12th November 2012
Helping Britain Prosper…
By Eva Eisenschimmel, Go ON UK Board member and Group Marketing and Brands Director at Lloyds Banking Group
Lloyds Banking Group is committed to helping Britain prosper. We believe communities who don’t have the skills to fully enjoy the benefits of the internet should not be left behind. And in 2013, we will join forces to support people and organisations in our communities who have low or no digital skills.
Go ON UK is tackling important and emotive issues which not only help jobseekers and businesses but help the elderly, the vulnerable and those less mobile too. These people can become isolated from their communities. By getting more people online we can help them once again feel part of a community, chatting with others online, sharing memories and benefitting from the vast resources the internet has to offer.
Lloyds Banking Group supports all its colleagues to have a day each year to ‘Make a Difference’ in the community. My senior leadership team and I recently spent time with City Gateway, an initiative to help find apprenticeships for young adults. We offered advice on how to solve problems in the workplace, and crucially write, review and edit reports on computers. This enabled them to become more confident using computers in readiness for the workplace and enabled us to give a bit of time back to help others with their digital skills.
Lloyds Banking Group offers flexible ways for our customers to bank with us, in branch, over the phone and through internet and mobile banking. We are delighted to have over 9 million of our 30 million customers registered for our Digital Banking services. However, this does still mean that over 60% of our customers are not yet online – a gap that we will continue to focus on and close.
As part of our commitment, we will ensure that digital skills development is available for our entire workforce of over 100,000 employees by the end of 2013 and will offer support to those who need extra guidance. We will also extend digital skills learning for up to four of our colleagues’ friends and family free of charge, through our internet based learning catalogue. By providing the skills and training to our colleagues, we will improve their self confidence and they in turn can better encourage more of our customers to go online for the first time.
Go ON UK ! We can do it and be the best in the world digitally.