Supporting Digital Champions

Now that you’ve recruited your Digital Champions it’s time to think about how you provide ongoing support to help them in their roles. There is a range of ways you can provide this support: 

Training 

As part of your onboarding process, it’s helpful to provide some core training to introduce the role of a Digital Champion and some of the key tasks they’ll undertake.

This training can be in-person or online. Here are some of our top tips for Digital Champion training:  

• Reiterate the role and expectations of a Digital Champions: Your onboarding training is an opportunity to manage expectations and set clear boundaries around what they’ll be doing. 
• Flexibility: This can apply to timing and venue/platform and will depend on the size of your organisation. We usually provide a few dates so that Digital Champions can self-select which sessions best fits around their working patterns. A simple booking form through Microsoft Forms or Google Forms can help manage training sign-ups. Also consider where you’ll deliver training and access requirements. If you’re delivering training online you may wish to think about which platform will work best e.g. Zoom or MS Teams.  
• Timings: The maximum length for an online training session should be 2/2.5 hours, with space for a comfort break.  
• Interaction: Try and avoid a training session which is predominantly information delivery. Build in space for interaction and participation. This can include space to talk about burning issues, working through case studies and doing activities in groups. If you’re delivering online you can include breakout rooms. Our training partners at Mhor Collective make use of Menti to allow Digital Champions to participate throughout training sessions. 

• Fears: We all have our own fears about digital. These come up in almost every training session. Build this into your onboarding training by creating space towards the beginning of the session to explore what fears people have about digital and how we might work with this. Fear is one of the biggest barriers to developing digital confidence, s it’s better we address this rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.  
• Evaluation: Remember to build in some evaluation questions at the end of each training session. This can be facilitated through a poll, or through some questions in Menti. This will help you determine how effective the training was and how you can make it even better for next time. Useful questions to ask might include: 
  • What was most helpful in this session? 
  • What was missing that would have helped you?  
  • What further training would be helpful for you?   

By creating opportunities for Digital Champions to provide feedback we can identify future training needs. There might be specific topics they want to cover, or guidance on new platforms being rolled out. You can sustain interest from your Digital Champions by responding to these needs and providing ongoing learning opportunities. You may even want to encourage some Digital Champions to take the lead on developing or co-delivering some sessions, giving them an opportunity for professional development.  

You can also make use of free Digital Champion training being offered through Connecting Scotland, or drop into a session for inspiration. This training is open to any organisation operating in Scotland, regardless of whether you’re delivering support through the programme.   

Peer support 

Create a network for your Digital Champions to share best practice and celebrate their wins. This can be a monthly in-person catch-up, and/or an online space that’s just for them. You could create a Teams or Slack channel that is only accessible by your Digital Champions.  

This space can be used to troubleshoot any problem s they’re having, sharing success stories, or sharing new resources. As a Digital Motivator you have a role to play in nurturing this space and making sure that you contribute to it too.  

Resources 

There is a wealth of resources online, so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. In fact, the real task is editing down your resource list so it’s relevant for your Digital Champions. Here are some of our favourite online resources: 

• Learn My Way by Good Things Foundation 
• Microsoft 365 Modules and Learning Paths   
• Microsoft 365 Help & Learning   
• Google Workspace Learning Centre 
• Bank of Scotland Academy  
• Digital Unite Technology Guides 

You can then begin to curate your own learning pathways on different topics. For example, here’s a webpage we curate with resources on the theme ‘Connecting and Communicating’ for Connecting Scotland. This allows you to check the relevance of each resource and create a library of resources that meets the needs of your Digital Champions.  

You can also create your own resources easily and for free. You can make use of Zoom or Teams to record you sharing your screen and doing a demo of some basic tasks specific to your organisation. These can be used to create a library of bespoke resources. Here’s an example from Connecting Scotland where we used the record function on Zoom to demonstrate a process.  

Recognition  

Recognising the efforts of your Digital Champions and celebrating their success is key to retaining them. This can also be used to help recruit new Digital Champions as they see the value in what you’re doing. We’ve collated some suggestions as to how you can recognise and reward your Digital Champions to keep them motivated:  

1. Personal interests  

Give some thought to the different reasons why someone might want to be a Digital Champion. This could be because they have a genuine passion for digital, they want to help others, or they want a personal development opportunity. When you understand individual motivations you can use this to make sure that you respond to the needs of your Digital Champions. You can capture their individual motivations when you recruit and onboard them.  

2. Badges 

Some organisations use badges to recognise their Digital Champions. These could be lanyards or pins for those working in physical spaces, or a digital badge they can display on their screens when they’re on video calls. This increases their visibility, which can help build momentum for your project as well as make them identifiable and easier to access.   

Some organisations use a tiered badging system to provide enhanced recognition e.g. Gold, silver, bronze. This approach can sustain engagement with Digital Champions, create an element of competition and more formally recognise their work. Usually, Digital Champions can advance through the different tiers based on how many people they support, or how much time they’ve spent providing support.  

There are some off-the-shelf solutions that you can sign up for as an organisation like Barclays Digital Wings which allows you to create an organisational league table.  

3. Events 

Get your Digital Champions involved in events to promote your work. These events can be aligned with national campaigns such as Cyber Scotland Week or Safer Internet Day.   

4. Impact Stories 

Being able to quantify how many people have been supported by your Digital Champions is great, but it doesn’t tell the full story of what you’re achieving. You can create case studies and videos to showcase the great work being done by Digital Champions, and the difference it makes. Here’s an example from Connecting Scotland. These videos and case studies can also be used to help build momentum for recruiting more Digital Champions, as well as keeping your Senior Managers on board with your project!