Digital skills, the key tools for your SME

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital revolution, forcing businesses and citizens to adapt to this new 100% digital society. However, this process has widened the digital divide. Indeed, in Spain, almost half of the population lacks digital skills. This highlights the importance of digital skills as basic and necessary tools for the potential of the business fabric through talented professionals with the skills and abilities to meet the new demands of the labour market. To meet this challenge, Spain has the España Digital 2026 and the Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia, both of which propose a series of ambitious measures and actions to make progress in this area.

As detailed in the Spanish education system's own portal, a digital competence is "one that involves the creative, critical and confident use of information and communication technologies to achieve objectives related to work, employability, learning, use of free time, inclusion and participation in society". Alongside this concept is that of digital maturity, which is related to the organisation itself. But the starting point for both is digital transformation. And while many organisations today are already embracing the process of digital transformation, not all of them are using technologies or creating new business models based on them.

Digital competences are essential for SMEs to continue to grow and evolve, especially at the beginning. There are four broad dimensions of each user's digital competence, applicable to SMEs: knowledge, skill, use and attitude. Having this approach will allow an SME to identify where the digital competence gaps are and to act accordingly, as well as to exploit data, analyse information and draw conclusions.

In order to measure competences, two different types of tests should be carried out to ensure the reliability of the assessment results: self-assessment and assessment of digital competences. There are other tools such as gamification, which aims to improve the experience and increase user motivation and satisfaction.

All in all, after the evidence of the existing digital divide of citizens and businesses, the need to improve the digital skills of society has become evident. As a result, public administrations, both at European and national level, are promoting different initiatives and developing different reference frameworks for the development of digital skills.