Did you know that digital friction from IT causes low Digital Employee Experience (DEX)?
Undue IT complexity and delays create conflicts with your internal customers and users, leading to dissatisfaction, low engagement, productivity losses, and turnover.
Luckily, there are simple ways you can prevent this, and resolving them will ensure your IT staff, internal customers, and users remain productive and engaged.
Digital friction is a term most Information Technology executives I talk with have never heard. Yet we all know its symptoms. This post exposes digital friction as the root cause of poor digital workplace experiences. You can reduce digital friction by leading on five factors. And you don't need to buy a new tool to ensure your IT staff, internal customers, and users remain productive, engaged, and satisfied.
Are your IT staff, internal customers, and users suffering from low Digital Employee Experience (DEX)? Do their interactions with your organization's IT system feel slow, cumbersome, and frustrating? If so, they may be experiencing digital friction - the root cause of a poor digital workplace experience. This post will discuss reducing digital friction by leading on the five core IT experience factors.
Digital Friction is a term that describes unnecessary complexity and delays caused by IT digital workplace solutions.
We all know the symptoms of digital friction: lower satisfaction scores, complexity, and delays. We all feel its outcomes, too: reduced productivity, employee frustration, and turnover.
All these things add to digital friction, which saps employees' motivation and makes them want to quit their job. It's not good for anyone when that happens.
Digital Friction is a term that describes unnecessary complexity and delays caused by IT digital workplace solutions.
I'm privileged to work with fantastic Information Technology executives worldwide. Despite these challenges, they remained determined to make their digital technology easy to use and provide proper support.
These IT executives overcame digital friction with the right leadership strategies and approaches. Witnessing their passion for delivering business outcomes is always inspiring.
You can solve your IT experience problems too. And it doesn't require new tools. Solving digital friction problems as these successful IT executives did only required leadership intensity — and knowing the causes of digital friction.
Digital Friction in Information Technology
When IT doesn't co-produce with non-IT employees, IT solutions don't meet business or users' needs, causing digital friction.
The result of digital friction is frustration, lack of productivity, and reduced profits due to difficulties from poor design or lackluster support from Information Technology (IT) units.
IT Leaders own digital friction — for better or worse. To improve employee digital experience, you must first accept that this is an IT problem. You must take ownership of those outcomes, understand their causes, and fix the root causes of digital friction.
The result of digital friction is frustration, lack of productivity, and reduced profits due to difficulties from poor design or lackluster support from Information Technology (IT) units.
You can make digital interactions easier for your employees by focusing on fitness for use and fitness for purpose. When you do this, you'll find that your employees have better experiences with digital tools, leading to increased productivity and job satisfaction.
Fitness for Purpose: Meeting Business Needs
Fitness for Purpose refers to an Information Technology (IT) solution's ability to fulfill specific business functional needs and the extent to which IT supports customers and users in meeting those needs.
Fitness for Use: Meeting User Needs
Fitness for Use reflects an IT solution's ability to meet user needs and how well it helps achieve user work goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
Impact of Digital Friction
Digital friction in the workplace can have devastating consequences for businesses, including high turnover, difficulty recruiting, lower profit margins, and higher costs.
A study commissioned by Salesforce found that digital friction costs U.S. businesses an estimated $1.8 trillion annually.
The report found that 81% of IT professionals waste more than 10% of their workdays, and 69% of employees lose productivity due to poor IT experiences.
However, only 25% either have or are working on an employee experience strategy and only 17% co-design digital employee experiences with employees.
Digital friction—the barriers to digital engagement that lead to customer and employee dissatisfaction—costs U.S. businesses an estimated $1.8 trillion annually.
Reducing digital friction should be at the top of every Information Technology executive's 2023 "to-do" list. And especially for smaller business IT units and leaders.
The same study found that smaller businesses experience disproportionately higher costs due to digital friction. Nearly one-third of the losses occurred in firms with 500 or fewer employees.
The 5 Types of Digital Friction
Any user-experience problem with an IT solution only has five possible causes.
Fortunately, we can measure and diagnose these unnecessary obstacles and roadblocks using five human factors with the acronym RATER.
Any user-experience problem with an IT solution only has five possible causes.
RATER gives you the "why" by diagnosing digital friction type. You can get beyond "dissatisfaction" and find the specific causes of poor digital employee experience.
Users of workplace digital solutions feel the effects of five types of digital friction in their workplace solutions:
Frustration from a lack of IT product or service functionality (aka Reliability.)
Losing trust in IT ability, data, and information (aka Assurance.)
Being forced to use IT solutions with poor user-friendliness (aka Tangibility.)
Dissatisfaction with IT interactions and being ignored by IT(aka Empathy.)
Losing productivity because of slow solution, service, and human response times (aka Responsiveness.)
It may help you to think about RATER as large buckets — each IT problem falls into one of the RATER buckets. Let's dig deeper into what RATER diagnoses and what else is behind the acronym.
Reliability
Reliability is the ability of IT solutions (products and services) to deliver essential functions under stated conditions for a specified period. Unreliable IT systems can cause increased downtime, security risks, and lost productivity. During such an event, business stops, employees can't do their jobs and lost productivity costs climb. Reliability is typically the most crucial aspect of IT delivery, accounting for about 32% of digital employee experience frustration.
Assurance
Assurance reflects IT competence, courtesy, information validity, and security. A lack of trust in IT can lead to reduced collaboration, increased costs, and reduced innovation. Without trust, employees may be less likely to share vital information with IT. They may take on tasks that IT should handle, leading to inefficiencies and higher costs. Assurance represents 19% of digital friction on average.
