In this edit of a webinar for organisers, TUC digital campaigner Matthew Topham introduces Megaphone.org.uk. He and Equity campaigner Gareth Forest share some real life examples of tactics that have worked.

If you’d be interested to hear more about how Megaphone.org.uk could help your union, you can also download this quick toolkit to get yourself started.

The post Video: Using Megaphone.org.uk in union campaigns appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

In the TUC Digital Lab we’re trying to frame digital unionism as less about keeping up with the digital Joneses, and more about being deliberate and grounded in our innovation. That means iterative experiments, moving carefully where risks are real, and making choices that keep the union effective over the long term.

Innovation as a way of working, not a destination

Much of the Digital Lab’s work has focused on iteration rather than one‑off transformation. In practice, this has tended to mean:

• taking small, testable steps rather than committing to large system overhauls upfront
• piloting ideas in real conditions and adjusting them based on use
• accepting that most digital change is ongoing, not something that can be “completed”

This approach reflects the reality unions operate in. Member expectations change. Employers adopt new technologies that we have to respond to. Regulation and platforms shift underneath us. Trying to design a perfect future operating model in advance usually works less well than building our capacity to respond and adapt.

Principles before platforms

One of the ways the Digital Lab has tried to keep innovation grounded is by being explicit about principles. The 8 principles for union digital transformation weren’t designed as a list of tools to adopt, but as a shared frame for decision‑making.

Those principles emphasise things that don’t age quickly, including:

• being clear about the problem you are trying to solve, before looking for new technology
• understanding and improving the data you already have, rather than collecting more by default
• designing with users and practical constraints in mind
• balancing security and risk management with the need to get things done
• committing realistic time, skills and resources to change

The principles themselves are described as a work in progress. That matters. Making principles explicit isn’t about fixing the “right” answers; it’s about creating a common language for navigating trade‑offs as circumstances change.

Future‑scanning without hype

Keeping an eye on the future is part of digital unionism, but the Digital Lab’s work suggests that future‑scanning is less about prediction and more about preparedness.

New technologies generally arrive with strong narratives attached. Artificial intelligence is a clear current example. In our work we try neither to present AI as a cure‑all nor dismiss it as not relevant to unions. We attempt to treat it as a set of tools with limited but sometimes useful applications, alongside significant risks.

That framing reflects wider learning we’ve gained about innovation from the programme:

• Over‑claiming what a technology can do tends to store up problems later
• Tools rarely compensate for missing strategy, skills or capacity
• Experimenting without governance often creates new risks rather than reducing them

A more cautious approach – testing clearly defined uses, being transparent about limits, and being explicit about where technology should not be used – has generally proved more useful.

Innovation also includes deciding what not to do

One theme that echoes strongly through our experience with generative AI is that innovation isn’t just about adoption. It can also be about restraint.

Internally, the TUC’s own guidance on AI usage is explicit that some ways of working with it are ruled out altogether. That’s because of:

• data protection and confidentiality risks
• bias and discrimination concerns
• copyright and authorship problems
• damage to trust or legitimacy

Keeping an eye on the future includes knowing when not to follow a technological trend, and where you need to research before moving ahead, even when external pressure is high.

Governance, trust and legitimacy

Digital innovation in unions has often turned out to be as much about governance as technology. Where it’s been more sustainable, the following factors are likely to show up:

• Agreed principles and policies that set clear boundaries
• Consultation with staff, reps and unions’ decision‑making structures
• Clarity about accountability and human oversight
• Transparency about how tools are being used and why

Without these conditions, experimentation tends either not to happen at all, or to happen informally in ways that create new risks, such as unmanaged “shadow” use of tools.

Keeping options open

One useful way to think about digital innovation in unions is as a way of keeping options open. Investments in shared infrastructure, skills, and learning don’t guarantee future success, but they reduce the risk of being locked into systems or processes that are hard to adapt later.

This also helps explain the Digital Lab’s emphasis on collaboration and shared learning. No single union can explore every emerging issue in depth. Pooling experience makes it easier for the movement as a whole to respond when new challenges or opportunities appear.

If your own union is embarking on a process of innovation, ask around. It’s likely at least one other union is also finding the same challenges, and will have useful perspectives that could improve your own understanding.

Looking forward without losing focus

Many of our principles for digital design could work as well in organisations that aren’t unions – indeed there’s a fair bit of overlap with the famous Government Digital Services principles. But one especially important point is that everything we do needs to build the union.

Unions are not digital services. Whilst many organisations’ innovation needs to fulfil a user need, and to do so in a way that’s financially sustainable, unions have a third circle in that Venn diagram. We also have to consider how changes affect our mission of building power through organising workers. That makes our job harder sometimes that it is for the increasing number of digital disruptors who are moving into areas that have traditionally been our domain.

Sticking to our values is going to help us a lot in this. They may be derived from our long history, but they have a vital role in our future – helping maintain our direction when faced with uncertainty and rapid change.

