Building Digital Literacy in Your Team

In a professional world increasingly driven by digital innovations and tools, it's vital for your team to be digitally literate. Leaders' and teams' familiarity with digital technologies impacts their efficiency and productivity, as well as the standard of service delivered to stakeholders.

Addressing the Digital-Skills Gap

The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report listed broadening digital access as the trend most likely to transform businesses, according to employers surveyed. 86 percent of respondents expected AI and information-processing technologies to transform their ways of operating by 2030. [1]

Knowledge-based jobs and an increasingly digital economy have resulted in new opportunities for workers who possess technical and information-processing skills. Yet, as the OECD Skills Outlook 2025 found, many employees have been left behind, especially in parts of the world where the main industries are in decline. [2]

As demand for digital skills accelerates, it outpaces supply. [3] But if you manage a team, there are measures you can take to upskill your people and close that digital-capability gap.

This article explores what digital literacy is, why it matters, and how to build digital capability within your team.

What Is Digital Literacy?

Digital literacy is a broad term encompassing the ability to use digital tools and resources for multiple purposes. The DigEULit project describes three stages of digital capability:

• Digital competence, where users gain skills and familiarity with digital tools.
• Digital usage, where these skills are put into practical and professional use.
• Digital transformation, where creativity arises from digital knowledge. [4]

Because technologies change often, digital-capability building is an ongoing process of training and learning.

Elizabeth Marsh's Digital Skills Workplace Framework includes technical, cognitive and socio-emotional skills under the umbrella of digital literacy. To be digitally literate, team members should be able to use digital technologies, understand them to a work-appropriate level, and collaborate and adapt, applying these tools as resources for teamwork. [5]

The Benefits of Digital Literacy

Digitally literate teams have several advantages. Individual team members understand the tools they need to do their jobs, while leaders and managers benefit from a more productive, effective and competitive team.

Here are some specific benefits that digital literacy brings to the workplace:

• Efficiency. 21 percent of productivity is lost through finding and managing information to complete tasks [6], and other digital-skills gaps may also result in time lost. But when everyone on a team knows how to use the right digital tools for their job, work is completed more efficiently.
• Confidence. Increasing digital competence can boost team members' confidence, as well as their ability to learn new skills. [7]
• Collaboration. Digital tools provide more options for collective working, especially in organizations that use hybrid or remote-working models.
• Innovation. Researchhas found that workers with greater digital autonomy and literacy are more likely to innovate. [8, 9] Digitally literate team members will likely brainstorm new applications for the tools they have at their disposal, using their skills to solve problems and offer new ideas at work.
• Competitiveness. A digitally literate organization has a leading edge in the marketplace. Research from McKinsey shows that shareholder returns for companies with leading digital and AI capabilities are two to six times greater than those of their competitors. [10] Organizations that value digital literacy are always learning and growing, becoming more competitive as they do so.

Challenges of Digital-Capability Building

To reap the benefits of strong digital capabilities across an organization, everyone needs to be on board, and capacity-building efforts need to meet all team members' needs. Here are some challenges you might encounter when developing digital literacy in your organization:

• Access. With more workplaces operating on a hybrid or remote basis, the first step is to ensure that all employees have access to the digital tools and training resources they need. This can include hardware, software, AI tools, and access to drives and cloud services, as well as training and information. Make sure that differing schedules or work locations are accounted for, and that all reasonable adjustments are made.
• Different knowledge levels. Some teams or employees have higher levels of digital literacy than others. It's a challenge to offer training that's easy for the less tech-savvy to understand while engaging the most digitally literate.
• Different team needs. Teams will also differ in the knowledge they require to do their jobs. Skills training should be tailored accordingly.

Once you understand the difficulties that might come with building your team's digital capabilities, you can start solving them and putting effective digital-literacy-building measures in place.

Building Digital Literacy in Your Team

Talk with your team about digital literacy and assess what they know already. This might take the form of a presentation, a meeting, or a discussion about the importance of digital literacy and the areas it encompasses. Encourage team members to participate and share their understanding.

Assess Needs

Team managers can send a survey to assess members' familiarity with various digital aspects of their job before tailoring training to the needs they find. Or they can carry out a Training Needs Assessment. Ask team members what digital knowledge they want and need.

Offer Appropriate Training

Assessment should give leaders an idea of individual and team development areas, so they can identify training to meet these needs.

Many workplaces already offer training in some aspects of digital literacy, such as GDPR compliance and cybersecurity. These standard modules can be supplemented by training in work-relevant applications and skills. Along with training, offer follow-up support, such as appointing a digital literacy "point person" on the team.

Evaluate and Adapt

Since digital literacy is an ongoing learning process, seek out employees' feedback on any training that's in place. This will help you to understand what's working well, what isn’t, and how to adapt future training to better meet team needs.

With ongoing feedback and monitoring, you can support your team in building digital literacy as their technological context evolves. [11, 12]

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is digital literacy?

Digital literacy involves building capabilities with digital tools and skills. The DigEULit project describes this in three progressive stages: digital competence, digital usage, and digital transformation.

2. Why is digital literacy important?

Digital literacy is important because industries are increasingly digital, and their people need to keep updating their skills accordingly in order to be competitive.

3. Can you develop digital-literacy skills in your team?

Assess your team's needs and abilities, offer training, and evaluate and adapt your efforts. Take an iterative approach. There will always be new skills for you and your team to adopt and learn.