John Wood, Author at TUC Digital Lab

Working remotely for trade unions

The coronavirus crisis and our response have caused huge changes for all of our society, but it also brings new ways of working. Unions are having to keep on doing the same things they’ve always done but in a really different context. And they’re having to add some new things on top.

This is going to be the new normal for months. And it could change some of the ways we end up working after that too.

So we’re really keen at the Digital Lab to understand the situation and the challenges facing unions, work out where there’s good practice, and discover where there are new areas we might come together to plot a way forward.

Measuring People Power in 2020+

How could we better measure the value and impact of grassroots power building, organising and volunteer initiatives? MobLab’s latest report surveys voluntary organisations to find out the opportunities and challenges in getting smarter on our metrics.

How do you get your users to actually use your union digital project?

Digital change projects are only partly about making sure a new bit of technology works. Even the best specified new tech tools won’t be any use if people don’t agree to change their current behaviour and engage properly with a new system or process.

When you’re trying to get someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do, you’ve got two options. You can motivate them to get over the barriers to taking the actions needed. Or you can make the barriers much easier to get over.

Online Petitions: A way forward for unions?

Unions21’s Henry Skewes writes on some of the learnings from the first stages of their online petitioning project.

Four digital challenges for unions that might be better tackled as a movement

At the TUC Digital Lab, we ran a survey amongst our affiliated unions, looking at their readiness for digital transformation. We found a mixed picture, with a number of technical and cultural areas where unions need to do more to meet the rising digital expectations of their membership and future members.

The report made some recommendations for union leaderships in evaluating their best next steps for their organisations. But it also suggested some areas where unions could benefit by working together on digital.

What does ‘digital’ mean for your union?

One of the challenges in looking at the experience of digital in UK unions is that there isn’t really any single accepted definition of ‘digital’ across the movement. Different unions currently have quite different conceptions of what digital means to them.