Digital unionism does mean paying attention to what is coming next in wider society. But it also means staying true to ourselves, and identifying where innovation is needed for us:

• Making choices that fit union values
• Building the capacity to adapt rather than predict
• Being clear‑eyed about both opportunities and limits

Keeping an eye on the future, in this sense, is not just about trying to foresee it, but also ensuring our unions are equipped to deal with it, whatever form it takes.

Further reading

If you want to explore these questions in more depth, the following Digital Lab resources look more closely at decentralisation, informal practice and control in unions:

• Principles for union digital transformation
• How are unions using AI? What should our next steps be?
• What could AI do for unions? And where should we start?
• Adapting to the new normal for trade unions
• Unions and digital disruptors
• ACTU Union Innovation Hub case study
• Union Innovation in Denmark
• Answering big questions by starting small – Developing the WorkSmart prototype

About this article

This blog was drafted with the help of generative AI, drawing on the Digital Lab’s 330,000 words of published content, across reports, guides, case studies and blogs. If you’d like to know more about that process and how AI was used, visit the series starter blog here.

The post Digital unionism means innovating with purpose appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

TUC Education ran a webinar with trade union reps, looking at what’s in the new rules, and how ready we think we are for it. Over 1,400 signed up for it, and we got some really useful feedback back from the reps who took part. Here are a few reflections on what we heard on the call.

Reps themselves are ready for this

The new rules mean unions can finally join the UK’s other organisations and businesses, which have been successfully using these tools for more than 20 years. We asked reps how many of them had already used electronic voting in non-union elections.

The list was topped by political party elections, which 46% of reps had already taken part in online. 27% had voted online in a building society AGM, with other governance elections scoring pretty well too.

That’s a significant number of reps who are already well used to exercising their democratic rights online.

And their members are likely to be ready as well

We asked reps to score how likely the membership of their branches were to be able to cast a vote online, using a scale where 10 meant “no member would have a problem with this”, and 1 meant “no member would be able to do this”.

63% voted 8/10 or more, suggesting a large majority of members will probably be fine using the new tools, but we may need to consider fallback methods in ballots where the electorates are less ready.

Lots of reps could speak with authority on this because they’ve already been using electronic means to run indicative ballots, branch elections or pay consultations. They had seen some pretty good levels of success that they were keen to replicate in statutory ballots.

“We always get much higher turnout on online consultative ballots compared to postal ballots.”

“Electronic votes have been 20% higher than postal.”

Accessibility was a big issue here, and reps told us that it cut both ways. Whilst older members, or those who might not be able to afford a smartphone, could be disadvantaged by a move to technologies they weren’t familiar with, there was also a recognition that digital improved access for members with visual impairments, in temporary accommodation, or for younger members. Consensus seemed to settle around how we provide for fall-backs or hybrid options that mean members aren’t excluded.

Frustration with postal voting runs pretty deep

And the mirror to electronic voting being easy for most members is that postal voting causes problems.

Reps told us about:

• delayed ballot papers arriving only on deadline day
• replacement ballots never arriving
• post disappearing in blocks of flats and shared addresses
• gaps in service meaning members miss post for weeks
• members working overseas or travelling missing ballot papers

Whilst the electronic regulations rightly consider security and deliverability, it’s clear that the existing regulations had been glossing over some very big holes in those for postal voting.

Members seem to be in a similar place too, with some reps telling us they encounter frustration in the branch when they have to persuade members to take part in postal ballots:

“Members always ask if they can vote online.”

“Members actually asked if they could vote online.”

“Trade unions aren’t living in the past.”

Reps think turnout will improve, but it won’t be automatic

Making a task easy isn’t the whole battle in getting someone to do it, you still need to work on motivation (read more on that here).

We heard some interesting comments around this, suggesting reps are realistic about how much this is going to change overnight.

Unions will need to work on improving engagement levels with members at both national and branch levels if we’re going to be able to mobilise them to vote at scale.

“I think members would be confident voting this way, but I’m not sure how many would actually vote.”

“Our major problem is half our members don’t open the emails.”

And getting personal contact data is going to be a fundamental issue

The technology will also only be as strong as the data behind it. There was a concern that many members preferred to use workplace email in their engagement with the branch. That’s a problem, as the first phases of online balloting will only be allowed to use personal email addresses.

“Most members in my branch receive union comms to their work email.”

“It’s going to be hard to get personal emails from people who prefer to use work emails.”

Reps suggested there would be a lot of work to do to convince members of the need to register a personal email address with the union. And then there would be an ongoing battle to keep those contact details up to date.

Why electronic balloting matters to union reps

We asked reps on the call to tell us what they thought the biggest benefit to their union might be from a move to electronic balloting. There were a huge range of ideas here, but we’ve grouped them into 9 main themes.

It’s clear that the largest group are looking to get an increase in turnout. That, potentially combined with faster ballots could do a lot to increase our industrial power.

