Half of UK adults cannot do all twenty essential work tasks
Before anyone talks about AI, there is a more basic gap underneath it. Ipsos found 52 per cent of UK adults fall short on the essential digital skills for work.
Ipsos, working for Lloyds Banking Group, measures essential digital skills for work against a list of twenty tasks. In the most recent wave, 52 per cent of UK adults could not do all twenty, and 18 per cent lacked the work skills entirely.
Why this sits underneath the AI conversation
It is difficult to get value from an AI tool inside a team that is not confident with the software it already has. The organisations that get the least from AI investment are often the ones where the underlying digital confidence was never addressed.
This is not a criticism of anybody's staff. These skills were rarely taught deliberately. People picked up what they needed and stopped, which is a perfectly rational thing to do.
Fixing the floor before the ceiling
- Find out honestly where the team is, a short skills scan is enough
- Fix the basics first, file handling, collaboration tools, data entry discipline
- Only then introduce anything that depends on those basics being solid
- Build the confidence in people who will still be there in two years
Every apprenticeship we deliver builds English and maths support in where it is needed, for exactly this reason. It is not a box to tick, it is the floor the rest of it stands on.
Source: Ipsos for Lloyds Banking Group, Essential Digital Skills for Work, fieldwork late 2024, published January 2025. This is the most recent wave of that measure.