For years, organizations have poured cash into collaboration instruments, intranets, units, workflow platforms, and automation — all beneath the banner of “bettering the digital worker expertise.” But worker frustration with digital friction stays.
This isn’t a expertise drawback. It’s an operational one.
Possession of the digital worker expertise (DEX) has lived in every single place and nowhere: unfold throughout IT, HR, operations, communications, and enterprise groups with no unified method. DEX operations are usually fragmented, inconsistent, and tough to scale.
Forrester’s Digital Office And Worker Expertise Survey, 2025, exhibits the problem clearly: 54% of enterprise and IT leaders say DEX lives inside IT, solely 20% say they’ve a devoted DEX staff, and the remainder is scattered throughout HR, communications, and office teams. When everybody owns DEX, nobody actually owns it.
It’s time to align on what we imply after we speak concerning the digital office and digital worker expertise and to introduce a brand new idea that may bind the 2 collectively to assist organizations operationalize DEX in a measurable, scalable manner.
Defining The Digital Office (And Why It Issues)
Forrester defines the digital office as:
The customized and customizable set of apps, content material, and units that make up a person’s productiveness expertise in accordance with their office persona.
This definition is deliberately employee-centric. The digital office will not be a static tech stack. It’s the digital instruments, capabilities, and workspaces that every worker depends on to do their job — formed by their function, location, and context.
A retail employee on a cellular machine, a developer with a cloud-native toolchain, or a name middle worker on a locked-down workstation have totally different realities, totally different ache factors, and totally different wants — however understanding the “what” is barely half the story.
And What Precisely Is DEX?
Forrester defines digital worker expertise (DEX) as:
The sum of all perceptions that workers have about working with the expertise to finish their every day work and handle their relationship with their employer throughout the lifecycle of their employment.
If the digital office is what workers use, DEX is the way it feels and the outcomes that this expertise allows or inhibits. A mistake that organizations are inclined to make is treating the digital office and DEX as interchangeable, however they’re not.
The digital office = the ecosystem. DEX = the outcomes. And it’s the outcomes which are what matter most.
Three Shifts Are Reshaping The DEX Panorama
We’re getting into a brand new period of DEX — and three forces are accelerating it:
- Fashionable DEX measurement lastly offers leaders actual visibility. Finish-user expertise administration options for DEX monitoring and administration mix telemetry with sentiment, giving an end-to-end view of experiences. Enterprise and IT leaders see worth in higher visibility of DEX, with 26% indicating that implementing a digital expertise monitoring technique is a prime precedence this yr.
- AI is popping expertise indicators into real-time motion. Generative AI can interpret indicators, suggest fixes, automate workflows, and execute proactive remediation. Organizations can lastly sense and reply to digital friction immediately, at scale. Bettering DEX is now not reactive — it’s responsive.
- Expertise information is increasing to the entrance line. Unified endpoint visibility is increasing to shared units, wearables, operational expertise, and customer-facing workflows. DEX isn’t only a knowledge-worker focus anymore however extends to the entrance line, the place outcomes tie on to income, service high quality, and model outcomes.
Collectively, these shifts make one thing doable that has eluded organizations for years: a measurable, operational connection between worker expertise and buyer expertise. To realize this, organizations should operationalize DEX past remoted IT groups and fragmented initiatives.
DEXOps: The Working Framework That DEX Has Been Lacking
As measurement, AI, and frontline visibility mature, a brand new time period has began to emerge and is gaining quick traction: Enter DEXOps.
DEXOps is the working framework for constantly managing and bettering the digital expertise throughout all the digital office ecosystem. It unifies expertise information, automation, workflow orchestration, and governance to align expertise, course of, and tradition with workforce effectiveness and enterprise outcomes. Put much more merely, DEXOps turns “bettering DEX” from one-time tasks into an operational self-discipline that’s predictable, measurable, and scalable.
Like DevOps reworked software program supply, DEXOps will rework expertise operations by:
- Breaking down silos amongst IT, HR, operations, and enterprise groups.
- Connecting expertise indicators to worker and frontline worth streams.
- Embedding constant governance throughout the digital expertise.
- Making DEX one thing organizations can tune in actual time.
- Turning DEX right into a driver of enterprise agility, effectivity, and buyer impression.
Organizations adopting a DEXOps mindset can:
- Eradicate friction earlier than it turns into a assist ticket.
- Scale back overhead, duplication, and churn.
- Speed up supply and frontline enablement.
- Construct repeatable, scalable change practices.
- Enhance buyer expertise by bettering DEX.
- Give leaders real-time visibility into expertise well being.
- Quantify ROI and construct confidence in digital office investments.
That is the “how” behind the problem we’ve been caught in for years: tying DEX outcomes to enterprise outcomes. In right this moment’s financial panorama, IT leaders face rising strain to display the enterprise worth of digital office investments. This urgency is highlighted in Forrester’s Fashionable Tech Operations Survey, 2025, through which 37% of digital and IT professionals recognized aligning IT investments and operations with strategic enterprise targets as their group’s prime IT precedence for the approaching yr.
In abstract: The digital office defines the ecosystem. DEX defines the expertise. DEXOps is the cross-organizational connective tissue to operationalize each.
Coming Quickly: Forrester’s DEXOps Framework
In my practitioner life, I spent extra hours than I can depend stitching collectively datasets that wouldn’t speak to one another, navigating misaligned groups with competing priorities, and constructing the enterprise case for expertise enhancements. When the numbers weren’t accessible, I leaned closely on qualitative proof (and loads of storytelling).
At present, trendy DEX measurement instruments, unified expertise information, and AI-enabled orchestration have closed these gaps. Enterprises lastly have what I wanted for by most of my profession:
- DEX as an final result, not an arrogance metric
- An operational crucial, not a challenge
- A strategic enterprise lever, not a value middle
I’m actively growing Forrester’s DEXOps framework, which can outline the ideas, working motions, and worth pathways for bringing DEXOps to life. My objective is to assist enterprise and IT leaders future-proof their tech ecosystems, mature their expertise operations, and create a future the place DEX turns into a enterprise differentiator.
If you wish to assist form this analysis, I’d love to listen to what’s working (or not) as you operationalize DEX in your group. Let’s construct this collectively.
Attain out to me on LinkedIn, or if you happen to’re a Forrester shopper, you’ll be able to arrange an inquiry or steerage session.