Saving money and improving efficiency are also going to be important in making our unions sustainable into the future. And improving engagement, building accessibility and democracy are all critical for meeting our members’ expectations from us, and building the capacity of our branches.

Thanks very much to all the reps who joined in and shared their thoughts. If you didn’t see it and would like to watch the webinar, here’s the recording.

And thanks to the brilliant team at TUC Education. You can catch their wider programme of webinars and learning for reps on their website here.

The post How ready are our union branches for electronic balloting? appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

From the TUC’s early online community unionreps.org.uk to our campaigning platform megaphone.org.uk and innovation in our affiliated unions, we’ve seen digitisation consistently support new forms of decentralisation. It gained a huge boost over the Covid pandemic, as centralised ways of working stuttered and local activity stepped up online.

Through digital, reps and staff gain tools that let them act faster, organise independently, and respond directly to members’ needs. Much of the time, this strengthens union activity. But sometimes it creates real tension.

Understanding digitisation therefore means we shouldn’t just look at efficiency or capability, but also at authority, control and trust.

Digital tools redistribute agency

Of course, by its nature union work is already deeply decentralised. Unions are:

• geographically distributed
• reliant on part‑time reps and volunteer activists
• operating in fast‑moving and unpredictable environments

Digital tools make it easier for people across the organisation to coordinate, share information and solve problems locally. That’s is especially visible in organising and in disputes, where speed, adaptability and trust matter.

In practice, this means that many people in unions already make digital decisions every day, whether or not those decisions are formally recognised.

Centralisation and decentralisation are both incomplete answers

We’re not presenting this as an either/or thing: should unions centralise systems to retain control and to gain scale and cost savings? Or should they decentralise access to empower activity and widen perspectives?

Highly centralised systems can:

• reduce flexibility
• limit personal interactions
• push people back into workarounds

Decentralisation also carries risks:

• fragmenting data and knowledge
• increasing security and compliance risks
• making coordination harder over time

Unions that navigate this tension best do so by being clear about where consistency matters, and where variation is acceptable or desirable.

Digitisation has huge benefits in running services to members at scale. And centrally run systems operated by a small number of skilled professionals can be a very cost-effective way to conduct mass mobilisation. But servicing members is far from the whole aim of a union, and mobilisation isn’t organising.

Trade unions are by nature decentralised (and decentralising) organisations. Any digitisation work needs to continually sense check against the union’s values and strategy.

It is harder and more expensive to make secure and sustainable systems that are devolved to the reps and local staff who need them. But that’s going to be the most appropriate way to build workplace organising in a digital age, and is a good long term vision for unions to be working towards.

Shadow IT reflects unmet needs

As we’ve already covered, unofficial tools are rarely adopted out of disregard for policy. More often, they appear because:

• official systems are unavailable, slow or inaccessible
• licences are limited or unevenly distributed
• work needs to happen quickly, across organisational boundaries

Seen this way, shadow IT is best understood not only as a risk, but as a signal. It shows where the gaps are between how the union intends to operate and how work is actually getting done.

If you just try to eliminate the use of informal tools without addressing those underlying gaps, it’s likely to fail.

Power, learning and adaptation are closely linked

As unions face new challenges and opportunities, the ability to adapt will increasingly depend on how power is shared.

Unions that are able to:

• recognise informal practice
• learn from how work actually happens
• evolve systems and rules over time

are better placed to support effective, member‑focused activity at scale.

Digitisation doesn’t mean unions have to abandon coordination or accountability. But they should rethink how these can be achieved in a more distributed organisation.

Designing for decentralisation

When we came up with the Digital Lab’s principles for union digital transformation, two of our key principles were to start with user needs and keep them involved, and to understand the problem before working on the solution.

That still holds nearly 7 years on. The more genuinely your design process is decentralised, the more effective your solution is likely to be. That means putting in the effort to understand what the work pressures look like from the perspective of the activists and staff who actually do the work. And verifying your assumptions by testing with users to make sure the solution actually meets them.

Taken together, the themes in this series point to a common conclusion: digitisation works best when unions treat technology as part of their organisational fabric – shaping culture, leadership, power and purpose – rather than being something that stands separate.

Further reading

If you want to explore these questions in more depth, the following Digital Lab resources look more closely at decentralisation, informal practice and control in unions:

• Managing shadow IT in unions
• How can unions choose which tech tools will work for them?
• Double down on reps, not digital
• Principles for union digital transformation
• Discover, define, develop: A model for designing change in unions
• User research with union reps
• Testing your union’s new digital services by prototyping
• Award-winning digital tools for reps

About this article

This blog was drafted with the help of generative AI, drawing on the Digital Lab’s 330,000 words of published content, across reports, guides, case studies and blogs. If you’d like to know more about that process and how AI was used, visit the series starter blog here.

