Now Wash Your Hands gets grasp of E-Skills

Now Wash Your Hands is awaiting final sign-off this week on a website for employer-led training body E-Skills UK, as the Government moves to make IT ‘the third basic competence’ after literacy and numeracy.

Some 21 million people use IT in the workplace, but there has been no national standard until now to gauge their skills, says E-Skills UK’s Martin Harvey.

With the backing of the Department for Education and Skills and companies like Accenture and Sainsbury’s, E-Skills UK is advocating an ‘e-skills passport’ that would both measure IT skill levels and plan training to improve them as required.

‘The idea is that any individual can go on-line and self-assess their skills against an employer-defined framework,’ Harvey explains. ‘The e-skills passport [is] a mechanism to take it to market.’

The brief was to make the self-assessment programmes, which measure people’s ability against 14 ‘techniques’, ‘a pleasant, rewarding experience’, says Harvey, adding, ‘It mustn’t be a chore.’

NWYH project manager Glen Conybeare says, ‘What E-Skills said was, we want usability, not a dull, dry, boring Government product.’

NWYH won the work without a pitch and is expected to update the website as its functionality increases. Group partner Angus Mackinnon is creative director on the project.

The site launches in October.