 rail link or the rollout of 5G.  Indeed, they believe that the success of such schemes depends on the social plumbing community schemes provided.

Social infrastructure, such as cafes, museums, leisure centers, and cinemas are not just places to bring people together, but also employ around 2.3 million people across the U.K. What’s more, the report highlights that they provide around half of all employment in “left behind” towns.

Jobs in these areas are particularly important for young people, who have been especially hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic as so many of these communal facilities have been forced to shut. Their importance cannot be overstated, however, as the report found that there was a clear correlation between the number of community and social facilities and the level of mutual aid provided during the pandemic.

It seems increasingly clear that if communities are to improve the prospects of residents, then social cohesion, as well as technical skills, have to be on the agenda. The Everton in the Community project promises to offer both, and may well be an example for others to follow.