Policy · Digital Inclusion · AI

From devices to a livelihood: what happens when you teach a jobseeker to use AI

There is a version of digital inclusion that stops at the handout. A device given out, a data SIM topped up, a box ticked. It feels like progress, and sometimes it is. But a phone in a drawer changes nothing. The question that actually matters is what happens next, when someone has the kit but not yet the confidence, the skills, or the support to use it for the things that change a life.

A new report from FutureDotNow, produced with Cosmic and Accenture, answers that question with real evidence. And the answer is striking.

Jobseekers equipped with essential digital and AI skills were twice as likely to enter employment as those on the standard Restart Scheme. More than a quarter, 26%, found work within four months, against 14% on the standard scheme. And they got there quicker.

I want to sit with that number, because it is the number I have been arguing toward for years.

What they actually did

FutureDotNow teamed up with Cosmic and Accenture, through the Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund, to test one simple question. If you give jobseekers real, practical digital and AI skills, does it help them get work?

Cosmic, a specialist digital skills provider already delivering on the Restart Scheme, built a course around the 25 everyday work tasks in the AI-embedded Essential Digital Skills Framework. Not theory. Tutor-led workshops, one-to-one coaching, supported practice, and City and Guilds digital competence badges to show for it. Alongside this, Accenture asked more than 25 employers what they actually want from new recruits, and where the real gaps sit.

It was a rapid proof of concept, deliberately small, built to see if the idea held before anyone scales it. It held.

The shift that matters more than the statistic

The employment figure is the headline, but it is not the part that moved me most. That was the mindset shift the report captures.

People arrived with low capability, low confidence, and low motivation. They left with all three lifted. The report describes it as a journey from digitally dependent to digitally independent. From avoidance to experimentation. From exclusion risk to a job outcome.

And here is the twist nobody expected: AI was the hook. The very thing we assume intimidates people turned out to spark their curiosity. It gave them a reason to lean in, and a motivation they did not know they had.

This is exactly what we see on the ground. The barrier is almost never aptitude. People are not incapable. They are under-confident and under-supported. Fix the confidence and the access, and the capability was there all along, waiting to be switched on.

The gap hidden in plain sight

It is worth understanding the scale of what this addresses. Less than half the UK labour force, just 45%, can do all the digital tasks industry and government agree are essential for work. Among jobseekers, only a third can. Two thirds are missing some of the essential skills, and one in seven can do none of them at all.

This is not a fringe problem affecting a few stragglers. It is more than half the workforce, and it is largely invisible, because we keep measuring it with comforting headline numbers that hide the truth. I have written before about how “82% have digital skills” quietly collapses to 45% the moment you count all the tasks rather than one. This report is what that 45% looks like in human terms, and what it costs.

The part employers do not realise

There is a quiet mismatch running through this work that every jobseeker deserves to know about.

Employers now treat basic digital capability as a baseline expectation, not a bonus. Not just for desk jobs, but for frontline and entry-level roles too. Email, messaging apps, mobile tools, safe handling of data: assumed from day one.

But most employers assume people already have these skills. So they do not train for them, and they rarely test for them in recruitment. As Accenture’s Judith Jackson-Merrick put it, employers assume candidates have essential digital and AI skills, but jobseekers lack confidence in those very skills, and closing that gap demands a response that is sustained, systematic, and at scale.

That space, between what is assumed and what is supported, is exactly where people fall through. This pilot stepped into it.

The quiet genius of the design

Here is the detail I think matters most, and it is easy to miss.

They did not build a shiny new programme from scratch. They strengthened something that already existed. They took the Restart Scheme, already running, and threaded digital and AI skills through it, by partnering with a provider who already knew that world inside out.

That sounds modest. It is actually the whole game. A brilliant one-off pilot that cannot be copied helps the people in the room and nobody else. A model that slots into what is already there can travel. It can scale. It can reach the next town, and the next, without waiting for someone to reinvent it each time.

Replicability is what turns a promising pilot into a national shift. That is precisely the thinking behind my own interactive digital inclusion toolkit, built to strengthen the work organisations are already doing, not to replace it.

Why this sits at the heart of everything I do

We often talk about digital inclusion as if it were a kindness, a bit of help for people who find technology hard. This report reframes it, correctly, as something far more serious.

Digital inclusion is the on-ramp to work. In an economy tilting toward AI, using these tools with confidence is fast becoming the difference between being in the room and being left outside it. Teach it well, and you do not just raise someone’s tech skills. You raise their chances of a livelihood, and with it, their sense of belonging in a world that keeps changing the rules.

And the prize is not only personal. FutureDotNow estimates that closing the workforce digital skills gap would add more than £23 billion a year to the UK economy. Social justice and economic sense, for once, pointing the same way.

The report’s core recommendation is refreshingly blunt: embed essential digital and AI skills into every employability programme. Not some. Every one.

Where I land

I read a lot of reports. Most tell you what is wrong. This one tells you what works, and then hands you the blueprint to do it too. That is rare, and it is generous.

The message for all of us working in this space is clear. The on-ramp is real. We now know how to build it. And the more of us pulling in the same direction, the sooner people stop being left at the roadside.

This piece responds to FutureDotNow’s report “How to be work-ready in the age of AI”, produced in partnership with Cosmic and Accenture, and funded through the Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund. The figures and findings referenced are theirs. You can read the full report here, or find more of FutureDotNow’s work at futuredotnow.uk.

The report in plain terms

A short, factual summary of what the report actually found, for quick reference.

What they tested

Whether embedding essential digital and AI skills into an existing employability programme, the DWP Restart Scheme, improves jobseekers’ chances of finding work. A rapid proof of concept delivered by digital skills specialist Cosmic, with employer research by Accenture.

The headline results

• Jobseekers with the skills were twice as likely to enter employment as those on the standard Restart Scheme.
• 26% secured work within four months, compared with 14% on the standard scheme.
• They also found work more quickly.
• A clear mindset shift: from dependent to independent, avoidance to experimentation, exclusion risk to a job outcome.

The scale of the gap

• Only 45% of the UK labour force can do all the digital tasks considered essential for work.
• Among jobseekers, just 33% can do all the digital basics.
• 67% of jobseekers lack some of the essential skills; 14% can do none of them.

What made it work (and what makes it replicable)

• A curriculum built around the AI-embedded Essential Digital Skills Framework, giving a common language for the 25 essential work tasks.
• Tutor-led training, not just self-guided, for learners with low starting confidence.
• AI used to spark curiosity and engagement.
• Progress recognised through City and Guilds digital competence badges.
• Crucially, it strengthened existing provision rather than building something new.

On employers

Employers now treat basic digital capability as a baseline for entry-level and frontline roles, but most assume candidates already have it, so they neither train for it nor test for it in recruitment. 90% expect AI capability to grow in importance over the next one to three years.

The bigger prize

Closing the workforce digital skills gap would boost the UK economy by more than £23 billion a year.

Full report: Read “How to be work-ready in the age of AI” by FutureDotNow, or visit futuredotnow.uk.