The post Digital unionism means decentralisation and power appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

However, many unions still run highly manual processes for membership services and communications. Updates are sent as generic broadcasts across too-broad subjects. Common member requests get handled late or inconsistently. Staff time is absorbed in administering predictable and repeatable tasks, delaying the speed of response.

When should unions use automation?

Marketing automation isn’t about “doing digital” for its own sake or simply sending out more messages. It’s a way of dealing with standard member interactions more efficiently. Counter-intuitively, in many cases an automated response can better meet a member’s expectations than a human one.

When more of the basics are automated, the union can respond out of hours, or during gaps in coverage. Data we hold about a member can make communications more relevant. And scarce time and energy can be redirected towards organising, representation and support work that can’t (and shouldn’t) be automated.

This new guide from the TUC Digital Lab focuses on how unions make those choices consciously: understanding where automation adds value, where human contact remains essential, and how to implement automation in a way that saves time and expense, whilst reflecting union values and realities.

For unions, well-designed automation helps to:

• Reach members at moments when they are most engaged
• Provide timely, relevant information without relying on manual follow-up
• Ensure important messages aren’t lost when staff capacity is stretched
• Free up staff time for organising, casework and member support

A new Digital Lab guide

The guide contains examples for unions to consider. Not as a prescription, but a starting point – showing how automation might support recruitment, engagement and retention in practical, union-relevant ways.

Not all will be technically possible for all unions. But nearly all will be able to make use of something in this guide, and as unions extend their core technologies and communications tools, new opportunities will continually open to them.

Dowload the guide here

Thanks to colleagues at the ACTU’s Union Innovation Hub and agency Forward Action, who have helped inspire and author this guide.

The post Marketing automation for trade unions appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

Data flows more widely across the union. Work happens across a wider range of devices, platforms and locations. All of this creates opportunity but it also creates risk.

The deeper we get into digital unions, the more often (and the more urgently) security and compliance will show up, with questions of trust, responsibility and organisational legitimacy.

Digital risk is inseparable from union responsibility

When members share their data (to join, ask for advice or seek representation) they are placing trust in the union that it can handle their sensitive information carefully, consistently and responsibly across the whole organisation.

For unions, this responsibility is especially serious. Union membership (or non-membership) itself is special category data, and union casework routinely involves highly sensitive personal information. When security or compliance fails, the consequences are not only legal or reputational. Members can be put at personal risk, and confidence in the union could be badly damaged.

Trust should be built into systems, not added afterwards

Trust doesn’t come from privacy notices or policies alone. It needs to be designed into everyday systems and processes.

Casework shows this clearly. Designing a casework system is not just about workflow or efficiency. It means deciding where sensitive data is stored, who can access it, how long it’s kept, and how the union can respond if a member exercises their rights. If these questions aren’t addressed early, risk simply gets postponed until something goes wrong, when it could be more damaging.

When systems are unclear or inadequate, people work around them. Files end up in personal folders. Case notes are shared through consumer messaging apps like WhatsApp. Surveys or forms are created using unofficial software. Each step may feel harmless on its own, but together they undermine the union’s ability to protect members and meet its legal obligations.

Shadow IT reflects gaps in provision

Shadow IT is often framed as rule-breaking. More often, it’s a signal for unmet need.

Union reps and staff are by nature problem-solvers (and often have a healthy distrust of authorities telling them what to do). When official tools are unavailable, slow or confusing, they’re going to reach for alternatives that are quick and familiar. The problem is not the intent – it is that these tools sit outside union oversight, security controls and data protection governance.

For unions, this creates genuine risk. Shadow IT makes it harder to enforce security standards, respond to subject access requests, or even know where member data is held. Addressing this isn’t just about shutting tools down. It requires leadership decisions about which tools reps and staff actually need, how those tools are communicated, and how new requirements are surfaced and acted on.

Cyber security depends on behaviour, not just controls

Most serious cyber incidents don’t begin with technical failure. They begin with human error. Phishing remains the most common way organisations are compromised, and unions are a frequent target.

Anyone can fall for a phishing attack – especially if they’re under pressure, on a mobile device, or when messages appear familiar and urgent. Treating security as a test of individual vigilance is unrealistic and unhelpful. Building a no‑blame culture and encouraging reporting and swift action are just as important as technical controls.

Compliance is a practical capability

Data protection compliance is often seen as paperwork. In reality, it’s an operational capability.

Unions must know what personal data they hold, why they hold it, where it is stored and who can access it. That is extremely difficult when systems have grown organically, data is scattered across tools, or responsibilities are unclear.

Mechanisms like RoPAs (Records of Processing Activities) are not just compliance artefacts. Used well, they provide visibility that supports safer system design, better decision‑making and quicker responses when issues arise.

Security underpins digital unionism

Security failures don’t stay contained. Breaches can force unions to notify members, regulators and the media within days. Trust can evaporate quickly. In sensitive sectors, the consequences can be severe.

