Why Your Digital Workplace Isn’t Working — and How IT Can Fix It

Is your digital workplace a shining example of success? Many are not. In this blog we look at eight symptoms of a broken digital workplace. We’ll consider the challenges, and what a high functioning digital workplace should look like. Most importantly, you’ll see what you can do to take control of your digital workplace initiative and get it back on track.

An Uncomfortable Truth

Digital Workplace has been a core part of IT strategy for several years. Money has been spent and many of the enabling technologies are in place. Yet often the digital workplace remains disjointed and falls a long way short of the promise. But the answer is rarely to be found in adding more tools and introducing new technology. If you’re an existing Microsoft 365 house, you already have the raw materials. But you may need to improve the nature of your digital workplace.

A digital workplace should enable employees to access all the tools, data, and communication channels they need to perform effectively from any location. And most do that. But it should also combine collaboration platforms, productivity applications, knowledge management systems, and business process tools in an integrated and cohesive environment. Often, this is where the problem lies. Despite the unifying capabilities of Microsoft 365, many organisations are still symptomized by fragmented experiences, poor findability, duplicated tools, and low employee engagement.

These issues aren’t because of shortcomings in Microsoft 365, but because of flaws in its adoption. Typically, we see failings in strategy and architecture, its alignment with the vision and the business’ needs, and in employee use.

Does this apply to you? How can you tell if your digital workplace isn’t what it should be?

Eight Symptoms of a Broken Digital Workplace

‘Broken’ is a strong word (sorry) and doesn’t usually mean total failure. But it does mean that your digital workplace is underachieving. Here are eight symptoms of illness.

1. A disjointed user experience

Employees may be experience a disjointed user experience if they don’t have a central dashboard, or unified access point for all daily tasks. As a result, they must switch between multiple apps, and perhaps even logins, to complete simple tasks.

2. Time wasted searching

Without a single, easily searchable, ‘source of truth’ employees are spending too much time searching for documents, tools, and people.

3. Information lives in silos

Closely related to symptom two, data and content is stored in multiple systems with no clear structure, resulting in duplication and poor version control.

4. Overreliance on email and meetings

A continued dependence on email and meetings betrays poor real-time communication. Suggesting that Teams isn’t being used well and poor visibility of projects, ownerships and cross-departmental work.

5. Inflexible legacy systems

The continued use of old platforms, that don’t play by the new rules is perhaps both a cause and symptom of digital frailty. They may not allow remote access, probably don’t integrate with productivity tools, and are anything but evergreen.

6. Frustrated and disengaged employees

All of this contributes to bad feeling. This may be evident in employee surveys, low adoption of corporate tools, people using their own ways of working, and high use of ‘shadow IT’.

7. Weak data security and compliance

These issues may also contribute to sensitive information being shared through unsecured, unofficial, channels. Also, access rights may be inconsistent, from system to system, and data governance poor.

8. Unclear strategy and ownership

The digital workplace roadmap isn’t clearly understood and recognised as led by IT. Technology decisions are being made in departmental silos and employee experience isn’t a key part of the decision-making process.

Why IT Leaders are Struggling to Create a Connected Experience

Delivering a highly effective IT service is anything but easy. And there are usually several very good reasons why a business’ digital workplace is underachieving.

Many organisations are still reliant on outdated and tricky to replace on-premises and/or custom-built systems. Without readymade APIs they are hard to integrate, and moving away from them is costly, risky, and may also be politically sensitive.

Often, ownership of the digital workplace is unclear and it’s not unusual to see strong functions dictating the nature of IT in their area. As well as depriving the organisation of a clear focus and a cross-functional strategy, it also contributes to silos. Of course, many departments, such as HR, Finance, and Operations, need specific systems. But without a business-wide strategy the result is an uncoordinated, fragmented toolset, that’s hard to secure and support, and provides a disjointed employee experience.

These challenges are often compounded by resource constraints. IT teams are usually stretched thin managing day-to-day workloads and doing just enough to keep the lights on. With limited time or capacity to truly delight their users, they’re forced into a reactive posture—prioritising short-term fixes over long-term value. Without an integrated, organisation-wide digital roadmap, IT finds itself reactively focusing on tools rather than implementing an integrated, long-term vision of how work should happen.

Technology is rarely a solution in itself. Introducing new platforms or tools without considering the bigger picture of vision, architecture, integration, and user needs will never solve the problem.

Regrettably, digital workplace is often seen as desirable rather than mission critical. Although important, increased productivity, a better employee experience, and improved engagement are hard to quantify benefits. Producing lower priority, and/or underfunded initiatives.

What a High-Functioning Digital Workplace Looks Like in Microsoft 365

So far, we’ve focused on the issues. Let’s look now at what can be realistically achieved.

While you’re probably familiar with the component technologies, the end-product goes far beyond using SharePoint, Teams, Viva, Power Platform and other technologies. It is a seamlessly connected, secure, and employee-focused ecosystem that enables people to communicate, collaborate, and work from anywhere, with minimal friction.

Here’s what it should look like.

