In the run up to the We Demand Better rally on 18 June, the TUC tested new ways to spread the word amongst union activists and potential marchers. As well as a series of local “road show” events, we…Read more…
Tories’ online voting block makes digital more important for strike ballots, not less
This weekend, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng signalled in the Telegraph that the government would finally rule out allowing unions to use online voting in strike ballots. This is annoying to see…Read more…
Talking about digital campaigning in unions
This week, colleagues from 10 TUC unions came together at a Digital Lab office hours session to share thoughts on digital campaigning. Here’s a note of some of the points we discussed….Read more…
Join Together – a new approach to joining unions online
Join Together is a new Software As A Service (SaaS) platform for unions, focused on supporting unions with online joining. They’ve been working with the TUC Digital Lab over the last two years to…Read more…
Making the most of mobile for union digital
One of the biggest shifts in digital over the last decade has been the move to mobile. The overwhelming majority of working age Britons now own a smartphone, and it’s given them a new and much…Read more…
NASUWT Conference 2022: Going back to physical events, without going backwards
Last year we wrote here about the experience of running a fully democratic and participative virtual NASUWT Annual Conference. A year later and the Union has just held its 2022 Annual Conference at…Read more…
Scaling peer-to-peer SMS campaigns in a national ballot – UCU case study
Any organiser will tell you that nothing beats a face-to-face a conversation. It’s the best way to motivate, persuade and win campaigns. But in many workplaces, the last few years have made…Read more…
User research with union reps
Over the last few months, the TUC Digital Lab has been collaborating with Accord to research how the union’s reps feel about technology, and to get pointers on where the union could best invest its…Read more…
Search engine optimisation (SEO) for trade unions
We’re getting a bit techy with our latest report. It’s an introduction to Search engine optimisation (SEO to its friends). This covers a range of concepts around content strategy and…Read more…
Understanding our digital-only union members
Over the last 20 months, many unions have seen a spike in new members joining. But with a reduced physical presence in workplaces, and with fewer opportunities to network, we’ve been unable to offer…Read more…
Looking ahead to 2022 in trade union tech
Unions have seen a lot of changes in tech since our Digital Lab programme started in 2019. In particular, the pandemic gave immediate impetus to many new tech projects over 2020 and 2021. We’ve seen…Read more…
How can unions choose which tech tools will work for them?
Over the course of the pandemic, every organisation has had to come up with new ways of getting things done. For unions, that’s meant a lot of hard thinking and experimentation about ways to organise…Read more…
What does the new normal look like for digital change in unions?
In my role at ASLEF I’m a campaigns and communications advisor, which includes digital comms. It will be familiar to colleagues that having digital in your job often means you’re seen as the…Read more…
What does the new normal look like for union online learning?
I work in TUC Education digital learning, part of the team that runs rep training programs and designs training materials that are traditionally delivered by our network of tutors, attached to…Read more…
The pandemic and the drive for #digitalunions
In the first week of 2020’s lockdown, I took part in Simon Sapper’s great UnionDues podcast, sitting on my bed with my laptop to record a conversation about digital change in unions….Read more…
Data protection responsibilities in designing systems and processes for union casework
As unions bring digital tools deeper into their case management processes, they start generating loads of often sensitive personal data. And that brings some clear responsibilities with it under the…Read more…
Adapting to the new normal for trade unions
The last 18 months have been a time of drastic change. Along with the rest of society, unions have had to adapt to the pandemic and the effects of the response to it. We had to work quickly to get…Read more…
7 things for unions to think about when updating member contact data
We’ve been working with RCM recently on how unions might work with members to keep contact data up to date. An automated SMS campaign succeeded in getting some great levels of engagement (read…Read more…
Why the TUC moved our IT systems to the cloud
The latest evolution in workplace technology has been the move to cloud computing. It’s changed the fundamentals of IT infrastructure, removing the need to invest so…Read more…
Digital approaches to case management for unions.
Our latest Digital Lab seminar looked at what digital could mean for case management in UK unions. I’ve been spending a lot of time of late talking to digital leads at our affiliate unions….Read more…