Your apprenticeship programme requires you to demonstrate your understanding of a range of technical knowledge criteria which are needed to carry out your job effectively. However, you don’t just need to develop your technical competencies. This knowledge is applied in day-to- day work tasks during which you will be operating in a work environment alongside your colleagues. To put your technical knowledge into practice you also need a broad skill set and a range of behavioural competencies.
Digital behaviours cover a variety of assessment criteria you will find in your Apprenticeship Standard, which state you must demonstrate effectiveness in areas such as: working well with colleagues, behaving professionally, problem solving and taking initiative among others. It is essential to develop this side of your skill set so that you can continually grow as a well-rounded professional and improve your promotability in terms of your ability to manage relationships, adapt your thinking to changing situations and manage yourself to realise your full potential.
Digital behaviours are less defined than technical skills such as managing network infrastructure and software testing. To develop them it is important to understand what they really mean and appreciate the sub-skills contained within them. From this point you can begin to practice simple, practical techniques that transform the way you communicate, self-organise and think about problems you encounter in your role.
For example, ‘ability to communicate effectively’ is a common learning outcome in many apprenticeship standards. To learn about and develop this it is useful to know that:
Once you identify a specific aspect of a skill or behavior you want to develop, you select a technique to practice and start trying it out as often as possible. Finally, you review your experiences and evaluate how the technique affected the situation.
The activities in this resource help you understand and develop your digital behaviours. In each section you wil find:
We suggest you work through all the materials in each topic and put into practice what you learn as soon as possible. You don’t need to do them in order, so start with whichever behaviour feels most accessible or relevant to what you’re doing in your role at present. As you build your confidence in one area, try out another one.
We hope you enjoy developing your behaviours and growing into the complete professional.
