The 12 Days of Benchmarking - Day 3
Digital workplace satisfaction score
Weâve talked about whether the business believes technology enables themâŚ
and whether your digital investments actually deliver value.
Today we bring it right down to the front line:
đ Do your people actually enjoy using the digital tools you provide?
Because this is where digital strategy becomes real.
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What this metric is
Digital workplace satisfaction measures how satisfied employees are with the digital products and services they use to perform their work.
In simple terms:
Do your staff find your digital environment helpful⌠or frustrating?
It is measured through a simple user survey across your organisation, using a 1-5 satisfaction scale.Â
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Why it matters
This metric sits at the heart of experience-led service management, which is a core theme in ITIL (Version 5).
You can have:
âŚbut if your people struggle to use them, the experience - and therefore the value - breaks down.
Low digital workplace satisfaction often leads to:
- workarounds and shadow IT
- frustration and disengagement
- and ultimately a poorer student or customer experience
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What good looks like in practice
Organisations with high digital workplace satisfaction tend to have:
- Core systems work consistently and are easy to access
- Friction-free user journeys
- People can complete common tasks without needing workarounds or support calls
- Joined-up digital ecosystems
- Systems are integrated and data flows cleanly across services
- Strong user-centric design
- Services are designed with users, not just for them
- Ongoing listening and improvement
- Regular feedback loops and visible improvements based on user input
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How to understand what is really happening
Survey scores are important, but they are only part of the picture.
To truly understand digital workplace experience, combine:
1. User feedback
Satisfaction surveys with open-text responses to understand why users feel the way they do
2. Experience analytics (DEX)
Telemetry and usage data such as:
- application responsiveness
These help identify the root causes behind user frustration.Â
3. Qualitative insight
Follow-up conversations, interviews, or service reviews with key user groups
Together, this gives you a complete view of the digital employee experience.
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How to improve it
If your digital workplace satisfaction score is low, focus on:
1. Fix the basics first
Login, access, performance, and reliability. These are the foundations of experience.
2. Remove friction from common tasks
Look at the most frequent user journeys and simplify them.
3. Design with users, not around systems
Involve stakeholder groups in co-creating digital services.
4. Integrate your platforms
Reduce duplicate data entry and disconnected systems.
5. Make improvement visible
Show users that their feedback leads to change. This builds trust and engagement.
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A simple reflection
If you asked your stakeholders today:
âHow easy is it to do your job using our digital systems?â
What would they say?
And would that answer match what your dashboards are telling you?
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Take part in the benchmarking
The ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model allows you to understand not just how your technology performs, but how it is experienced by your people.
By contributing your data, you can:
- benchmark your digital workplace experience against peers
- identify your biggest experience pain points
- and prioritise improvements that directly impact productivity and satisfaction
đ Take part in the PBM survey and contribute your data - ITIL Performance Benchmarking Survey 2026ďťż ďťż
Tomorrowâs focus:
SLA compliance rate - are your services consistently meeting the levels youâve agreed with your customers?
