Thinking about the future can be daunting. With the nature of jobs, skills, and qualifications all changing so fast, we know that supporting your child to make the right choices isn’t always easy.
However, Work Ready is here to help. Through our future-proofed digital skills programme, we're giving young people the confidence they need to see their future in tech and digital industries. We’re also giving you the know-how you need to support them along the way.
Work Ready is the future-proof digital skills programme from BT Group. Free and accessible, it’s designed to guide the way into the digital future by taking a holistic and inspirational approach to digital skills.
We know that parents and carers are the single greatest influences on children's career decisions. So, as well as providing resources for use in school, we’ve made it our mission to support you too.
To find out what parents can do to kickstart conversations about digital skills, we gave 3 parents here at BT Group a challenge. We asked them to have a conversation about digital skills with their own children at home – to find out how much they know. They also offer their advice on how to get your young person to understand digital skills and how it can relate to their future careers – whatever their starting point, or yours.
Discover what happened in our film....
Our parent toolkit brings you all the valuable tips and tricks you need to get started. It includes the key facts you might want to know and conversation starters to use with your children. The toolkit also has ideas for activities to learn more about digital skills together. Download it now and make your digital skills and careers conversations easier to navigate.
Working out what this all means for your young person isn't easy. Take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions – and explore what you can do to support their journey.
Here you will find a range of questions to help support you and your young person understand more about digital skills. You can also find some useful tips on what you as a parent or carer can do to support them with their digital journey.
Simply put, digital skills give us the ability to use technology effectively and safely. For example, knowing how to navigate different websites, using search engines to find information or even creating content using YouTube, or coding with platforms such as Python.
Not at all. Digital skills are everywhere and the pace of change in technology means we all need to develop these to play our part. It’s not just about technical ability. Digital skills mean we can innovate and work with technology more effectively, ensuring we think critically about advancements, work collaboratively with teams and embed ethics in innovation.
Start with conversations and research. We know it can feel daunting with the pace of technological change and the changing landscape of work. Our simple toolkit has a lot more info to help boost confidence as well as easy activities you can try at home with your young person to help them start articulating their own digital skills.
Digital skills are now increasingly embedded to most careers and employers say they want people with these skills. Developing digital skills means we can adapt to the changing future of work, applying critical thinking and problem solving to situations and technology we might not yet know about. Your children may also be entering jobs that don’t yet exist, but by equipping them with the right skills, they will be best prepared for their future.
All jobs use digital skills. From working in healthcare using medical equipment to working in marketing and using AI for image generation. We've included some case studies in the parent toolkit for you to explore.
Digital skills are at the heart of what we do here at BT Group. We are at the cutting edge of technology, connecting the nation and innovating for good, but to do that well, we need people that are technically skilled but also people who can think outside of the box, ask hard questions, and bring people together to collaborate. You can explore some of these stories through our video case studies of BT Group colleagues on our ‘For Educators’ section.
Your child likely already has many of the vital digital skills they need - and there are easy ways to keep building them at home or in school. Every child can benefit from reflecting and growing their digital skills. The evidence shows a great first step is just talking about skills together, use your own examples to demonstrate how to articulate a skill you have and an example of how you use that skill.
No, we know it can feel daunting or confusing but there’s lots of great support and specialists out there. You’ll already be supporting them to develop their skills all the time – sometimes without thinking about it. Just ask questions and encourage your child to keep an open mind about their future career choices.
Our schools offer includes both in-person workshops and virtual bootcamps, designed to get 11-14 year-olds exploring and articulating the role of digital skills in the future workplace. We also have curriculum-linked lesson content and a design challenge to put their digital skills into practise. If you have a relationship with a school, please do share this website with them. Here are some further digital skills resources for you to explore:
Signposting
You can use these additional resources to further assist you in supporting your young person to have a successful future.
Parents Advice for Career Conversations - Talking Futures
Jobs of the future: What will our children be doing in 2040? - BBC Bitesize
Careers Advice for Parents | Youth Employment UK
