Feature
Research Report
The State of the Digital Workplace
After years of digital workplace evolution, a richer toolset, the rise of "employee experience" as a concept and now astonishing AI capabilities, you'd think a strong digital employee experience (DEX) would be the norm. Employees should be able to expect technology that is frictionless, intuitive and integrated — where things just work and getting the job done is easy.
We are nowhere near that goal. Reworked's 2026 State of the Digital Workplace finds that most organizations are struggling with DEX. Asked to describe their employees' day-to-day experience with the digital workplace, only 19% of respondents called it "frictionless and productive."
The other 81% described experiences ranging from needing improvement to having major capability gaps. Twenty-six percent said they had the core tools in place but with a "clunky, disjointed or glitchy" user experience, and 19% said major components were missing entirely.
The findings are based on a survey of 700 digital workplace executives working across multiple sectors and organizational sizes. The report's questions and scope went through a significant overhaul this year to enable organizations to benchmark their own digital workplace and find actionable insights. And what it found is a wake-up call.
Why Aren't We Still Failing With DEX?
No single factor explains the continued poor state of DEX, but the report points to a number of elements holding teams back.
An easy answer would be that DEX has slipped down the priority list because everyone is now focused on AI. AI is certainly the dominant focus: 73% of respondents named "AI & Automation" as their top digital workplace priority, and nearly half also flagged agentic AI as a priority.
But that explanation doesn't hold up. Organizations said they are still committed to employee experience. More than half (56%) called EX a key digital workplace priority with established accountability, and another 37% recognized its importance even if formal structures are less developed.
So if EX is still a priority, why isn't it translating into a better day-to-day experience? The data points to three deeper problems.
1. The 'Employee' Is Being Squeezed out of 'Employee Experience'
The most striking finding is a shift in how organizations define EX itself. Asked what best reflects their organization's view of employee experience, 51% described it as "technology-focused" — more than twice the 23% who saw it as primarily "culture-focused." Only 21% saw it as a blend of technology and people.
In other words, most organizations now treat EX as a technology problem to be solved by deploying the right tools, not as a question of how employees live and work.
The same pattern shows up in ownership. This year, more than twice as many respondents said IT owns EX (39%) as said HR does (19%) — a reversal not seen in previous years of the survey.
Compare this with our understanding of customer experience. McKinsey defines CX as "everything a business or an organization does to put customers first, managing their journeys and serving their needs." CX is grounded in what the customer actually experiences. EX, increasingly, is not. When the people side of EX gets downplayed, the solutions deployed inevitably drift away from the friction employees feel.
2. Businesses Are Neglecting Continual Improvement and Change Management
Good DEX depends on data-driven decisions, user feedback, testing and incremental improvement over time. Continual improvement is a core ingredient of any people-first approach to digital workplace design.
The research suggests many organizations aren't doing it. Only 53% of respondents said they have a "continual improvement" mindset for their digital workplace. While just 2% report little or no maintenance at all, that still leaves 45% relying on either "inconsistent" reactive maintenance (12%) or "periodic check-ins" (33%) that follow no real strategy or schedule.
Enablement — the change management that helps employees get value from their tools — is just as thin. Almost half of organizations offer only "minimal" (13%) or "limited" enablement (36%), or rely on local and peer-driven efforts to fill the gap. Without continual improvement and proper enablement, even good tools deliver poor experiences.
3. Digital Workplaces Remain Fragmented
A good digital employee experience is integrated. Employees can move between tasks without bouncing between disconnected apps, and it minimizes context switching. A fragmented environment does the opposite: it wastes time and drains productivity.
But companies aren't prioritizing integration. Fewer than half of respondents (45%) describe their environment as "well architected." Only 14% explicitly call their digital workplace "fragmented," but most others report silos beyond their core platform.
Legacy technology makes this worse. "Technology limitations and legacy systems" was the single biggest digital workplace challenge cited in the survey, named by 54% of respondents. Half of organizations are sticking with their legacy tech rather than replacing it, although a meaningful 28% of those at least plan to use APIs to connect older systems with modern tools.
The Fix: Put Employees Back at the Center
The squeezing of the "employee" out of "employee experience" mirrors a wider shift away from employee-centric thinking: return-to-office mandates despite preferences for remote work, the retreat from diversity and inclusion and the rise of the AI-first rather than people-first organizations.
Webinar
May
6
Retention Is a Communication Problem: New Data from 6,000+ Employees
This session gives leaders a clear diagnosis and practical path to treat retention as an infrastructure problem.
Register
Conference
Jun
2
Gartner Application Innovation & Business Solutions Summit Las Vegas 2026
Register
Webinar
On demand
Do Learning Programs Really Work? How to Turn Education Into Engagement In Healthcare
See how leaders are using learning programs to build trust with healthcare professionals and create measurable engagement.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Fuel Your Front Line: Workforce Trends Shaping 2026
Get expert insight into the tools and tactics top frontline teams will need in 2026.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Fix the Disconnect Between Projects and Profit
Your margins are hiding in disconnected data. Let's find them.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
AI in Customer Service: Faster Resolutions, Happier Customers
Don’t let rising demand burn out your team. See how to build a smarter, more resilient support org.
Watch Now
There is no single fix for DEX. It requires a multi-pronged approach, supported by a clear strategy, adequate resourcing and a committed team. Reworked's own Digital Workplace Excellence model — which shaped the report — groups the work into four themes: Leadership, Technology & Optimization, Employee Enablement, and Calibration & Maintenance.
But running through all of them is a single principle: keep employees at the center. That means looking at the digital workplace through a people lens rather than a technology one, investing in genuine integration, committing to continual improvement driven by user feedback, and properly resourcing enablement. Do that, and next year's survey may finally show DEX moving in the right direction.
Editor's Note: What else is happening in the world of digital employee experience?
- The Engagement Disconnect: How Broken Digital Workplaces Are Failing the Global Workforce — Workers are checking out worldwide. Reworked's State of the Digital Workplace reveals why tech investments keep failing and what leaders must measure to fix it.
- DEX Leadership Is the Missing Element in Enterprise AI Strategy — The winners in enterprise AI won't be the ones with the most capabilities. They'll be the ones who deploy them most deliberately.
- Don't Let Your Company's Digital Tools Sabotage the Employee Experience — It’s time for organizations to overhaul their approach to digital employee experience.