Nexthink has published new research exploring the challenges that IT leaders face in preparing for the next wave of AI-driven digital transformation.
Most IT leaders (92%) believe this new era of digital transformation will increase digital friction and less than half (47%)of employees have the requisite digital dexterity to adapt to technological changes. A further 88% expect workers to be daunted by new technologies such as generative AI.
The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience report details the findings of a survey of 1,100 global IT decision makers, with 95% of IT leaders saying the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation will be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far. But it is clear that solving digital friction and improving the employee experience must become a priority, or risk undermining the impact of investments.
“Organizations are spending trillions on IT to digitally transform, but without their people on board, it’s a fast track to failure,” said Vedant Sampath, CTO at Nexthink. “Too many employees are left grappling with unfamiliar AI tools because they lack digital dexterity: the ability to confidently embrace new technologies. IT teams, meanwhile, are flying blind without visibility into where things are going wrong. Transformation isn’t just about rolling out new tech; it’s about enabling people to use it effectively. If businesses don’t end this digital dexterity crisis, they’ll end up with cutting-edge AI tools – but a workforce that can’t use them. That’s a one-way ticket to watching AI investments go up in smoke.”
The pace of change is relentless
IT leaders anticipate a 43% rise in the volume of applications being used over the next three years. In fact, 66% report that their organization rolls out a new application, tool, or platform every month. But this rapid expansion is stretching IT teams to breaking point, with 69% admitting there are too many users in the organization for IT to provide adequate adoption support for everyone. Without proper guidance, application rollouts suffer, leading to lower productivity (61%), reduced collaboration (51%), increased IT support tickets (46%), and higher employee dissatisfaction (46%).
To keep up with this accelerating change, IT leaders are clear on the need to improve digital dexterity across the workforce. 96% want to enhance their ability to accurately identify users’ digital friction, which would significantly strengthen digital transformation efforts. With AI reshaping the way people work, 96% say they need to enhance digital adoption support to help employees adapt to AI, with 95% highlighting that tailored digital employee experience (DEX) insights are more essential than ever. The impact of improving digital dexterity is clear: faster adoption of new tools (46%), higher productivity (38%), and enhanced innovation (37%).
“Digital transformation lives and dies by the employee experience,” added Sampath. “If IT teams can’t effectively guide employees through adoption, businesses will never unlock the full value of their investments. DEX is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s business critical. Without it, IT leaders will struggle to measure impact, let alone maximise returns, and risk seeing their transformation efforts stall before they even get off the ground.”
Resilience Forward comment
The ability to adapt is at the heart of organizational resilience. While this is often thought about in terms of adapting to the changing situation after a major incident, in fact adaptive capability also applies to the whole system and environment in which an organization exists and operates.
There seems no doubt that the business environment is in the middle of a rapidly evolving AI revolution; and organizations need to adapt just as quickly to both avoid being left behind as an AI dinosaur and to ensure that new opportunities are maximised.
Organizations need to find ways to enable their workforce to adapt along with organizational technology use. As the above survey points out, organizations that fail to achieve this workforce adaption will experience a very real digital dexterity crisis.
