AI and digital employee experiences are on the cusp of mainstream adoption
2024 has been a critical year for digital workplace application leaders, as the focus on hybrid and remote work dwindles and the need for a strategic concentration on everyday AI rises. Everyday AI is placed on the Peak of Inflated Expectations on the Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace Applications, 2024 (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace Applications, 2024
“Everyday AI technology aims to help employees deliver work with speed, comprehensiveness and confidence,” said Adam Preset, VP Analyst at Gartner. “It supports a new way of working, where intelligent software is acting as more of a collaborator than a tool. The digital workplace is now entering the era of everyday AI.”As technology vendors seek ways to improve productivity among workers that go beyond traditional application and feature enhancements, they can look towards everyday AI. This technology not only delivers productivity benefits, but also provides new marketable offerings such as tools to help workers find and synthesize relevant information, answer questions more comprehensively and produce work artifacts more easily.
“Everyday AI will become more sophisticated, moving from services that, for example, can sort and summarize chats and email messages to services that can write a report with minimal guidance,” said Preset. “In many ways, everyday AI is the future of workforce productivity.”
Increased Emphasis on Organizations to Have a DEX Strategy
Nearly all employees are becoming digital employees as they spend more time working with technology than ever before. Because of this, organizations must have a strategy to measure and improve DEX to attract and retain talent to improve employee engagement and maximize discretionary effort and intent-to-stay.
Business leaders are looking for guidance on how technology can help boost productivity and organizational alignment. DEX emphasizes best practices that boost digital dexterity, attract and retain talent, and help employees deliver against business outcomes.
DEX is in the Trough of Disillusionment on the Hype Cycle, meaning that interest is waning as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. To increase the appeal and relevance around DEX, business leaders should take a holistic approach across IT and non-IT partners to build a meaningful environment that empowers employees to adopt new ways of working.