The Right Way to do DEX

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) solutions are starting to become common for organizations as they seek to understand and enhance how employees interact with their digital workplace. Platforms like Nexthink offer powerful insights into system performance, employee sentiment, and user experience. Yet, despite these capabilities, many DEX implementations fail to deliver meaningful ROI. Why? Because most organizations limit the use of DEX to IT alone.

According to Gartner, many enterprises still focus too narrowly on traditional IT-centric KPIs when using DEX solutions, ignoring the broader potential to transform the holistic employee experience. The truth is that DEX can do far more than diagnose application crashes or optimize device refresh cycles. When fully embraced across departments, it becomes a strategic asset for improving organizational performance and culture.

Narrow IT Focus: A Common Pitfall

DEX tools are often deployed by IT teams with a specific focus:

• Monitoring system and device performance
• Automating ticket resolution or self-healing
• Performing sentiment analysis scoring
• Managing technology lifecycle and refresh strategies

While these are valuable functions they keep DEX siloed within IT.  This means organizations can miss out on the opportunity to improve cross-functional collaboration and employee well-being on a broader scale.

The Opportunity: Cross-Departmental Collaboration

To truly unlock the value of DEX platforms like Nexthink, organizations must integrate them across departments such as Facilities, HR, and Corporate Communications. Here’s how:

1. Facilities Management

Facilities teams can use DEX data to understand how employees are interacting with physical spaces. For instance:

• Identify underutilized office areas or high-traffic zones
• Launch campaigns to educate staff about new amenities or upgrades
• Collect feedback on workspace comfort and ergonomics

This data helps facilities leaders make informed decisions about space planning, resource allocation, and workplace enhancements.

2. Human Resources

HR departments can leverage DEX to:

• Monitor and improve onboarding experiences
• Track employee engagement over time
• Measure the effectiveness of wellness and development programs
• Pinpoint digital friction impacting productivity

By analyzing sentiment and behavioral data, HR can take proactive steps to support employee satisfaction and retention.

3. Corporate Communications

Internal communication teams often struggle to measure the impact of their campaigns. DEX solutions offer a data-driven way to:

• Gauge awareness and adoption of new policies or tools
• Tailor messaging based on employee feedback and behaviors
• Improve communication timing and channel effectiveness

Think Beyond Sentiment: Driving Tangible Business Outcomes

While sentiment scoring and tech adoption are often the headline features, DEX tools can also deliver bottom-line value. For example:

• Productivity Boosts: Employees lose up to 22 minutes per day* due to tech-related issues. DEX can reduce this by enabling faster problem resolution and proactive maintenance.
• Retention: 56%** of employees say poor digital experiences hurt their engagement. DEX insights allow organizations to address frustrations before they lead to attrition.
• Cost Savings: Extending device lifecycles or reducing unnecessary software licenses through usage analytics directly contributes to cost efficiency.

Bottomline: Shift in Mindset

DEX isn’t just a tool for troubleshooting laptops. It’s a lens through which the entire employee experience can be understood and enhanced. But to achieve this, executive leaders must champion a culture where IT collaborates deeply with other departments to realize the full potential of their DEX solution.

Rather than asking, “How is our tech performing?” the right question is: “How are our people experiencing work—and how can we make it better?”

If your DEX investment isn’t delivering the value you expected, it may be time to look beyond IT. Embrace the full potential of DEX by engaging every department that touches the employee journey. Only then will you realize its true promise: a more connected, productive, and empowered workforce.

Sources:

* Robert Half Technology survey of U.S. office workers – Link

**2024 Scalable Software Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Report – Link