How Can Providers and Employers Build Digital Skills for Adult Learners?
Christine reflects on why the development of digital skills is so important for all adults.
Digital capability is no longer optional, it’s a core life skill, as vital as Maths and English. Yet for many providers and employers, knowing where to start in developing adult learners’ digital skills can feel overwhelming.
Do you focus on Essential Digital Skills (EDS), Functional Digital Skills (DFSQs), or embedding digital across your wider programmes? How do you balance everyday life skills with workplace-ready capability? And what does this mean for apprenticeships, adult learners and staff confidence?
Digital Skills for Adult Learners: Why they matter now
- Employability: 54% of working adults cannot perform the 20 essential digital tasks identified by industry and government. (1) (2). That means over half the workforce risks being left behind.
- Inclusion: Millions remain offline or struggle with basic connectivity, impacting their access to services, careers and education.
- Policy: Since 2020, adults have a legal entitlement to digital skills (3), alongside Maths and English at Level 2. For providers and employers, this is not an optional add-on.
- Future skills: With AI, automation and sustainability reshaping the workplace, digital capability underpins learners’ ability to adapt and thrive.
Clarifying: Essential Digital Skills (EDS) and Digital Functional Skills (DFSQs)
It helps to think of digital skills development as two sides of the same coin:
- Essential Digital Skills (EDS): everyday tasks such as using email, completing online forms, or staying safe online.
- Digital Functional Skills (DFSQs): more structured, workplace-relevant qualifications that equip learners to apply digital knowledge confidently in employment contexts.
Both are underpinned by the national digital entitlement. Together, they set the foundation for learners to progress in life, learning, and work.
Embedding Digital Skills across Learning Programmes
Whether you are a college curriculum manager, an employer with apprentices, or a training provider, the challenge is often: how do we make digital skills relevant?
Some strategies include:
- Contextualisation: Embedding digital into subject-specific tasks; e.g., care apprentices using digital record-keeping, construction learners exploring online tools for project planning.
- Confidence-building: Supporting staff to feel digitally capable themselves, so they can model and encourage positive learner attitudes.
- Curriculum planning: Using the Essential Digital Skills framework as a baseline, while aligning DFSQs to apprenticeship standards and workplace needs.
Real-world tasks: Designing activities that mirror authentic digital demands, from online job applications to using collaboration tools at work.
Linking Digital Skills to Employability and Sustainability
Digital skills don’t just improve job prospects. They also support Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) helping learners to access digital services, reduce travel through online collaboration and engage in global conversations about sustainability.
In other words, digital skills are not only about today’s jobs but about shaping a more connected, resilient future.
Digital Skills for Adult Learners: Moving forward
For providers and employers, the next step is clear: review your current approach to digital skills:
- Are you confident your learners can manage everyday digital tasks?
- Are you giving apprentices the workplace-relevant digital capabilities they need?
- Are your staff equipped to deliver?
Developing learners’ digital skills is not a separate project, it’s integral to employability, inclusion and progression.
By embedding digital learning opportunities now, you’ll ensure your learners are prepared for the demands of life, work and a rapidly changing world.