Employees will access all work, tools, and resources from one entry point: a branded SharePoint intranet or portal with consistent, intuitive, and personalised navigation. With easy and integrated access to third party tools, such as business applications, helpdesk and HR systems.

This is underpinned by a clear, intuitive information architecture also powered by SharePoint. Libraries are structured, with permissions for different teams, and retention and sensitivity labels enforcing information governance policies. Microsoft Syntex can also be used to intelligently tag content.

Communication is streamlined and rationalised with Microsoft Teams as the hub for daily communications: chat, calls, and meetings. While email is used to complement real-time collaboration, and Viva Engage to provide social engagement and knowledge sharing.

Employees enjoy a consistent experience across desktop, web and mobile platforms. They can collaborate with others on documents in real-time, with all files securely stored in SharePoint.

Productivity improvements are delivered by automating repetitive workflows (Power Automate) and easily creating specific apps (Power Apps). While direct, user-friendly access to real-time business intelligence facilitates higher quality, data-driven business decisions (Power BI). Further productivity gains are achieved through the use of Copilot. Ever returned from a meeting to loads of new emails? Outlook Copilot can summarise long email threads in seconds, highlight emails requiring immediate attention and even draft replies in your tone. Need to create a regular report from data in Excel? The Power BI Copilot can clean and structure data, build charts, simply explain trends and outliers, and feed the insights directly into PowerPoint or Teams.

A people first approach also draws on Microsoft Viva to provide engaging, personalised experiences focused on wellbeing (Viva Insights), development (Viva Learning), and engagement (Viva Connections).

Security is a constant worry for all in IT, and Microsoft 365 has it baked in. Secure Single Sign On, across all apps, is provided via Entra ID. Multi-Factor Authentication and conditional access rules provide additional security without compromising usability. While guest access can be controlled to provide secure collaboration with partners and suppliers.

Microsoft 365’s built-in functionality also ensures a consistent and compliant approach to governance and data lifecycle management. Version control is automatic, across all devices, and lifecycles can be managed automatically, with further enhancements via Power Automate.

The result is a unified and intuitive digital workplace that enables frictionless collaboration, provides security and compliance, drives productivity, and improves employee engagement.

Achieving this isn’t just about deploying the tools. Important though they are, the key is to design a digital experience that works for people. With the right design, implementation doesn’t have to be done all in one go but can be phased according to budget, resources, and other constraints.

Realising the Potential: IT’s Role in Making It Happen

As technology enabler and guardian, IT is uniquely positioned to drive a successful digital workplace. Laying the foundations, ensuring governance and security, and partnering across the organisation to deliver a seamless, secure, and empowering environment for employees.

Though led and initiated by IT, successful digital workplace initiatives are business owned. This calls for the involvement of the senior leadership team to ensure alignment with business goals. As well as close collaboration with others, such as HR, comms, and operational teams, to ensure a people-centric outcome. While this is crucial to your digital workplace being business owned, IT should be the champion of user experience and not leave this to others. A ‘people first’ approach will influence so many aspects of the project that it can determine its overall success. It encourages greater emphasis on presentation, enablement and training and that tends to positively impact use. While a user-centric approach to the policies and compliance can go hand in glove with greater adherence.

Where Do You Go from Here: Review and Strategy

If you can now see that your digital workplace is falling short, you’ll be asking if and how you can change that. You may even be wondering ‘if’ it’s even doable.

Chances are we’ve already helped people who’ve started in a much worse position than you, so take heart.

Earlier sections, on the symptoms and challenges, may already have highlighted some priority actions for you.

This may mean that time needs to go into securing the support of the senior leadership team and refining the digital workplace vision. Ensuring that it is aligned with business goals and able to deliver value, and is business owned, and IT led.

For some, this will take time. In parallel with this review where you are. What tools are you using and, by omission, which ones you should you be considering? Where is information duplicated or siloed? Where is adoption of a deployed platform poor? What do employees really need?

This may help you to identify and set some priority workstreams that will contribute towards the solid foundations you need. Consolidate as much as possible, with SharePoint as your central layer. If necessary rethink your document management strategy. Plan a true, single-entry point, employee portal – not just another microsite. Explore the additional benefits that Viva, Power Platform, and Copilot technologies can bring, when the time is right.

This doesn’t need to be all done at once and it doesn’t need to be all done alone. If you aim to draw on the expertise of a partner, involve them at an early stage. They can help you to create a compelling vision, sell it to the board, and sensibly prioritise workstreams according to your resources.

You’re Closer Than You Think

There’s a danger in reading something like this, that’s highlighting shortcomings and challenges, that you feel daunted by the work ahead. Don’t be.

We’re yet to encounter a ‘rip and replace’ situation. With Microsoft 365 you’ll already have many of the building blocks in place. So, it’s more a case of finessing and augmenting what’s already there. Showing people how to make best use of the tools already at their disposal can be low cost, high reward activity.

While the right partner will have the know-how to simplify, and the skills to undertake much of the heavy lifting for you. The digital workplace you want is possible.