Because unions are about supporting members in their working lives and helping them to exercise their rights, digital unionism can’t be about moving fast and accepting that things will break. It needs to be about building systems members can rely on.

That means:

• treating security, compliance and trust as design inputs from the start
• investing in usable, secure tools for reps and staff
• supporting staff and reps with training and guidance
• and maintaining clear oversight of where data lives and how it is used

Done well, this work strengthens unions. It makes digital change safer, more resilient and more worthy of the trust members place in their union.

Further reading

To explore these issues in more depth, the following Digital Lab resources focus on security, risk and trust in union digital practice:

• Managing shadow IT in unions
• What is shadow IT and why should unions care?
• How can unions choose which tech tools will work for them?
• Cyber security for unions
• Email phishing simulation to keep unions safe
• Privacy by design: Keeping union digital projects data safe
• Data protection responsibilities in designing systems and processes for union casework

About this article

This blog was drafted with the help of generative AI, drawing on the Digital Lab’s 330,000 words of published content, across reports, guides, case studies and blogs. If you’d like to know more about that process and how AI was used, visit the series starter blog here.

The post Digital unionism means security, compliance and trust appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

In our experience, tech change projects are mostly about change and less about tech. Problems with the technology itself are rarely the decisive factor in whether projects succeed or fail. That’s more often explained by how change is led, paced and governed – and by whether leadership treats digitisation as an organisational challenge rather than just a technical one.

Digital change always disrupts existing practice

Every significant system change in a union affects how reps and staff work. It alters routines, assumptions and relationships between teams and roles.

When resistance occurs, it rarely comes from an in-principle opposition to digital change. More often, it reflects uncertainty about:

• how work will be reorganised
• what will be expected of different roles
• whether the change will make that user’s daily work easier or harder

If these questions are left unanswered for too long, confidence can evaporate – even when the strategic direction is sound.

Leadership is required long before decisions are final

In system change projects, there’s an important role for leadership in seeing through implementation after key decisions have been made.

That’s obviously important, but our experience would suggest that leadership matters even more at the points when priorities are being defined. Particularly when that means trade‑offs might be unavoidable between what different parts of the union see as important.

At these moments, clarity of purpose is more important than certainty of outcome. Unions make better progress when leaders can articulate why a change is necessary, even while acknowledging that not everything is known at the outset.

Many leaders can feel unequipped to take an active role in digitisation projects, worrying they don’t have the technical skills. Projects can end up being passed to technical managers too soon as a result. But sponsorship from the top is critical. Focusing on the strategy behind the changes, and understanding how the union can most effectively work through changes, are disciplines every bit as important as the technical decisions that will be made during the project.

Honest conversations about capacity matter

Another recurring lesson we’ve seen in the Digital Lab is that digital change often surfaces uncomfortable truths about capacity.

New systems may reduce duplication or enable new ways of working, but only after an initial period of increased effort. Sometimes a change that makes things easier for members will put more work onto the reps or staff who run the process. Or a successful change could result in much higher interaction with members, generating more work downstream to cope with the new demand.

If those realities get glossed over, projects can become associated with stress and overload rather than improvement.

Unions that manage change more successfully tend to be explicit about:

• what will not be done during transition periods
• where temporary workarounds are acceptable
• how progress will be assessed over time

This kind of honesty builds trust, even when the change itself is demanding.

Bring people with the change, not just through the change

In unions, members, staff, reps and elected lay leaders may all experience the same change differently. People are more likely to give change the benefit of the doubt if they can see that their practical knowledge has shaped the project.

That means making space for involvement before everything is settled: mapping who will be affected, asking people where current processes cause pain, using workshops or testing sessions to expose practical problems, and showing visibly how feedback has changed the plan.

It also means recognising that different groups will need different reasons to believe the change is worthwhile. Some will be motivated by new possibilities, others by seeing peers make it work, and others by reassurance that support will be available when the old way of working disappears.

A useful project habit is therefore to treat engagement as ongoing work, not a single consultation stage. Champions, user testing, peer learning and open channels for questions can all help people move from uncertainty into experimentation. They also give the project team earlier warning when the change is creating confusion, anxiety or resistance in parts of the union.

Governance shapes outcomes long after projects end

Digital change does not end at “go‑live”. Systems evolve, priorities shift, and new needs emerge. Unions benefit when they give early thought to:

• who owns systems once initial projects are complete
• how future changes will be proposed and agreed
• how learning from early phases will be captured and built into improvement

Without this, improvements can stall once the project team disperses, leaving unions with new systems but little capacity to support adoption or further development.

Leadership here is about creating conditions for ongoing improvement, not about micromanaging technical detail.

Leadership sets the tone for learning and adjustment

Perhaps the strongest signal leadership sends during digital change projects is how it responds when things don’t work as planned. Progress is going to be more likely if issues are treated as information – signals that processes, assumptions or sequencing need to change.

This approach doesn’t lower standards. It raises them, by making it possible to improve in practice rather than on paper.

