How can businesses improve digital skills?

Rated: the options for developing digital skills within a business

We’ve been talking about digital skills throughout this week to coincide with the release of our research report into the current state of digital skills in the marketing industry, which we created in partnership with eCommerce expo and TMF&A. The results of our survey of over 1,000 marketers have some useful lessons for how businesses can support digital skills development to foster internal talent. If you're based in the UK, you can hear Dave Chaffey explain the implications of the research in a talk on Bridging the Digital Skills gap at eCommerce Expo (free registration).

 Support for Digital Skills Development

The marketers we surveyed, we’re generally upbeat or ambivalent about the support they received for digital skills development. Only 20%  thought their company's support for skill development was below average, whilst just under half were happy with the level of skills development. As we’ve pointed out in our previous posts on digital skills, companies will benefit from nurturing internal digital talent owing to the shortage of digital skills which can make recruitment a challenge. That said, there was considerable room for improvement, with only 15% strongly agreeing with our statement that there was excellent support for skills development in their organisation.

The level of support for skills development varied significantly by the different methods employees might want to improve their digital skills. 50% rated company support as inadequate when it came to taking paid qualifications, but only 12% thought there was inadequate support for learning via digital marketing blogs and news sites.

This graph reflects the reality that businesses are willing to facilitate skills development but often not willing to pay for it. Paid events and conferences, paid courses and paid qualifications scored the worst in terms of the level of support. This may seem like sound business sense, and a prudent financial decision. However, businesses should remember that the skills shortage in digital skills can make recruiting a challenge - this means higher salaries may be needed to attract the top digital talent. Therefore investing in the skills of your current staff may often be cheaper in the long term.

 Improving digital marketing effectiveness

We also asked the 1,000 marketing professionals we surveyed about their opinions on how to improve digital marketing effectiveness, and again the results have interesting implications for investing in skills development within digital teams. 3/4 thought that encouraging a culture of personal up-skilling and sharing best practice throughout the organisation would be a good way to improve skills in digital marketing departments.

 

Just over half although thought there should be an annual budget in place for investment in staff learning. Certainly food for thought for those building digital departments or reviewing how they run their current marketing departments.

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