Despite the major role that digital now plays in the majority of communications campaigns, many communicators still lack a core set of digital skills. In the last decade, learning to code has gone from being something that was left to IT and technology professionals, to something that is now an obligatory part of the primary and secondary school curriculum. Now, every organisation has a digital presence, regardless of sector, and responsibility for that online presence rarely sits with one individual, or even with one team. Communicators are content creators and, more and more, that content is built and shared online. But while the UK’s children will come out of school with basic coding skills, many experienced professionals in the communications industry are unable to say that they have that same ability, and many would argue that this is a problem which needs addressing.

Tiffany St James, co-founder of digital consultancy Transmute and executive director of the British Interactive Marketing Association (BIMA), says, “Communicators of every ilk need a rudimentary understanding of three things: one is photo- manipulation, one is really basic HTML and the other one is metadata.”

One of the key reasons for learning to code is for effective project management, because it will often be the head of comms or someone else in the communications team whose job it is to manage or direct a digital team or agency on a project. When working with a team of specialists, it helps to have a rudimentary understanding of the language being used and of what is and isn’t possible to achieve.

Bridget Beale, MD of BIMA, says, “These days, why would someone working in communication not want to know how to code? At the very least, this is a skill that brings greater insight into technical possibilities and makes professional interactions with designers and developers easier. It also helps in aspects of digital copywriting and tagging for analytics. All of that said, personally I can only work in basic HTML and it’s on my list of professional goals for 2016 to learn to code properly!”

Danny Whatmough, head of social EMEA at Weber Shandwick, agrees, “It is becoming increasingly hard to split PR and communications from digital. It runs through everything we do as comms professionals. So knowing a little bit about the nuts and bolts is always going to be useful.” He adds, “While there is absolutely no need for everyone to learn how to build a website or an app from scratch, knowing the basics will really help when putting together plans, when working with web development experts and publishing or optimising content. Take SEO; knowledge of basic HTML will help format text and ensure everything has been optimised effectively. Also, while a platform like WordPress is pretty foolproof, it is often useful to be able to delve into the raw HTML to fix links or formatting that might not be behaving properly.”

Rudimentary coding skills also give both the communications professional, and their organisation, an advantage over the competition. From an individual’s perspective; there is a skills gap in the digital industry, and anyone who can demonstrate that they have mastered some practical digital skills gives themselves a competitive edge. St James says, “We know that there’s not enough resources, coders or programmers as are required by clients and agencies. We know that people with even a rudimentary skill of coding are being snapped up, but it means that they’re allowed to do things that aren’t necessarily stretching them and therefore there’s a lot of opportunity for people who have these skills to be able to grow and learn and experience a wide-ranging career path.” Likewise, a PR agency, for example, which demonstrates that it has people who collectively have a good understanding of what is possible using digital tools, will also have something that its competitors may not. The demonstration of a greater depth and breadth to an agency’s services is a potentially crucial advantage during the pitching process, particularly when targeting major, digitally-savvy brands.

Learning to code beyond a rudimentary level could also help a communications agency become more integrated, able to offer all of the services that a client needs without having to look outside its workforce. The integrated format is becoming more and more popular among PR, marketing, digital, and brand and communications agencies, and coding is a tool that any successful, integrated agency needs in its belt.

Some communicators feel that coding isn’t their remit; as creative people, they tend to shy away from the more technical side of things. Jude Widdowson, digital communications manager at Interserve, a construction company based in the UK, recommends a digital team of campaign and project managers, apart from the content team, but with the technical skills to help deliver the content in the right way. She says that it is rare for a person to have strong writing and technical skills. However, having at least a rudimentary understanding of the practical limitations of HTML can actually breed greater creativity. An understanding of coding is an understanding of what is possible online, both in terms of content and design.

Age is also cited as a major contributing factor for a lack of digital skills, however, a 2013 study by North Carolina State University showed that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improved over time and that older programmers knew as much (or more) about recent software platforms than their younger counterparts. The study involved looking at the profiles of more than 80,000 programmers. However, while this shows that older programmers are more than capable of surpassing their younger peers once they choose to learn, this doesn’t account for those that never get around to learning the skill in the first place, there may be a tendency to resist change among those who have been in the communications industry a long time compared to those who have just started out and who are learning new skills every day.

As with any type of training, finding the time and budget to teach coding skills is an obstacle. However, there are an array of traineeships, courses and workshops available for communicators who are looking to improve their coding skills; such as Decoded, Code Academy and Coderwave, to name a few. Courses provide people with the opportunity to learn basic, medium or advanced-level programming, and some offer the chance to build a game, code a website, or even build a mobile app. St James says, “There are many courses out there, just make sure they’re fit for your business, fit for your people and fit for where you currently are in your digital maturity and where you plan to go.” Widdowson says, “The best way to learn and retain HTML skills is to start researching using Google and practice, practice, practice. I set tests for my digital executive to help her apply what she has learnt on a monthly basis.”

Beale says, “In a profession where time is short and deadlines continually loom, it can be hard to prioritise training and investment in a skill that can be seen as a nice-to-have rather than a business essential. How much longer will this be the case though? With digital running through everything we do, understanding the lingua franca will surely start to become the passport to success for communicators at the top of their game.” If children as young as five are learning to code, then it won’t be long until the entire workforce is expected to learn those same skills. Communications practitioners should strive to be at the forefront of that change.