Digitisation therefore tests leadership not on whether predictions are accurate, but on whether organisations can learn as they go.

Further reading

If you want to explore how unions have approached leadership and change during digital projects, the following Digital Lab resources go deeper into these themes:

• Managing big tech changes in UK unions
• 5 lessons on leadership for union digital change
• 8 principles for digital transformation in unions
  

About this article

This blog was drafted with the help of generative AI, drawing on the Digital Lab’s 330,000 words of published content, across reports, guides, case studies and blogs. If you’d like to know more about that process and how AI was used, visit the series starter blog here.

The post Digital unionism means showing leadership and managing change appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

Digital unionism means moving beyond seeing data as a by‑product of systems, and towards treating it as a shared organisational resource that supports judgement, learning and better decisions.

Data only matters if it gets used

Most unions already hold a great deal of data. Membership records, contact details, engagement metrics and casework information are routinely collected and stored by our different digital systems. The challenge is rarely a lack of data.

However much data the union holds, the struggle is often rather to make that data accessible, and turn it into insight that can inform decisions.

Common challenges include:

• data that sits in one system but isn’t visible elsewhere
• reports that are produced regularly but are limited in scope and don’t cover exactly what’s needed
• uncertainty about which figures can be relied on

In these situations, data exists but it has little influence. It becomes something to account for, rather than something to think with.

Unions that make progress tend to focus less on collecting more data, and more on ensuring the data they already have is:

• accurate enough to trust
• accessible to the people who need it
• connected to real questions the organisation is trying to answer

Data quality is an organisational issue

A recurring lesson from CRM and infrastructure projects is that data quality is rarely a technical problem alone. Inconsistent records, gaps and duplication often reflect how work is organised:

• multiple teams collecting similar information in different ways
• unclear rules about who updates what, and when
• systems that allow workarounds rather than supporting shared practice

When data problems are framed as technical faults, they tend to persist and the focus becomes one-off remedial projects to update them. If they get treated as organisational signals, showing where processes or ownership are unclear, they might become easier to address on an ongoing basis.

Trust runs through all data use

Data practices are inseparable from trust — both internally and with members.

Internally, staff and reps are more likely to use and share data about themselves and their activities when they trust its accuracy and understand how it will be used. Externally, members’ confidence in the union depends on whether they see personal information being handled carefully, consistently and transparently.

For example, that means only gathering the personal data you’ll need to do the things that your members would reasonably expect you to be doing. Or not surprising them with a sudden jump in the ways their data is getting reflected back to them in their interactions with the union.

When data is mishandled, or when unions seem unsure about what information they hold on members or how it is used, trust can be damaged quickly. Building a mature relationship with data therefore means treating data protection, visibility and responsibility as foundational concerns, not secondary compliance problems.

The unsung heroes of most unions are our data protection officers. There’s often a bigger tension around data in unions than there is in companies. We have highly distributed communities, often charged politics and we reach deep into our members’ lives. Plus we’re working with some legally very sensitive data.

Most times in digital projects, we can go a lot further and faster if we treat the DPO less as the data police, and more as an enabling sherpa to help us find the common sense ways to approach the things we want to do.

Insight emerges through sharing data

Unions that get value from their data tend to devote space and resource for sense‑making rather than just expecting numbers to speak for themselves.

This might happen in leadership discussions, organising meetings, or planning conversations. Anything that involves people interpreting information together.

Some unions have introduced specialist data analyst or head of data insights roles that bring professional skills to help support this work across the union’s teams. That can be really helpful – as can informal opportunities to share and talk about what the union is finding out and where it might connect with others.

Without a focus on sharing and collective interpretation, even well‑designed reporting systems for our data can reinforce existing narratives rather than challenge them.

Digitisation changes organisational memory

Modern systems don’t just store data. They reshape what gets remembered, and what gets lost.

Unions moving to newer systems often discover that:

• important knowledge was tied up in individual inboxes or spreadsheets
• historic decisions were poorly documented or hard to trace
• reporting reflected what systems could produce, rather than what unions needed to know

Big digitisation projects force these issues to the surface as the union chooses what data it needs to migrate, standardise or discard.

Handled deliberately, this process can strengthen organisational memory and make learning easier. Handled carelessly, it can erase context and make past experience harder to recover.

Data supports judgement – it doesn’t replace it

Digital tools can make patterns more visible and decisions better informed, but they do not remove the need for experience, context or values.

A deeper relationship with data recognises this. It uses information to support human judgement, not to bypass it. Data can help unions spot emerging issues earlier, evaluate what is working, and learn from what isn’t. But it can’t make decisions on its own.

Digitisation works best when data is understood as a shared resource that informs and enriches decision‑making, not an external authority that overrides it and narrows discussion.

A deeper relationship with data enables learning and iteration

As unions experiment with new ways of working, data increasingly plays an important role in learning.

