By Ojo Emmanuel Ademola
The currently trending news report is heavy on the side of learning how to improve individual digital skills for boosting daily life and career. Essentially, digital skills are a step towards learning lots of other new things. They can improve an individual’s confidence to use technology for work, learning, and daily life.
There are standard reports out there that put 92% of Jobs available today even in a developed economy as requiring digital skills. If such is true, which is, an apparent indication of the current state of work, how triggering would the data show for a developing economy? With this peculiarity, One-Third of Workers across the board have low or no digital skills due to historic underinvestment, structural inequities, and other notable reasons attributed to infrastructural inadequacy and like of political will in making such structural gains. The question then arises, how we close the digital skill divide to generate significant, measurable economic payoff for workers, businesses, and the broader economy? In today’s tech economy realities, the emphasis is no longer on the hours of work done, but on both the throughput and response time.
Digital is completely changing us, our positions, and how we maintain our organizations and deal with our cash. This implies that having the digital abilities, inspiration and certainty to utilize the web securely is becoming fundamental forever for daily living and work. Backing for investigating difficulties for help to further develop employability through advanced abilities for individuals confronting huge hindrance, and starting suggestions on the most proficient method to defeat these turns into a basic topic in general, and specifically, in the worldwide South Countries where optimizing improvement is the cash well-suited of a majority rule government.
Digitisation, robotization and globalization will keep on influencing the universe of work. The ONS has revealed that mechanization, or by extension, automation is set to influence huge pieces of the economy, with 1.5 million individuals or 7.4% of workers at high risk, most of these being ladies (70.2%) or more youthful individuals matured 20 to 24 years (ONS, 2019). This incorporates many low and centre-talented jobs with unsurprising assignments that are equipped for normalization. Also, advanced gadgets, stages and content are always showing signs of change and multiplying. Individuals need to refresh their abilities as the need might arise to refresh their gadgets.
Undoubtedly, many jobs today need digital skills to benefit exponentially from the marketplaces. Indeed, the more competent the availability of diverse digital skills, the high robust the productivity metrics remain advantageous. At the deep to the surface, the need for digital skills even for jobs that do not ask for high levels of qualifications or experience remains highly in need. For example, a worker in a warehouse or a shop may have to continually keep digital records of stock.
You also need digital skills every day for shopping, banking, keeping in touch with family and friends, and much more. As digital skills now become daily drinking water and essential shelter attainment, therefore, it is essential to underline the inclusiveness of digital skills for daily life, and essentially, they include:
First. The use of devices like a computer, tablet, or mobile phone for simple, personal, and work chores and tasks find and use information on the internet understandably on how best to be safe and responsible online. Also, it involves being able to communicate socially and professionally using email, messaging, and social media shops, banks, access services, or applying for a job online. Besides, it includes having the option to convey socially and expertly utilizing email, informing and virtual entertainment shop, bank, access benefits, or go after a position on the web.
Second. With the deployment of digital skills in problem-solving, building confidence is always paramount. For example, being more confident using the internet and communicating online can indeed help an individual to keep in touch with family and friends, make everyday life easier, increase chances of getting and keeping a job to improve access to information, advice, and services, open up learning, training and career opportunities. Overall, it gives the users a coherent sense of humour in the delivery of essential communication needs and with great confidence.
Third. Digital skills at work sustain various levels of technological advances. For example, most jobs created so far and those in apt emerging are beginning to need some level of digital skill, and are exponentially increasing. With an inalienable mind for economic growth and development, technology, both in outlook and acceleration is also creating lots of exciting contemporary jobs. The more intelligent data within the community of works, the more expansive the future of works becomes, which is in direct proportionality to the effective handling of job creations and sustainability by digital skills. Undoubtedly, these jobs will need hireling with the confidence to use the internet on a variety of devices, like, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, PCs, or their variants. Such usually enables individual employees with the ability to communicate effectively online using email and social media to work from home or a remote location. For example, using online tools like Zoom, Skype, Teams, and Facetime to communicate and create online reports and accounts to generate tickets for accessing appropriate information Search to yield reliable information online in an ethical manner, behaving safely and legally online.
