The hidden cost of digital friction: Why your employees are suffering in silence

Digital friction is costing your organization more than you realize. While your employees navigate daily technology hurdles, they're losing precious hours of productivity—and you might not even know it's happening.

Recent data reveals a startling reality: 49% of employees lose between one and five hours of productivity weekly when dealing with IT issues. Even more concerning, 23% lose six or more hours. That's not just lost time—it's lost revenue, decreased morale, and mounting frustration that spreads throughout your organization.

The problem runs deeper than visible complaints. Many employees have learned to accept digital friction as part of their daily routine, creating a culture of silent suffering that undermines your entire digital workplace strategy.

Why employees stay silent about digital struggles  

Your employees face technology challenges every day, yet many never report them. But this silence isn't defiance; it's adaptation to a broken system.

Several factors contribute to this troubling trend. Employees often normalize their frustration, viewing slow systems and glitchy applications as unavoidable workplace realities. They've mentally adjusted their expectations downward rather than seeking solutions.

Others hesitate to contact IT support, worried about being perceived as bothersome or incompetent. They fear creating additional work for already stretched IT teams or appearing unable to handle basic technology tasks.

Time constraints also play a major role. Employees calculate that submitting tickets, waiting for responses, and explaining problems takes longer than simply working around issues. As a result, they choose inefficient workarounds over lasting solutions.

This acceptance of subpar digital experiences creates a dangerous cycle. Poor digital employee experience (DEX) becomes the norm, productivity suffers, and your competitive advantage erodes without clear visibility into the underlying problems.

Read more: Digital Employee Experience (DEX): What is it, why it matters, and what are its benefits

The true impact on organizational performance  

Digital friction doesn't just affect individual productivity—it cascades through your entire organization, creating a butterfly effect that touches every aspect of business performance.

When employees lose hours weekly to technology issues, projects stall, deadlines slip, and customer service degrades. The cumulative effect of these seemingly minor disruptions compounds into significant operational challenges.  

The financial implications extend beyond lost productivity. Frustrated employees become disengaged, leading to higher turnover rates and increased recruitment costs. Customer satisfaction drops when internal inefficiencies affect service delivery. Innovation stagnates as teams spend time fighting technology instead of creating value.

Your organization's reputation also takes a hit. As Andrew Hewitt (Vice-President, Strategic Technology) explains: "Employees start speaking out about how difficult it is to work at your company, and eventually, they leave."

Unsurprisingly enough, top performers seek employers who provide modern, efficient tools that enable rather than hinder their work. And that’s where proactive IT management comes in.

Read more: DEX Decoded: Your key to digital workplace excellence

Moving from reactive to proactive IT management

Traditional IT support models wait for problems to surface before acting. This reactive approach allows issues to fester, productivity to suffer, and employees to develop workarounds that mask underlying problems.

Modern organizations need proactive IT management that identifies and resolves issues before they impact employee experience. This shift requires tools that provide continuous visibility into your digital workplace performance.

Proactive monitoring tracks key metrics across your entire technology ecosystem. Instead of waiting for trouble tickets, IT teams receive real-time alerts about performance degradation, application errors, and system instabilities.

This approach delivers multiple benefits. IT teams can address problems during off-hours, minimizing disruption to daily operations. Root causes receive attention rather than just symptoms, preventing recurring issues. Employee satisfaction improves as technology becomes more reliable and responsive.

The transformation from reactive to proactive IT management requires investment in the right tools and mindset changes. However, the return on investment becomes clear through improved productivity, reduced support costs, and enhanced employee satisfaction.

Essential metrics for measuring digital employee experience

You can't improve what you don't measure. Successful DEX initiatives rely on comprehensive metrics that provide clear insight into user satisfaction and system performance.

Four critical metrics form the foundation of effective DEX measurement:  

Stability metrics track system uptime, application crashes, and error rates. These indicators reveal how reliably your technology performs for end users.

Responsiveness metrics measure application load times, system boot speeds, and network latency. Slow performance frustrates users and reduces productivity, making these measurements crucial for user satisfaction.

Performance metrics evaluate overall system efficiency, resource utilization, and throughput. These measurements help identify bottlenecks that impact user experience.

Sentiment metrics capture user feedback, satisfaction scores, and reported issues. These qualitative measurements provide context for quantitative data and reveal user perception of their digital workplace.

Comprehensive monitoring across these four areas provides a complete picture of your digital employee experience. IT teams can identify trends, prioritize improvements, and measure the impact of changes on user satisfaction.

Real-world success: Transforming visibility into action

RLI Insurance faced a common challenge: limited visibility into their endpoint environment made it impossible to identify which employees struggled with digital friction. Without clear insights, addressing issues or improving employee experience became guesswork.

By implementing TeamViewer’s DEX solution, the insurance company was able to get better visibility and identify the employees experiencing device problems. This transformed their approach to IT management and employee support.

RLI tracked the four essential DEX metrics—stability, responsiveness, performance, and sentiment—providing clear visibility into each user's experience. With this data, the IT team could then identify and address issues proactively, eliminating silent suffering and improving workplace productivity.

The results spoke for themselves. Instead of waiting for complaints, RLI's IT team was able to detect problems automatically and resolve them before they impacted employee productivity. This proactive approach created a more engaged and productive workforce.

Read more: How RLI Insurance achieves greater visibility with the TeamViewer DEX Platform

Addressing specific technical challenges

Sometimes digital friction manifests in unexpected ways that traditional monitoring might miss. RLI Insurance, for example, discovered this when employees complained about devices overheating and rapid battery drain—issues that directly impacted productivity and user satisfaction.

These problems exemplify how digital friction can take many forms. Overheating devices force employees to seek alternative workspaces, interrupt their workflow, and create anxiety about potential data loss or hardware failure.

With an endpoint troubleshooting solution, RLI created custom instructions to identify overheating devices, uncover root causes, and determine how many employees were affected. This targeted approach allowed them to address specific technical issues that were degrading the digital employee experience.

The ability to create custom troubleshooting instructions demonstrates the flexibility needed for modern IT management. Different organizations face unique challenges that require tailored solutions rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.

Building your digital workplace transformation strategy