TUC Digital - Supporting digital-first trades unionism.

Finding out what makes prospective members click

There are an estimated 6,000 people working in visual effects in the UK – most of them clustered around London’s Soho. London has become one of the three international hubs for this burgeoning industry.

Getting more out of your union’s content: TUC Digital Lab workshop report

Just what do we mean by ‘content’?

Content is the lifeblood of websites, emails, social media posts, text messages, apps and more. If unions don’t have good content, where will our members find the help and advice they need? (The answer is, of course, somewhere else on the internet).

Summer Patrol: taking offline conversations to online organising

The TUC Summer Patrol is an organising campaign run by young trade union unionists in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. The aim is to visit high streets to interview and engage young workers about their workplace conditions, their legal rights, and how they can organise to improve their workplace.

#digitalunions: Staying connected

Next year, millennials will make up more than 50% of the workforce. Those who entered work during the internet age are nearly all instinctively digital-first. They’re also mobile, connected throughout the day, from wherever they are.

From Netflix to Monzo, people expect the convenience of digital services – always available, transparent, flexible, and with them in control. Those rising expectations can be hard for established organisations like unions to meet.

Are you election ready on Facebook?

As we enter a likely general election, many unions will be thinking how they can get their issues across more clearly online during such a high profile campaign moment.

Organising in the digital age: TUC Digital Lab workshop report

On Wednesday 26th July at UCL we held our fourth TUC Digital Lab session, looking at the challenges and opportunities for unions in making greater use of digital in organising.

Optimising digital engagement with union comms

Alex Lloyd-Hunter of digital agency Forward Action was one of the judges in this year’s TUC Communications Awards. And before the ceremony, he talked to a group of union communicators about his particular specialism – optimising results from digital engagement with supporters. Here’s a run through of some of the points he made that could be useful to unions.

Successful union balloting with digital: TUC Digital Lab workshop report

At the end of June we convened the third session of the TUC Digital Lab, where we discussed and workshopped approaches to running successful ballots, with help from digital tools and design methods.

Campaigning to win with digital: TUC Digital Lab workshop report

For the second TUC Digital Lab workshop, we brought together colleagues from 14 union organisations to help us identify good practice in union digital campaigning.

Developing social video at the TUC

We’ve been doing some work at the TUC to improve our own social video output. The digital comms team got together recently to take stock of what we’ve learned and where we’ll go next, and we thought it could be useful to share more widely for other unions looking into their work in this area.