The start of 2025 has brought headline-grabbing attempts by some employers to require a return to the office. But the truth is that the “workplace” today is defined less by where you work (location) and more by what you do (outcomes). Statistics from last year tell us that over half (53%) of US employees worked in a hybrid setup. Employers are solving for a location problem when they should be solving for outcomes. The challenge therefore is not for organizations to get people back into the office, but to ensure that workers have the consistently positive digital experiences needed to produce quality work in an efficient manner.
This is no small task and will require a sizable reimagining of the role of IT. It will also require organizations to put their trust in IT in ways they don’t traditionally do. Outdated operating models and support constructs will need to be abandoned – for example, nearly three-quarters of IT professionals believe that the service desk as it is currently constituted will be ‘extinct’ by 2027, to be replaced by an AI-augmented Experience Desk.
Both technologies and mindsets will have to shift to accelerate the transition from reactive troubleshooting to proactive and preventative digital workplace analytics that safeguards and improves the digital experience, and as a result, business outcomes.
Complexity, resistance, and opacity
The reason that the digital experience challenge is so complicated is because it’s part technology, part human. Start with the tech. Given the complexity of modern digital environments, IT teams are constantly firefighting slow or crashing applications, systems that have slowed down to a crawl, and outages that grind productivity to a halt. And often it’s only when employees call up to complain that IT is even aware something has gone wrong!
At the same time, most IT teams are facing significant resistance to change from employees. The continued outsourcing of solutions to employees, now through AI chatbots, is pointless if people immediately say ‘Human! Human! Human!’. Take the task of migrating employees to a new operating system. It’s not just switching to a new OS – a successful migration requires IT to update virtually every application, tool, and utility that employees use. Every device needs to be checked to verify that the hardware is compatible and has the right specs for the applications to run properly.
And many of those applications may either be blacklisted, incompatible, or unnecessary, needing further analysis by IT. And don’t forget about the applications or utilities that IT isn’t aware of that will come back to bite them after the migration.
Consequently, OS migrations often end up being hugely chaotic, causing days or even weeks of lost productivity for many, both in the business and in IT as they clean up the fallout. It’s therefore no surprise that many employees will fight against them since they see little value for them in making the change, especially compared to all the disruption they can anticipate.
A vicious circle
It’s easy to see how such scenarios can result in a downward spiral of undetected IT issues, lost productivity, and employee frustration. With no way to get ahead of issues, IT teams are forced to face frustrated employees and can end up submerged in ticket backlogs. All of this in turn drives employee morale down and leads to huge amounts of wasted resources, and possibly even turnover. Then, as business performance suffers, it gets harder to attract the best talent, and so the outlook worsens.
In short, employers need to change the paradigm. That doesn’t necessarily mean big, cumbersome, difficult changes, or shifting to ultra-personalized and expensive services. It means empowering IT with the tools it needs to see, diagnose, and fix issues before they have a chance to impact the employee experience. It means transforming to new environments with fact-based, non-impactful, AI augmented methods that meet both employee expectations and corporate requirements.
Faster response, improved decision-making
A great place to start is assessing self-contained AI-powered analytics tools, which can help improve IT decision making, automate remediation, identify issues before they become problems, and reduce ticket overload. Contrary to some narratives, IT professionals are fundamentally optimistic about the potential for AI to benefit their career and organization.
There are good reasons why. AI analytics can scan malfunctioning devices and related environments to provide root cause analysis for faster, more accurate troubleshooting. They can take the guesswork out of incident response to enhance IT decision-making and reduce friction for end users. They can be used to create automated workflows for previously resolved issues—enhancing the productivity of IT and regular employees. And ultimately, they can predict and avoid issues altogether so employees are never impacted by an outage.
The most capable platforms will be able to use anonymized benchmarking data from potentially millions of customers to understand, resolve, and avoid issues faster and more effectively. Use cases range from device health and onboarding to version rollback and even license management. AI analytics can also help the business make better-informed decisions about digital transformation strategy.
Future-proofing with AI
The result is enhanced experiences for happier, more productive employees. And an IT function that has more time (and budget) to focus on higher-value, strategic efforts. That’s what IT and end-user computing (EUC) professionals are aiming for too. Over half (58%) want to improve their knowledge of the employee experience, and a similar share want to learn generative AI skills.
Some may still harbor reservations about the potential impact of AI on their careers. But a growing number know that embracing AI will sharpen their competitive edge and improve their individual results. AI is fast becoming a necessity for modern IT teams. By leveraging AI for digital workplace analytics, organizations can create seamless, productive work environments at a fraction of the cost and time previously required.
IT was always designed to enable, rather than hinder, the business. AI finally enables them to realize this vision.
