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Fast Forward for Digital Jobs

techUK's Fast Forward for Digital Jobs report examines the state of play of adult education and digital skills training and sets out seven key recommendations to support learners, support employers, and deliver change at scale.

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The Fast Forward for Digital Jobs report highlights the significant discrepancy between the upsurge in demand for digitally skilled workers in areas such as coding and the opportunity to retrain in these fields for the many millions made redundant due to the COVID-19 recession. 

The report takes insights from techUK's Fast Forward for Digital Jobs Taskforce, which includes Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, BT, Salesforce, Cisco, FDM, and UKFast, and the wider tech industry to see how we can work together to signpost the opportunity of digital jobs to more people and work to ensure that these opportunities are open to people of diverse backgrounds.

The report stresses the need to take immediate action to close the growing digital skills gap with thousands of digital job vacancies remaining unfilled, even in the current job market. This comes as recent projections suggest a further three million new jobs that will require digital skills will be created in the UK by 2025.

While recent UK Government initiatives show an understanding of the importance of digital skills, the UK does not yet have the infrastructure and resources to meet this challenge alone. The Taskforce is calling for the Government to work with tech firms to open up new pathways for all people to access digital skills certifications with a proven track record on employability, supporting individuals from all backgrounds to succeed in digital jobs. Read the full report.

 

The report outlines seven key recommendations under three headings for Government and the technology industry:

Supporting learners
  1. Showcase the life changing opportunities of digital skills and jobs – highlighting the diversity and effectiveness of pathways and jobs available to all.
  2. Champion bite-sized flexible learning as a flexible, affordable and effective route for learners to acquire productive digital skills that are valued by employers.
  3. Help learners meet the cost of retraining – extend financial assistance similar to The Lifelong Loan Entitlement and Lifetime Skills Guarantee for a culture and system of lifelong learning.
Supporting employers
  1. Help SMEs to invest in digital reskilling through a Digital Skills Tax Credit.
  2. Enable more SMEs to benefit from the Apprenticeship Levy - including increasing the percentage of unspent funds from levy-payers that can be transferred to smaller companies.
  3. Ensure education providers focus on job readiness – create partnerships between employers and educators to ensure programmes focus on the skill sets those employers need.
Delivering change at scale
  1. Develop an online ‘Digital Skills Toolkit 2.0’ to help people navigate to digital skills and careers - Building on the success of the Skills Toolkit, an end-to-end ‘Digital Skills Toolkit 2.0’ would make digital opportunities and pathways more transparent and accessible to more people.

 

Pathways to digital - case studies

Sara

Sara Matthewman

Sally Hopkins

Sally Hopkins

 

 

Elliott Garwood

Elliott Garwood

Carol Fletcher

Carol Fletcher

Shane Whittingham

Shane Whittingham

Alexander Gittings

Alexander Gittings

 

 

Cinderella Ezeanochie

Cinderella Ezeanochie

 

 

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TechSkills case studies

 

 

 

 

Report recommendations

Antony Walker, techUK’s Deputy CEO, runs through the Fast Forward for Digital Jobs seven report recommendations which focus on supporting learners, supporting employers and deliver change at scale.

 

Minister Gillian Keegan at techUK’s Fast Forward for Digital Jobs launch

Minister for Skills & Apprenticeships, Gillian Keegan provides a keynote speech on education at techUK’s Fast Forward for Digital Jobs report launch.

 

 

 

Get involved

All techUK's work is led by our members - keep in touch or get involved by joining one of the programmes below.

 

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Skills, Talent and Diversity

Making the UK the best place to start and grow a digital business is contingent on our ability to skill, attract and retain the brightest global talent. techUK’s Skills, Talent and Diversity Programme seeks to ensure the UK has a world-leading tech workforce by equipping the pipeline of talent with digital skills to become digital leaders, attracting and retaining a diverse workforce & making sure the UK is an attractive location for talent from across the world.

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Jobs and skills

To make sure that the UK is a world-leading digital economy that works for everyone, it is crucial that people have the digital skills needed for life and work. Rapid digitisation is creating surging demand for digital skills across the economy and the current domestic skills pipeline cannot keep up. Digitisation is also leading to rapid changes in the labour market that means some traditional roles are being displaced. There is an urgent need to better match the demand and supply.

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TechSkills

TechSkills brings together employers and educators in partnership to develop the digital talent industry needs. Our mission is to create and promote industry-valued pathways into digital careers. We want to realise a future where people across all areas of society can thrive in tech, whether they are starting out, upskilling or changing careers.

For more information please contact: 

Nimmi Patel

Nimmi Patel

Head of Skills, Talent and Diversity, techUK

Nimmi Patel is the Head of Skills, Talent and Diversity at techUK. She works on all things skills, education, and future of work policy, focusing on upskilling and retraining. Nimmi is also an Advisory Board member of Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (digit). The Centre research aims to increase understanding of how digital technologies are changing work and the implications for employers, workers, job seekers and governments.

Prior to joining the techUK team, she worked for the UK Labour Party and New Zealand Labour Party, and holds an MA in Strategic Communications at King’s College London and BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Manchester. She is currently taking part in the 2024-25 University of Bath Institute for Policy Research Policy Fellowship Programme.

Email:
[email protected]
Phone:
07805744520
Twitter:
@nimmiptl
Website:
www.techuk.org
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimmi-patel1/

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Antony Walker

Antony Walker

Deputy CEO, techUK

Antony Walker is deputy CEO of techUK,  which he played a lead role in launching in November 2013.

Antony is a member of the senior leadership team and has overall responsibility for techUK’s policy work. Prior to his appointment in July 2012 Antony was chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), the UK’s independent advisory group on broadband policy. Antony was closely involved in the development of broadband policy development in the UK since the BSG was established in 2001 and authored several major reports to government. He also led the development of the UK’s world leading Open Internet Code of Practice that addresses the issue of net neutrality in the UK. Prior to setting up the BSG, Antony spent six years working in Brussels for the American Chamber of Commerce following and writing about telecoms issues and as a consultant working on EU social affairs and environmental issues. Antony is a graduate of Aberdeen University and KU Leuven and is also a Policy Fellow Alumni of the Centre for Science and Policy at Cambridge University.

Email:
[email protected]
Phone:
07780603065
Twitter:
@techUKdepCEO
Website:
www.techuk.org/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonywalker/

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