Solent University: Age UK Digital Transformation Report QHO321

This report examines the digital transformation of Age UK, a charity providing services to senior citizens in the UK. The report delves into Age UK's structure, culture, mission, competitors, services, and organizational strategies, highlighting the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It analyzes the popular social media platforms used by older people and identifies barriers to digital platform adoption, such as lack of skills, access to technology, and motivation. The report explores suitable local services for digital delivery transformation, including information and advice, visit services, and day care services. It then reflects on solutions to the identified barriers, recommending volunteer-led digital literacy programs and tailored support. Recommendations include teaching customers how to use digital technology and offering personalized experiences, such as connecting them with old friends. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of digitalization for providing services, particularly during the pandemic. References include relevant books and journals.

Age UK charity

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Age UK structure.........................................................................................................................3
Age UK culture............................................................................................................................3
Mission and Vision of Age UK...................................................................................................4
Competitors..................................................................................................................................4
Products or services.....................................................................................................................4
Organisational strategise of Age UK...........................................................................................4
Popular social media platform for older people..........................................................................5
Age UK barriers for convincing their clients to use digital platform..........................................5
Types of local services suitable for transformation of digital delivery.......................................5
Reflection on reasoning and judgement for the solution of barriers...........................................6
Recommendations........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................7

Introduction
Age UK charity is the organisation which work to provide their various facilities to
senior citizen of UK. It was founded in 1 April 2009 and its headquartered is located in London,
UK. It is UK’s largest charity for old people. There are many facilities provi9ded by this
charitable trust to their targeted audience like foot care for old people, exercise classes for above
50 year old people, helping their customers to tell them that how they can make them self busy at
home by performing some useful activities, helping senior citizens to learn how to use digital
gadgets and platforms like social media and many. The following report covers structure, culture,
mission, competitors, services and organisational strategy of Age UK Company, popular digital
medium used by their customers, issues and challenges faced by their customers and their
solutions. This report also covers recommendations for Age UK for their success.
Main Body
Age UK structure
Age UK is formed with the merger of Age concern England and Help the Aged. It
worked for the benefit of old age people who are physically unfit to do some works of their daily
life. Hence, this charitable organisation helps these types of old people and aims to make their
life better. It arranges its funds by them self and government is also helping them to raise fund as
they are registered as charitable trust. Their staff members are those volunteers who reach at the
home of old people and provide them facilities like transporting their groceries items to their
home and many others. They have their stores in UK so that old people will register their issues
and problems there and have those products to sell which is usable for old people like Bed and
Chair protection, Toilet Aids, Disposable Incontinence Products and many others. In 2018, Steph
Harland takes the position of CEO of this trust and takes the responsibility to handle all strategies
for the growth of this charity.
Age UK culture
Their employees work for the benefit of old people and they have a well being working
environment for their employees where they get appreciated by senior authorities for their better
work (Andriani and et. al., 2019). This charitable trust treats equally and gives respect to
everyone whether they are their clients or employees. It is a charitable trust hence, they are

unable to provide high salaries to their employees but they always try to provide more then
lowest to their employees and their employees are happy with working such a great organisation
where they have good relationship with each other and they have transparent communication
channel between employees and their management team.
Mission and Vision of Age UK
Vision- Their vision concludes to build such a great society where everyone enjoys their
full life with happiness.
Mission- Their mission consists of helping old people in their day to day life and so that
they can live qualitative life with less or no issues and problems (Kwayu, Lal and Abubakre,
2018).
Competitors
The Stroke Association, Macmillan Cancer Support, Rethink Mental Illness and many
others are their competitors which provide their social facilities to needy people and they use
some strong strategies to raise fund and attract more volunteers toward their organisations.
Products or services
Age UK provides some required facilities to their customers and especially to those who
are unable to walk due to their old age. Their services includes-
 Home Help- Here, they help people to tell them that what all activities they can perform
to make them self busy and stay at home in this Covid 19 Pandemic.
 Foot Care- They provides foot massage to old people so that they can walk properly with
any pain in their foot bones (Furniss, Curzon and Blandford, 2018).
 Exercise classes- They have exercise classes for their old age customers but now a days
at the time of pandemic they conduct this classes online.
 Shopping and transport- They help old people to transport their items from one place to
another.
Organisational strategise of Age UK
Their main strategy to reach as soon as possible to those old people who need their help
and make them believe that they are working for their benefit. They make sure that these old
people will learn to operate digital technology so that they can communicate with them whenever
needed and they make network with each other to make them believe that they are a family.

Popular social media platform for older people
Facebook is the most popular social media among old people in the world because it is
used by 46% of old people in their day to day life (Mühlbacher and Böbel, 2019). For Age UK, it
is compulsory to aware more old people for the use and benefits of digital world especially in
this pandemic of Covid 19. Age UK use online meetings with their customers to teach them that
how they can exercise at home and eat healthy foods to stay healthy.
Age UK barriers for convincing their clients to use digital platform
Some of the barriers are faced by Age UK to make their targeted audience to use digital
mediums and these barriers are mentioned below-
1. Skills- Age UK is facing issue with the lack of skills in their clients about operating
digital gadgets. Most of the digital gadgets are updated and have modern features whose
features get changed and updated after every few days. Hence, it is tough to understand
the usage of social media and digital gadgets by older people especially above 65 of age.
2. Access (to IT skill)- Due to lack of funds many old people are unable to arrange the
digital gadgets for their benefit and another issue is that they are unable to connect their
devices with internet access or any other additional source because they are lacking
behind it to understand the things due to their physical and mental health which is
considered as weak than young people who understand things quickly (Walecka-
Jankowska and Zimmer, 2019).
3. Motivation- It consist of removing the fear and mistrust of being online and telling them
that they can use social media platforms for many ways. Age UK are lacking behind to
motivate their customers to use digital gadgets for their benefits because old age people
have older mindset about technology. Hence, they are required to find out some strong
strategies to influence their customers to use digital platforms.
Types of local services suitable for transformation of digital delivery
There are many types of their local services which is suitable for transformation of
digital delivery and they are mentioned below-
1. Information and advice service- This is the service which covers the information about
their organisation and how needy peoples will get benefited for this services (Hickman

