Closing The Digital Skills Gap With Giant Campus
we were quite literally bred to do this
Giant Campus was started with the intention of personally helping to close the digital skills gap identified by the UK Government in 2016. And, well, we reckon we’ve definitely assisted in attempts to do so.
Following the release of a big project we’ve been working on over the last year, we’d like to share with you some of the ideas Campus was born from. More than anything, we’re quite proud to have achieved what we have so far as a startup business, so it’s nice to reminisce.
Having been set up in response to the UK government’s Digital Strategy released in 2016, we’ve since worked tirelessly with Google on their Digital Garage e-learning platform, a project mentioned in the business-led digital skills section of the report. The strategy recognises the importance of digital skills, addressing a gap in digital education for many generations, as well as a gap in positions for those digitally-minded looking for jobs that require their specific skill sets.
“If we want to increase our overall prosperity, to enjoy higher real wages, and if we want more opportunities for young people to get on, we have to raise our productivity. In a digitally-driven economy, that means ensuring that everyone has the skills they need to flourish, with nobody left behind.” Source: UK Digital Strategy 2017
The work we did with Google’s Digital Garage gave us a great outlet for sharing our passion and know-how of all things digital and online business-like.
It was found that it was 24% more likely that unemployed adults lacked the basic digital skills than high earners. And, that in order to satisfy the future skills need by 2022, an estimated 1.2 million new technical and digitally skilled people are needed. That’s a lottttttt.
A survey conducted for the UK Digital Strategy found that of 1,000 UK-based businesses, having digital capabilities helped boost revenues by 4.4% and reduce costs by 4.3%. So, as a business, our digital marketing training courses, delivered to businesses and individuals, aim to help other businesses become giant. Invest a little in our training and, if you implement what you learn, you’ll see a return on investment.
As you may have seen, our courses range from using search engines to help your business be found online, using analytics to monitor results as well as give your business actionable next steps, to using social media to increase brand awareness and help towards your sales and marketing strategy.
Danny Windsor, who heads up Giant Campus, said:
“Giant Campus is such an exciting project. It’s a business unlike any others in Kent. We have a mission to achieve and that mission is everything to us. The digital skills gap may sound like a problem we can ignore, but realistically businesses are going to be at a disadvantage against those larger in scale unless companies like ours take digital skills seriously. Formal education providers, such as schools and colleges, struggle to keep up with the ever-evolving digital agenda. By the time a curriculum is designed most of the knowledge in it is out of date. It’s hard to teach digital unless you live and breathe it day in and day out. And that is exactly what our professors and Giant Campus do.”
A year after we began, we have seen learners in the hundreds attend our workshops and enquire after bespoke training for their business. This has seen the formation of relationships between countless Kent businesses, as well as the opportunities for us to deliver digital training across Europe and the US.
As the digital landscape evolves, so do we. No two courses delivered are the same as digital grows at an exponential rate that we pride ourselves on being able to keep up on.
We don’t just do this in an attempt to make a profit either, we have a pure education first focus. We understand the value of learning, with members of our team holding a strong background in both the education and digital sector.
We believe we’re the only training business in Kent with this approach, with our trainers being practising experts in the subjects they teach. We believe the skills gap can be closed with efforts from both parties, the educators and the educate-ees. The work we’ve done with Google provides free and certified education to millions of learners, so it’s now down to them to get learning.
The future is digital, so it’s time to embrace it and get educated *mic drop*.
Amber Vellacott
Content Marketing Lead
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