Tangibility
Tangibles relate to physical facilities, equipment, user interfaces, and communication materials. Users struggle to use digital platforms built without a focus on user experience (UX). Frustration and a lack of engagement with the platforms result in increased customer service costs, reduced employee engagement, and possibly even employee turnover. Around 16% of digital friction comes from Tangibility.
Empathy
Empathy means IT staff makes internal customers and users their top priority by engaging them in co-creating IT solutions. It's impossible to tailor IT solutions to business needs without communication and understanding between IT and other departments. A lack of IT empathy (prioritization of user experience) decreases collaboration and productivity. This source of digital friction comes in at around 11% of total employee frustration.
Responsiveness
Responsiveness is the ability to provide useable solutions and prompt support. Lack of responsiveness in IT leads to poor customer service, increased costs, and reduced productivity. Delays in IT responsiveness can result in higher costs. A lack of responsiveness hinders productivity as employees can't access the resources they need to do their job. Responsiveness is usually the second highest cause of digital friction at around 22%.
RATER gives you the "why." But what lies beneath RATER's digital friction diagnosis? What is IT doing (or not doing) to cause RATER failures? We'll cover this next.
The Root Cause of Digital Friction
The root cause of digital friction is poor coordination by IT Plan, Build, Transition, and Run functions.
There are four primary IT functions: plan, build, transition, and run (aka PBTR.) Factors internal to the IT organization affect the level of PBTR capability. Any of these factors anywhere along the line result in one or more of the five types of digital friction.
Digital Friction only comes from inadequate IT strategy and design of digital workplace solutions to meet business objectives, the operationalization of their delivery, or both.
The root cause of digital friction is poor coordination by IT Plan, Build, Transition, and Run functions.
Here's how IT leadership failures create digital friction that results in low digital employee experience, as shown by a RATER diagnostic of the IT solution creation lifecycle:
IT strategy planning failures occur when IT fails to identify and prioritize the right digital initiatives or when they fail to develop a comprehensive digital solution strategy. This comes from not being close enough to your internal customers and users. Ask your strategy team: Did we co-create with business partners? Did they approve our plans? How do we know our solution will meet customer product or service expectations?
IT design and build failures occur when organizations fail to co-create digital solutions that are user-friendly, secure, and scalable. Ask your design team: Have we blueprinted the standards required to meet the agreed-upon strategy? Does anyone think these plans are infeasible? Does our design standardize and automate as many components as possible?
IT transition to production failures occur when IT fails to properly plan and execute the transition from legacy systems to digital solutions or new versions of existing digital workplace solutions. Ask your transition leader: Did we put people, processes, partners, and products into action and equip them as required by the blueprinted design? Are roles clear and conflicts removed? How will we recognize and reward superior staff performance?
IT run and operations failures occur when organizations fail to properly manage and maintain digital solutions, resulting in poor performance and user experience. Ask your operations leader: Do the systems and people put in place deliver to defined and blueprinted standards? Is IT product or service information communicated to customers correctly? Are you, your team, or any documents overpromising delivery? How will we know we are delivering what we promised?
A failure at any of these touchpoints creates a gap that leads to digital friction. The result of these gaps is usually a negative impact on customer experience, operational efficiency, and overall business performance. Worse, gap failures often cascade to compound even worse performance.
Key Takeaways
Remember the following key takeaways as you prepare to solve your digital friction problems:
Digital friction is complexity and delays due to poor design or support from IT
The result of digital friction is frustration, lack of productivity, and reduced profits
Digital friction is caused by IT and solving digital friction is an IT task
Digital friction robs 81% of IT professionals of more than 10% of their workdays
Smaller businesses experience disproportionately higher costs due to digital friction
69% of employees lose productivity due to poor IT experiences
IT units cause digital friction when not aligned with internal customers and users
RATER is an acronym for the five types of friction
Reliability is the ability of IT solutions to deliver essential functions
Assurance reflects IT competence, courtesy, information validity, and security
Tangibles are physical facilities, equipment, user interfaces, and communication materials
Empathy means IT engaging internal customers and users in co-creating IT solutions
Responsiveness is the ability to provide useable solutions and prompt support
The root cause of digital friction is poor coordination by IT PBTR functions
You can improve digital friction through leadership and it doesn't require a new tool
Conclusion
You now know digital friction — where it comes from and how to measure it.
Now you need to take action.
Keep asking leaders of the four critical IT functions the fundamental questions presented above. You don't need tools for this, and it's best to ask these questions in person.
Reduce digital friction and improve the digital employee experience by leading with it. Make it part of your 1:1's. Put digital employee experience goals into your workforce or talent management systems, PDPs, or IDPs. Have responsible leaders provide updates at team meetings.
With engaged IT leadership and this post as your guide, I'm confident you will resolve digital friction!
If you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below. Also, check out the links below for more tips on digital friction and why you must prioritize it.
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Our Principals Hello, we're the Principals of DEXSIGHTS. We're guiding IT Leaders through the journey of transforming into employee IT experience experts. Each of us has been in IT for over 20 years. Our past roles include IT Leader, Analyst, startup founder of a SaaS firm, and Practice Leader at a global consultancy. We've always focused on the experience of IT's consumers — employees, customers, and users. As a result, we've achieved global visibility as IT thought leaders. We've learned how to quickly find and fix IT customer and user problems. We've combined all our experiences, research, successes, and struggles from leading IT by using employee experience as our compass. Now we're providing it to you.
Our Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Blog Posts The author is responsible for the content of this post. First, the author drafted this post using a word processor. Next the author used AI (OpenAI and Grammarly) to refine parts of this posts structure. Finally, the author edited the text for content, voice, and desired reading time.