In today’s marketplace, the only option for a nation’s economy to develop is for the critical mass production of digitally capable hands to proliferate the system both in the public and private sectors. That’s to accentuate the learning of digital skills even for free. That is to say that in today’s trending engagement, there are lots of ways to get help, and free courses to help you improve your digital skills. Among these are:
First. You could find an online course on essential digital skills in the Skills Toolkit with menu use of learning in a specified way. For example, most major banks, technology, and economy-based foundations across the Global South Nations now have an Academy to gain digital skills for daily life. In fact, in all the Global North Nations, for illustration, for online banking, shopping, and helping children with schoolwork, there are technology hubs available for use in local libraries and via digital libraries as well. Interested individuals can book time on a PC and use their learning resources to sign up for a course at a local school, college, or adult education service.
Second. Learning hands-on digital skills helps to break several parties to going back into education. Access to education or the move of going back to schools for adults could indeed be highly challenging but with the efficacy of technological infrastructure for such, those challenges are becoming the issues of the past.
Third. Since COVID-19, learning styles are becoming more adaptable. For example, Andragogy and Omniology are becoming very popular. As vertical to traditional pedagogy, andragogy and ontology allows learners to study and design their curriculum in such a way that they own their learning styles contextually, and determine how best the content could be creatively embedded. Indeed, not all learning has to take place in a classroom, the alternatives are not only gaining traction but centrally taking charge. There are lots of flexible ways to learn at an individual learning pace, in one’s time, and in a place on’s feels comfortable.
Four. An individual may not be comfortable with the idea of earning a certificate, yes, if you do not like the idea of doing a course, you could start by asking a friend or family member to help you get online. Finding career advice, even career change, with digital skills you can help in doing research into any of your ideas and find career information online to benefit your associates and ultimately invest in individual social responsibility if you so desire it as an active citizen.
Permit me to point steer on diverse websites, which are great sources of valuable information and advice where you can also drive on chat online with advisers who are indeed talking to people in similar situations in online outlets and or portals to explore distinct varieties of jobs to find out which jobs are prospering in demand and robustly support government and private institutions’ strategic objectives targeted at job creation and advancing the economy.
By practical upping of applying for jobs, digital skills can help an individual aspiration to find and apply for jobs. They make it easier to prepare for an interview and help you succeed. Notably, most jobs are only advertised online these days. Often, the need arises for job seekers to apply using an online application form or by emailing a CV. It is becoming highly inevitable to secure the appropriate fulfilling jobs online these days. Even the andragogical approach to elevating the future of work is trending to channel things as today’s marketplaces dictate. It has even come around globally to provide major human resources service delivery attractively online with the ethical and legality of protecting personal information from falling into the bad guys.
In today’s approach to seamlessly implementing various stages involved in the interview process, the job selection process may also include online tests or a video interview. Knowing how to cope with these will improve securing job opportunities. It is an instance of delivering Skills for jobs in the digital sector. The saying is simply of acceptance if you are confident with basic digital skills, you may want to go on to learn something more specialist like how to code a website or coding anything at least with ease of huge benefits. The use of social media as a marketing tool is becoming a huge monetary source these days. With basic digital skills, you can progress to expertise in cyber security designing digital products and services, and much more within a diverse body of knowledge in practice.
Such furthering could open up new career opportunities or help you to do your current job better. The more you learn about digital careers including roles, salaries, and experience required, the more you are creating a robust network of opportunities for yourself and your immediate society. Some are arguing against globalization, but overall, with digital skills advancement, there are far more benefits to a nation’s productivity and development agenda. The advocacy is more leaning on the perpetuity of digital skills to download viable and sustainable development hidden for so long of centuries particularly in the global south nations of the world.
Digital skills are in global demand, particularly with the scenario agenda of getting the South to meet with the North. The East is fast meeting with the West with aptitude proliferation of digital skills across the East’s space, agreeably, the West is not looking back or waiting either. For instance, Half of all employers in the global North major economies are saying they cannot find candidates with advanced digital skills. Undoubtedly, job roles requiring digital skills often pay more than those that do not. Andragogical, available free level three Digital and Information Technology qualifications could help any available individual to get the digital skills employers want. It is a matter of simple online search, via Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engine for free courses for jobs to explore opportunities in Information Technology and the digital sector.
Conclusively, there is more help out there to support an aspirational individual to develop the skills in demand locally, nationally, and globally. It makes much sense to start with your immediate environment, I mean, your local area, and get a better job, you could take part in a Skills Bootcamp, and digital hubs around what I call the Web of notable networking for job seekers. For instance, I can see things happening for good in developing economies of some global south Countries like Nigeria, where job seekers or career changers could get more help with what are the next steps for developing digital skills by speaking to an adviser in Local Government across the board of governance for gaining from a robust digital economy that’s globally broadcasted.
Professor Ojo Emmanuel Ademola is a UK based cyber security expert