and Silva, 2018). Age UK can use a digital platform like social media especially
Facebook to put all the information on their account and share it to their customers
because most of the old age people are familiar with Facebook rather than any other
social media platform.
2. Visit services- Here, volunteers visit to old people home and talk with them for few
hours to reduce their loneliness for few days. This will help to make happy to old people
when someone talks to them. Age UK can provide this facility through zoom meeting by
connecting all their customers in a single meeting with video conferencing and share their
day to day life with each other. This will create a well being environment for them.
3. Day care service- This is the service where Age UK employees provide some tips to
their customers that how they can stay healthy to live happy life. This service is most
important service of Age UK in this Covid 19 Pandemic. Before this pandemic they have
physical classes for exercises and other activities but due to this pandemic they are
supposed to have this service through video conferencing. They use Whatsapp, Zoom and
Facebook video facilities to help people to tell them exercises and other ways to keep
them self healthy.
Reflection on reasoning and judgement for the solution of barriers
According to me the solutions of their problems related to lack of skills of clients to use
digital technology is that Age UK must send their volunteers at the home of their customers and
these volunteers must teach them that how they can use digital platforms and what are the
benefits of using digital platform by sharing them real life experience of those old people who
are using social media and the most effective solution according to me for all their problems
related to skills, Access and motivation is that they must allow the volunteering to those 50-55
age group people who know about digital world better so that they can have a communication
with them and build a trust because they are also under old age group. Hence, they can easily
convince older people to use digital technology. There are many advantages of this solution and
that is their customers can build good relationship with them and create a well being
environment and that 50-55 age group of people are much aware about their mindsets and thinks
for their fears related to digitalization (Engelbrecht and Samuel, 2019). Hence, they can solve the
issue by understanding their emotions.

Recommendations
There are some recommendations made for Age UK for transformation to digital
delivery and they are mentioned below-
1. It is recommended for Age UK to teach their customers how to use digital technology
before transformation of services to digital delivery because their most of the customers
are not familiar to use digital technology well.
2. It is recommended for Age UK to surprise their customers on their birthdays by providing
a conference call with their young time friends through whom they did not contacted for
many years to create more happiness in their life and this will also help the organisation
to gain more trust of their customers.
Conclusion
From the above information it is concluded that many issues and challenges faced by
many organisations including charitable trust and the best solution for providing well being
services to customers at the time of Covid 19 pandemic is to transform most of the services to
digitalization and help customers to understand online services well.

References
Books and Journals
Andriani, M. and et. al., 2019. Knowledge management strategy: an organisational development
approach. Business process management journal.
Engelbrecht, A. and Samuel, O.M., 2019. The effect of transformational leadership on intention
to quit through perceived organisational support, organisational justice and trust. South
African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences. 22(1). pp.1-8.
Furniss, D., Curzon, P. and Blandford, A., 2018. Exploring organisational competences in
Human Factors and UX project work: managing careers, project tactics and
organisational strategy. Ergonomics. 61(6). pp.739-761.
Hickman, C.R. and Silva, M.A., 2018. Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture,
strategy, and change in the new age. Routledge.
Kwayu, S., Lal, B. and Abubakre, M., 2018. Enhancing organisational competitiveness via social
media-a strategy as practice perspective. Information Systems Frontiers. 20(3). pp.439-
456.
Maritz, R. and du Toit, A., 2018. The practice turn within strategy: Competitive intelligence as
integrating practice. South African Journal of Economic and Management
Sciences. 21(1). pp.1-14.
Mhlungu, N.S., Chen, J.Y. and Alkema, P., 2019. The underlying factors of a successful
organisational digital transformation. South African Journal of Information
Management. 21(1). pp.1-10.
Mühlbacher, H. and Böbel, I., 2019. From zero-sum to win-win-Organisational conditions for
successful shared value strategy implementation. European Management
Journal. 37(3). pp.313-324.
Osemeke, M., 2020. Re-thinking balanced scorecard as organisational strategy performance
management and measurement. International Journal of Business Process Integration
and Management. 10(1). pp.42-50.
Sallos, M.P. and et. al., 2019. Strategy and organisational cybersecurity: a knowledge-problem
perspective. Journal of Intellectual Capital.
Setiyaningrum, W. and Peranginangin, J., 2018. Convergent strategy towards competitive and
sustainability competitive advantages in online media competition. International
Journal of Civil Engineering and Technology. 9(1). pp.499-507.
Virtanen, P., Laitinen, I. and Stenvall, J., 2018. Street-level bureaucrats as strategy shapers in
social and health service delivery: Empirical evidence from six countries. International
Social Work. 61(5). pp.724-737.
Walecka-Jankowska, K. and Zimmer, J., 2019. Open innovation in the context of organisational
strategy. Engineering Management in Production and Services. 11(3).