Helping members to improve their digital skills has been a key part of Usdaw’s ULF funded lifelong learning project for some time. The project at Tesco’s Chester store shows why it is still relevant and important to both members and the company.

The Chester project grew out of a discussion at the regular store Reps meetings, as Mobile Union Learning Rep (MULR) Nick Atton explains:

We were talking about the changes that the company were making to their operations and procedures - things like holidays, payslips and shift allocation.”

We all knew colleagues who didn’t have the digital skills or confidence to access the systems or use the processes quickly and easily so we decided to set up a learning initiative to help them”

The first step was to find a provider. Nick approached Warrington College to check the availability of both classroom based and remote courses. 

Nick said:

The college had courses available and were keen to help, but it quickly became clear we needed to have an idea of people’s different skills levels. The best way to do this was through ICT Profiling.”

ICT Profiling is a tablet-based exercise that the individuals complete to identify their digital strengths and weaknesses. This would give an accurate picture of the range of skills needs across the store and help the College plan a learning programme. Nick and the ULRs got the company to agree to three days of profiling which Nick advertised and conducted with a couple of the store reps over a two-week period. The results were then collated by Warrington College.

Nick said:

The results showed us that we needed a basic IT course that would assist the colleagues in accessing PCs and getting on to basic computer programmes.”

We talked to store management about the best way of arranging the courses to minimise disruption and the need for shift changes. We agreed to run the first course over a six-week period in two- hour sessions per week. We ran two cohorts for 16 people which worked very well.”

The course was a great success, with everybody completing the course and getting their certificates. The publicity from this has encouraged other staff members to ask for extra ICT profiling days within store over the coming months.

Nick explained that it hasn’t stopped their, saying:

The staff that completed the basic IT course has shown further interest in enrolling on to a more advanced IT course so we are looking at this as well as planning profiling for another 15 people”.

Find out more how unions can help you develop your digital skills by talking to your union learning rep or going to the Digital Skills pages on the unionlearn website.