Whether improving member journeys, adjusting communication strategies or testing new ways of working, data helps unions understand the impact of change over time. It makes iteration possible, not as endless experimentation but as steady improvement informed by evidence.

This kind of learning does not require perfect data. It requires honesty about limitations, clarity about what matters, and willingness to reflect on evidence collectively.

Developing that relationship with data takes time. But it significantly increases a union’s ability to act confidently in a changing environment

Further reading

If you’d like to dig deeper into how unions are grappling with data in practice, the following Digital Lab resources explore these themes in more detail:

• CRM Report – how system design shapes what data can be trusted and used
• Running CRM projects in unions
• Data case studies and workshops from the Digital Lab blog collection – examples of how unions are using data to support organising, communications and decision‑making

About this article

This blog was drafted with the help of generative AI, drawing on the Digital Lab’s 330,000 words of published content, across reports, guides, case studies and blogs. If you’d like to know more about that process and how AI was used, visit the series starter blog here.

The post Digital unionism means a deeper relationship with data appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

The same systems have enabled very different outcomes in different unions. The difference lies in how digital capability is understood, supported and embedded across the organisation.

Digital skills are unevenly distributed

We’ve been lucky enough to work with some brilliant people across nearly all our affiliated unions as part of the Digital Lab. But it’s shown us that the digital knowledge in unions is often concentrated in a small number of people.

That creates familiar risks:

• key systems being dependent on individual expertise
• digital responsibilities being added on top of already full roles
• limited resilience when staff move on or change roles

Unions are generally not short of commitment or ambition but can we struggle when digital work gets treated as specialist knowledge and siloed, rather than shared organisational capability. Where skills are isolated, progress is fragile.

Clarity of roles matters as well as skills

Digital Lab participants sometimes describe uncertainty about who owns what when it comes to digital work and its place in the union’s strategy.

Sometimes digital skills develop in a particular area of work – often the communications team – and then those people end up stretching to cover bits of other areas, just because those functions are ‘digital’ too.

When roles and authority are unclear, digital change slows down. Work is delayed while issues are passed between teams, or decisions get avoided altogether. Over time, this can lead to workarounds that solve immediate problems but compound and create longer‑term complexity.

Where unions make progress, they tend to be explicit about ownership – even when capacity may be limited.

Culture shapes whether tools get used or avoided

The same tech tools can produce very different outcomes depending on organisational culture.

In unions where people feel confident trying new ways of working, systems are explored, adapted and gradually improved. In more risk‑averse environments, the same systems can be under‑used, avoided, or treated as fixed and inflexible.

This isn’t just about enthusiasm for technology. It’s about whether people feel supported to:

• ask questions
• flag problems early
• admit when something isn’t working
• learn together rather than individually

Without that, attempts at forcing system change can end up entrenching some old habits rather than changing them.

Training alone is rarely enough

Many unions invest in training during major system changes. But one‑off training is rarely sufficient.

Skills decay if they aren’t put to work in a timely way. Confidence drops when processes don’t align with daily work. New starters struggle if knowledge isn’t documented and shared.

The union is more likely to make sustained progress if they tend to:

• build learning into everyday practice
• allow time for people to adapt how they work
• value incremental improvement over immediate mastery

Digital capability grows through use, reinforcement and reflection. Not through handover sessions and documentation alone (essential as those are).

Digital confidence underpins adaptation and innovation

As systems evolve and new possibilities emerge, unions increasingly need to adapt. Whether it’s improving communications, reworking data practices, or trialling new approaches, the capacity to respond depends on organisational confidence.

Unions with stronger digital skills and a learning‑oriented culture are better able to:

• experiment at a manageable scale
• identify what is and isn’t adding value
• adapt systems over time rather than replace them wholesale

This kind of iteration does not depend on having the latest technology. It depends on people being supported to learn, question and improve together.

Without investment in people, even the best technology will under‑deliver. And without leadership that recognises digital capability as an organisational issue rather than a technical one, unions risk repeating the same challenges with each new system.

Further reading

If you want to explore these questions in more detail, the following Digital Lab resources reflect how skills, roles and culture affect digital change in unions:

• Managing big tech changes in unions
• 8 principles for digital transformation in unions
• Design principles for a new union CRM project
• Double down on reps, not digital
• What does the new normal look like for digital change in unions?
• Scaling peer-to-peer SMS campaigns in a national ballot

About this article

This blog was drafted with the help of generative AI, drawing on the Digital Lab’s 330,000 words of published content, across reports, guides, case studies and blogs. If you’d like to know more about that process and how AI was used, visit the series starter blog here.

The post Digital unionism means skills and organisational culture appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.

But of course it is also about tech, and about unions developing a new relationship with it.

Tech systems shape what unions are able to do every day. And just as importantly, what they are unable to do.

Systems quietly define what’s possible

Membership systems, finance tools, document management, websites and comms platforms form the underlying machinery of the union. Members never see these systems directly. But they experience the consequences of how well, or how poorly, they work.

