Helping Your Team Learn New Online Skills Without the Jargon

Margaret has run a community centre in Sheffield for fifteen years. She can organise a harvest festival for 200 people, handle difficult conversations with grace, and somehow always knows exactly which local teenager needs extra support. But when her younger colleague starts talking about “optimising their digital presence” and “leveraging social media analytics,” Margaret’s eyes glaze over.

She’s not alone. Across the UK, brilliant people with real skills in charity work, community groups, and social enterprises are being told they need to “upskill digitally” or “embrace new technologies.” Meanwhile, they’re wondering: what does any of this actually mean, and how are they supposed to find time to learn it all while still doing the job they’re passionate about?

Here’s the thing: your team doesn’t need to become tech experts overnight. They just need to feel confident using the online tools that will make their work easier and more effective. The secret isn’t throwing around fancy terms or overwhelming people with complicated training courses. It’s about making digital skills feel as approachable as learning to use a new coffee machine.

Start With the Skills They Already Know

The biggest mistake organisations make is treating online skills like they’re completely foreign concepts. But your team already knows more than they think. They send emails, use their phones, and probably shop online. These are all digital skills; they just don’t realise it yet.

Build confidence by connecting new skills to familiar ones:

• Compare posting on Facebook to putting up a notice on your physical noticeboard
• Explain email newsletters like sending a letter to multiple people at once, but faster and cheaper
• Show how online surveys work just like paper questionnaires, but the answers come back sorted automatically

Try this approach: Instead of starting a training session with “Today we’re learning about content management systems,” try “Today we’re learning how to update your website as easily as changing a poster on the wall.”

One housing charity in Liverpool saw much better results when they stopped using phrases like “digital transformation” and started saying “let’s make our admin easier.” Same skills, less intimidating language.

Learn One Thing at a Time (Really, Just One)

When people feel behind with technology, there’s a temptation to try to catch up all at once. Resist this urge. Your team members are already busy helping people, writing reports, and managing a hundred other tasks. Loading them up with a massive digital skills course is a recipe for overwhelm and failure.

Pick one specific skill and focus on that:

• Week 1: How to post a photo on your Facebook page
• Week 2: How to write an engaging caption for that photo
• Week 3: How to see if people liked and shared your post

Make it immediately useful: Choose skills that will help people with something they’re already doing. If they’re constantly answering the same questions by phone, teach them how to create a simple FAQ page on the website. If they’re manually typing up survey responses, show them online forms.

Set tiny goals: Instead of “become social media experts,” aim for “everyone can post one update per week.” Instead of “master email marketing,” start with “everyone can send one newsletter using our template.”

Create a No-Shame Learning Environment

Nothing kills digital confidence faster than feeling stupid for asking basic questions. Yet too many training sessions assume everyone starts with the same level of knowledge, leaving some people feeling embarrassed and left behind.

Make it safe to not know things:

• Start every session by saying “There are no silly questions here”
• Share your own tech mishaps and mistakes, it makes you human
• Pair confident tech users with those who need more support
• Celebrate small wins loudly (“Great job getting that photo uploaded, Janet!”)

Use the “phone a friend” system: Identify the tech-confident people in your team and officially make them “digital buddies” for others. This works better than formal training because people can ask questions as they arise, without waiting for the next course.

Real example: A mental health charity in Cardiff found their older volunteers were avoiding social media training. So they started each session with tea and biscuits, sharing funny stories about tech mistakes, and making it clear that everyone was there to help each other. Attendance tripled.

Practice With Real Work, Not Fake Examples

Generic training courses love teaching you to post photos of sunsets or create fake newsletters about imaginary events. But your team doesn’t need to know how to post sunset photos, they need to know how to share updates about your real work with real people who care about your cause.

Use your actual content for practice:

• Instead of practicing with stock photos, use real pictures from your recent events
• Rather than writing pretend newsletters, work on your actual monthly update
• Practice posting about your genuine services, not made-up examples

This approach has three benefits:

1. People see immediate, practical results from their learning
2. You get actual work done while training
3. Everyone stays focused because the content matters to them

Make it collaborative: Have people work in small groups on real projects. Maybe one group updates your volunteer page, another creates social media posts about your latest success story, and a third group works on your email newsletter. Everyone learns, and you get multiple tasks completed.

Keep It Simple and Ignore the Latest Trends

The internet is full of people telling you about the “next big thing” you absolutely must try. New platforms, new features, new strategies appear every month. For busy charity teams, this constant change can feel exhausting.

Focus on the basics that actually matter:

• A website that clearly explains what you do
• Email that reaches your supporters reliably
• Social media posts that share your work and connect with your community
• Simple ways for people to contact you or get help

Ignore the noise about:

• The latest social media platform all the young people are using
• Complicated analytics and data tracking
• Advanced features you’ll probably never need
• Expensive tools that promise to “revolutionise” your work

Stick with tools that are:

• Free or very cheap
• Used by lots of other organisations (so you can get help easily)
• Simple enough that multiple team members can use them
• Reliable and unlikely to disappear next year

Remember: you’re not trying to become cutting-edge digital innovators. You’re trying to use online tools to do your important work more effectively.

Start Small and Build Confidence

You don’t need to transform your entire organisation’s approach to technology overnight. You need to help your team feel a little more confident and capable each week, building skills gradually while still focusing on what they do best, helping people.

This week, pick just one person and one simple online task they’d find useful. Maybe it’s showing your office manager how to update your opening hours on Google, or teaching your youth worker how to post photos from your after-school club. Spend 15 minutes on it, use everyday language, and celebrate when it works.

The goal isn’t to turn everyone into tech experts. It’s to help good people doing important work feel confident using the tools that can amplify their impact. Every small skill learned, every barrier removed, every moment of “oh, that’s actually quite easy!” gets you closer to an organisation that’s comfortable with technology without being obsessed by it.

Your mission matters too much to let tech anxiety hold you back. Start simple, be patient with yourselves, and remember, you’re already changing lives. These skills just help you change a few more.

What’s one online task that would make someone’s job a little easier this week? Who could you spend 15 minutes helping, and what would you help them learn?

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