Scots near top of the class on digital skills but country lagging over safety

Major research by Barclays also puts a price on employees with ‘expert’ skills

Scottish workers rank among the highest in the UK for their digital skills according to a major piece of research by banking giant Barclays.

Barclays Digital Development Index 2017, which analysed 88,000 UK job adverts and some 6,000 adults, placed Scotland fourth overall for digital skills – after London, Northern Ireland and the north-west of England.

The study noted that with 60 per cent of Scots boasting “above-basic” skills in IT and digital matters, demand from employers was being met.

It found that Edinburgh was performing better than Glasgow for digital skills while Scottish workers with “expert” skills could earn some £9,000 more a year.

Scots topped the poll for “solving problems”, scoring 6.7 out of ten in the index, slightly ahead of the UK average. However, while Scotland was above the UK average for five out of the six digital skills categories, the country was found to be below the UK average for “content creation and coding” skills.

Uk-wide, the report found that 63 per cent of jobs require digital skills such as wordprocessing, database spreadsheet or social media management skills, but only 57 per cent of the workforce has these capabilities. This mismatch will worsen, it argued, as digital skills become even more vital to British businesses.

And although they have up to 30 years left in their working lives, it would appear that Generation X – 35-54 year olds – is being left behind. Those aged 35-44 are 11 per cent less likely than their millennial colleagues to say they are very confident about their digital skills.

Generation X workers are also more worried about their ability to keep their skills upto-date – 21.5 per cent have confidence in their ability to do so, versus 28 per cent for millennials.

Jamie Grant, head of corporate banking for Barclays in Scotland, said: “In recent years, we’ve seen a movement across Scotland to tackle digital exclusion and with improved digital skills returning a range of social, cultural and economic benefits it is clear why it is of such importance.

“With this come the issues of cybersecurity and cybercrime. Digital safety has never been more important but with Scotland sitting at the half way point of the UK digital safety index, it’s evident that more can be done to upweight our ability to deal with these issues as well as improving skills.

“In direct response to this, we launched a multi-million pound #digisafe campaign earlier this year.”

sreid@scotsman.com