Recruiting Digital Champions

If Digital Motivators are changemakers, then Digital Champions are the agents of change. Digital Champions are the most valuable resource a digital skills programme can have. Digital skills are more likely to be developed when the learner is supported through a trusted relationship.  

What is a Digital Champion?  

Digital Champions help others to build confidence and skills to make the most of the internet. You don’t need to be a digital expert to be a Digital Champion. However, you do need to have the patience, enthusiasm and passion to help others, as well as being confident in your own digital skills. 

If you want to explore the role of a Digital Champion you can check out 'The Role of the Digital Champion'

Getting the right people to be Digital Champions is crucial for the success of your digital skills programme. There are probably people in your organisation that you have in mind to be Digital Champions because of their enthusiasm for digital. You may want to proactively approach some of these people, as well as using more traditional ‘recruitment’ methods to invite people to take part.  

The first thing you should consider is the personal qualities and attributes that make a good Digital Champion: 

• Friendly, approachable, and eager to help others learn new skills 
• A good listener 
• Able to explain things in simple terms  
• Understanding of people’s interests and motivations for learning  
• Passionate about the positive impact digital can have on people’s lives 
• Patient 

Before you start your recruitment there are a few factors that you should consider: 

1. What problem am I trying to solve? What is the purpose of your digital skills programme? Is it to support the people who use your services? Is it to support the digital skills of your workforce? Have a think about what it is you want your Digital Champions to achieve as this will determine the nature of the support they provide.  
2. What kind of Digital Champions do I need? There are different types of Digital Champions (referenced in our Digital Champion Guide), and you should consider this as part of how you frame the role in your organisation. Once you know the problem you're trying to solve you'll know if you need to recruit dedicated volunteers to your organisation to help with digital skills, whether it's a formal update of job descriptions or whether it is embedded in the core support your workforce already provide.
3. Manage expectations. It’s important that you create clear expectations of what a Digital Champion does, as well as what they don’t do. You may find it helpful to create a role description or a summary of key tasks. We’ve created a sample Digital Champion role description for Connecting Scotland that you can adapt. One of the most commonly asked questions is “How much time will this take?” Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer to this as it depends on the Digital Champion model you’re using, the number of Digital Champions you have versus the number of people you’re supporting (workload), and the current level of digital skills of the people you intend to support (intensity of support). A ‘test and learn’ approach can start to give you an idea of how much time a Digital Champion spends providing support. Start small with a pilot and gather learning around time spent providing support. You can then incorporate this into your role description as you roll out further.   
4. What do you call them? We use ‘Digital Champions’ for consistency as it’s the most commonly used term across Scotland. That doesn’t mean you have to use it. We’ve seen a lot of different names, such as Digital Buddies, Digital Ninjas, Digital Ambassadors.   
5. Digital Skills. Digital Champions aren’t IT specialists or a helpdesk service. They don’t need to be digital gurus. They do, however, need to be confident in their own digital skills. As part of your recruitment or onboarding process you may want to include a digital skills assessment. SCVO has an online Digital Skills Check-up Tool that you can use, or adapt for your own preferred platform. If you’re doing a digital skills survey of your workforce you could include a question asking for volunteers to be Digital Champions – this is a good opportunity to understand levels of interest.  
6. Development opportunities. As an organisation, you may decide to endorse Digital Champions as a professional development activity. This is a great way to provide formal recognition to the work being undertaken by your Digital Champions. Some of the key skills that you can link to this activity include: 
   • Facilitating individual learning  
   • Delivering training – if your Digital Champions are delivering demo sessions or group training 
   • Developing learning resources – if your Digital Champions have the freedom to create and curate resources to support their learners 
   • Providing peer support and confidence building  
   • Experience of delivering digital learning