Teleworkers’ digital up-skilling: Evidence from the spring 2020 lockdown

Abstract

During the spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, the proportion of employees who worked from home increased sharply, which increased the use of digital tools. In this context, we study how teleworkers improved their digital skills. More specifically, we ask whether the lockdown was an opportunity for teleworkers to increase their digital skills and whether some subgroups with traditionally lower digital skills (women, older workers, and less educated) have benefited from a catch-up effect. Using a sample of 438 employees working for firms located in Luxembourg, our empirical analysis shows, first, that three out of ten teleworkers felt that they improved their digital skills during the lockdown and, second, that the lockdown helped to reduce the gender and age digital skill gap but broaden the educational digital skill gap. Third, training and more frequent use of many digital tools during the lockdown are positively related to the digital upskilling feeling, but not for all subgroups of teleworkers studied. Finally, the feeling of digital upskilling is inverted U-shaped in the number of digital tools discovered during the lockdown, but not for all subgroups of teleworkers studied.

Keywords:

• Catch-up effect
• digital tools
• lockdown
• upskilling
• work from home

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the following workshop and conference participants for their valuable comments on previous versions of the paper: IAAEU workshops, 2nd LISER/IAB conference, AIM annual conference, BEYOND4.0 conference.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 It should be noted that, in Luxembourg, telework was mandatory between mid-march and June 2020, recommended between June 2020 and July 2022, and allowed afterwards.

2 For instance, for the analysis and exploitation of big data generated by the users of digital tools (e.g. internet browsing, online shopping, use of social networks).

3 Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ISOC_SK_DSKL_I__custom_2144242/default/table?lang=en.

4 Authors calculation based on data from Eurobarometer 92.4, December 2019 (Eurobarometer 2020).

5 Authors calculation based on data from Eurobarometer 92.4, December 2019 (Eurobarometer 2020).

6 The SEI survey was approved by the LISER’s ethics committee in April 2020. All participants provided appropriate informed consent before replying to the SEI survey.

7 https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/desi.

8 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_ske_ittn2/default/table?lang=en.

9 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ISOC_SK_DSKL_I21/default/table?lang=en&category=isoc.isoc_sk.isoc_sku.

Additional information

Funding

This research is carried out within the framework of the DIGITUP project “Digital Up-Skilling in a Telework Environment” supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (COVID-19/2020-1/14736055/DIGITUP/Martin).