New Research from Nexthink Finds Employees Are Losing Two Work Weeks a Year to IT Downtime

For a 10,000-person organization, IT downtime could be costing $25 million a year¹

The additional dimension of mass remote working during the current crisis will have led to IT Teams having even less visibility of IT challenges being faced by employees

LAUSANNE, Switzerland & BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--New research launched today by Nexthink, the global leader in digital employee experience management, finds that IT challenges and poor digital work experiences are costing businesses tens of millions of dollars in lost work time and that the problem is much bigger than IT leaders realize. With employees saying that only just over half of workplace technology issues they experience are actually reported to IT, the IT department does not have visibility of the problems that exist in their organizations. For a company with 10,000 employees, this could equate to nearly half a million dollars per week and $25 million per year.

The Experience 2020 Report: Digital Employee Experience Today conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, shows that employees are losing an average of 28 minutes every time they have an IT-related problem. The report also shows that IT decision makers believe employees are experiencing approximately two IT issues per week, wasting nearly 50 hours a year. However, as only just over half of IT issues are being reported, the numbers are more likely to be nearly double that – close to 100 hours (two work weeks) a year. This has led to a vicious cycle of employees trying to fix IT problems on their own, leading to less engagement with the IT department, which doesn’t have visibility into how the technology is being consumed.

There exists a major disconnect between IT departments and employees, with 84% of employees believing that their organizations should be doing more to improve the digital experience at work. However, a staggering 90% of IT leaders believe that workers are satisfied with technology in the workplace, highlighting the discrepancy between perception and reality of the digital employee experience. Ironically, innovative IT leaders are exacerbating the problem by introducing new technologies and digital transformation projects without having visibility into the success of these projects. These new technologies negatively impact employees’ digital experiences because IT cannot measure how the change is impacting their day-to-day work.

Other takeaways and findings from the research include:

• When IT issues go unnoticed, things get worse: 79% of respondents agree that when IT issues are not reported, it always leads to bigger issues
• Digital employee experience is highly important across organizations: 82% view it as ‘very important’ to ‘critical’
• Inability to measure new IT rollouts: On average, IT departments only have approximately 56% visibility into the success of new technology roll outs, 58% visibility into adoption of the roll out, and 45% visibility into the issues impacting employees’ experiences
• IT issues at work are commonplace: 61% of respondents agree that IT downtime is an accepted norm in their organizations

“A significant amount of downtime per employee is a reality for many organizations but IT teams don’t have visibility of the poor digital experiences that employees have to put up with,” said Jon Cairns, VP of Global Solution Consulting at Nexthink. “Every day, employees settle for small IT glitches – slow boot-up times, patchy internet connectivity, programs crashing, etc., but these problems go unreported, unnoticed and amount to more wasted time than we’d like to admit. Combined, all of this hurts productivity, morale, organizational culture, employee retention and ultimately the top and bottom line for millions of businesses. Add in the fact that so many of us are all working remotely during the current crisis and the problem may be much bigger than the research shows.”

The research, conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, surveyed 1,000 senior IT decision-makers and 2,000 end users at organizations with at least 1,500 employees across the U.S. (400 IT/800 Users), the U.K. (200 IT/400 Users), France (200 IT/400 Users), and Germany (200 IT/400 Users), to examine the state of IT challenges in the workplace, uncovering similarities and disparities between the groups.

To download the full report, visit https://www.nexthink.com/resource/the-experience-2020-report-digital-employee-experience-today/.

About Nexthink (www.nexthink.com)
Nexthink is the global leader in digital employee experience management. The company’s products allow enterprises to create highly productive digital workplaces for their employees by delivering optimal end-user experiences. Through a unique combination of real-time analytics, automation and employee feedback across all endpoints, Nexthink helps IT teams meet the needs of the modern digital workplace.

About Vanson Bourne (www.vansonbourne.com)
Vanson Bourne is an independent specialist in market research for the technology sector. Their reputation for robust and credible research-based analysis is founded upon rigorous research principles and their ability to seek the opinions of senior decision makers across technical and business functions, in all business sectors and all major markets.

¹ Companies with 10,000 employees have an average of 10 years of IT downtime per week (2 hours x 10,000 = 20,000 hours per week / 2,000 work hours a year = 10 years of potential work time that is lost), according to the Nexthink research. As the average American makes $48,672 annually, the time not spent working is a loss on average of $486,720 per week and $24,336,000 a year for these enterprises.