UK Essential Digital Skills for Work

Updates to the measurement of Work EDS

The measurement of Essential Digital Skills for Work (also known as Work EDS) has been adapted in 2022, as it is now also measured amongst those who are not in paid work but are not retired. This allows a view of the workplace skills of those who make up the UK labour force sample, some of which may be job seeking.  For the Essential Digital Skills for Work calculation, prerequisites have also been removed, meaning that attainment is no longer dependent on achieving the Foundation Level and Life EDS.

59% (c.23.4 million) of the UK labour force is not meeting its full tech potential

In previous years, the EDS for Work (also known as Work EDS) has been key to demonstrate proficiency with the digital skills needed to thrive in the workplace. This level of attainment is defined as being able to do at least one task within each of the five Work skills categories (Communicating, Problem Solving, Handing Information and Content, Transacting and Being Safe and Legal Online). However, in this report, a light is shone on the skills gap for those who are unable to do all 20 Work tasks surveyed and those that can. The Work tasks cover the ability to do tasks such as from communicating in the workplace digitally using messaging applications, following data protection guidelines online and accessing salary and tax information. The ability to do all 20 Work tasks is identified as the goal to facilitate employee and employer success.

• For further information find the full report here

59% of the UK labour force sample cannot do all the 20 Work tasks surveyed, meaning just 41% can do all Work tasks and there is huge opportunity to improve digital skills in the workplace. Although 78% of the UK labour force sample have Work EDS, this may still mean that they are unable to do as many as 15 tasks. Industry and educational level have the greatest link with a person’s workplace digital skills. Unlike attainment of the Foundation Level or being able to do all Life tasks, the age of an individual is less of a defining factor. The demographics that have the greatest influence on having the digital skills needed for work are the industry an individual works in, their educational background and the income they receive.

The Work EDS results were launched at the Accelerate 2023 event on March 10th, a face-to-face event that included a panel discussion by industry experts on how the digital skills gap can be closed, and an interactive workshop by all attendees.

Technical Note

Ipsos interviewed 4,099 participants aged 18+ years in the UK (Great Britain and Northern Ireland) via our telephone Omnibus between 13th April – 13th May 2022. Quotas on sample are set on age, gender, region and working status. Data are weighted to represent the UK population in terms of age, social grade, region and working status within the gender variable and additional profiles on tenure and ethnicity using PAMCo data. Data are further weighted on device ownership using data derived from a robust national survey. Within this report we have included population estimates from the survey data based on ONS 2020 mid-year stats for the UK. Full details of the range of extrapolation based on the margin of errors, are available in the full technical note.

• Ipsos Essential Digital Skills 2022 Technical Notes (lloydsbank.com)