When unions struggle to meet members’ expectations, it’s often not because they lack commitment or good ideas. It’s rather because existing systems make some things easy, and others unreasonably hard.

That shows up in familiar ways:

• when joining works smoothly, but follow‑up is slow or inconsistent
• when data exists, but can’t be accessed by the people who need it
• when staff and reps rely on unofficial workarounds to get things done

In each case, the limitation isn’t effort or intent. It’s capacity shaped by infrastructure decisions. Often that’s from decisions made many years earlier, under very different conditions.

Digitisation is an investment plan, not a purchase

One of the clearest lessons from unions undertaking major system changes is that digitisation can’t just be approached as a one‑off purchase.

New systems bring ongoing costs that will often scale as we get more use (and return) from them:

• licences or subscriptions
• training and support
• integration with other tools
• additional overheads for security
• time spent adjusting processes and ways of working

Focusing only on the initial price of technology risks underestimating both the effort required and the benefits available.

Conversely, avoiding investment altogether often leaves unions paying a different price: in wasted staff time, duplicated work, fragile processes and missed opportunities to serve members better.

Union leaders need to understand investment in technology in terms of return and opportunity. That means a greater focus on siting tech investments within the union’s overall strategic plan. And on evaluating progress and the potential further returns from further development.

Aging systems create hidden risks

A number of unions have systems that still function, but only just. These systems might:

• depend on tacit knowledge held by one or two people in the union, or at the supplier
• require manual intervention to correct errors
• struggle to cope with changing scale of demand

The risk here isn’t just technical failure. It’s organisational vulnerability. When systems are brittle, changes become harder, and the cost of doing nothing quietly builds up over time.

Large system projects can feel daunting. But in many cases, deferring decisions doesn’t freeze the problem, it compounds it.

There’s an opportunity cost in systems that were rigidly designed to fit the way the union worked a decade or more ago. They work fine until the union tries to extend a process into new areas, or adapt to entirely new ways of working, at which point they increase the friction to change.  

Modern systems change how unions can work

Moving to newer systems isn’t simply about replacing old tools with faster or more reliable versions.

We’ve seen many unions in recent years move towards cloud platforms – also called Software as a Service (SaaS) – where the union rents tools and infrastructure rather than buying them.

This is a big shift in approach, but it has some big potential benefits. A new generation of more flexible and connected tech tools can change how information flows through the union, making it easier to:

• share accurate information across teams and roles
• reduce duplication and re‑keying
• use knowledge and functionality from one area of work in other areas
• connect directly to member-facing activities, to enable greater personalisation and self-service
• innovate new tech-enabled processes without major expense
• have tools with an ongoing upgrade path as opportunities change
• plug in best-of-breed tools for specific functions, and change them more easily if needed

Investment only pays off if practice changes too

The improvements a union wants might need new tech to make them possible, but new systems are not going to deliver improvement on their own. Productivity and service improvements only get realised when unions:

• revisit their processes alongside system changes
• support people to use the new tools confidently
• prioritise which problems new systems are meant to solve, rather than tackling too much at once
• factor in honest evaluation to understand the possible next steps

Without this, even well‑chosen systems can add complexity rather than reduce it.

The union has a balance to strike between bending new tech to fit old processes, or bending the union’s processes to fit standard approaches of new tech.

Digitisation is therefore as much about sequencing and focus as it is about technology. Phasing change, learning as you go, and resisting the urge to do everything at once consistently leads to better outcomes.

Systems are political, whether we treat them that way or not

Infrastructure decisions distribute power inside organisations. They determine who can see information, who can act on it, and who has to wait.

When systems are poorly aligned with how unions actually operate, the result is often informal decentralisation: people solving problems their own way because the official route is too slow or unclear.

When systems are designed and invested in deliberately, they can support a different kind of organisation – a union that is more resilient, more transparent, and better able to meet members’ needs consistently.

Further reading

If you’d like to explore how these issues play out in practice, the following Digital Lab resources go deeper on systems and infrastructure decisions in unions:

• Managing CRM change projects in unions
• Managing IT infrastructure modernisation for UK unions
• Introducing cloud CRM platforms for unions
• Running CRM projects in unions – workshop report
• Managing shadow IT in unions
• Design principles for a new union CRM project
• Building union CRM together – ACTU Union Innovation Hub case study
• Next steps in CRM for unions: PCS case study
• How to start a CRM change project in your union
• Union tech survey 2024 – some thoughts on the results
• Measuring our digital journey: A survey of UK unions
• Moving to Dynamics at CWU
  

About this article

This blog was drafted with the help of generative AI, drawing on the Digital Lab’s 330,000 words of published content, across reports, guides, case studies and blogs. If you’d like to know more about that process and how AI was used, visit the series starter blog here.

The post Digital unionism means systems and investment appeared first on TUC Digital Lab.