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Employees Lose 2 Weeks Per Year to IT Downtime

Tim Flower

IT challenges and poor digital work experiences are costing businesses tens of millions of dollars in lost work time and that the problem is much bigger than IT leaders realize, according to The Experience 2020 Report: Digital Employee Experience Today from Nexthink, conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne.

With employees saying that only just over half of workplace technology issues they experience are actually reported to IT, the IT department does not have visibility of the problems that exist in their organizations. For a company with 10,000 employees, this could equate to nearly half a million dollars per week and $25 million per year.

Employees lose an average of 28 minutes every time they have an IT-related problem

The research shows that employees lose an average of 28 minutes every time they have an IT-related problem. The report also shows that IT decision makers believe employees are experiencing approximately two IT issues per week, wasting nearly 50 hours a year. However, as only just over half of IT issues are being reported, the numbers are more likely to be nearly double that — close to 100 hours (two work weeks) a year. This has led to a vicious cycle of employees trying to fix IT problems on their own, leading to less engagement with the IT department, which doesn't have visibility into how the technology is being consumed.

There exists a major disconnect between IT departments and employees, with 84% of employees believing that their organizations should be doing more to improve the digital experience at work. However, a staggering 90% of IT leaders believe that workers are satisfied with technology in the workplace, highlighting the discrepancy between perception and reality of the digital employee experience.

Ironically, innovative IT leaders are exacerbating the problem by introducing new technologies and digital transformation projects without having visibility into the success of these projects. These new technologies negatively impact employees' digital experiences because IT cannot measure how the change is impacting their day-to-day work.

Other takeaways and findings from the research include:

When IT issues go unnoticed, things get worse: 79% of respondents agree that when IT issues are not reported, it always leads to bigger issues.

Digital employee experience is highly important across organizations: 82% view it as "very important" to "critical."

Inability to measure new IT rollouts: On average, IT departments only have approximately 56% visibility into the success of new technology roll outs, 58% visibility into adoption of the roll out, and 45% visibility into the issues impacting employees' experiences.

IT issues at work are commonplace: 61% of respondents agree that IT downtime is an accepted norm in their organizations.

"A significant amount of downtime per employee is a reality for many organizations but IT teams don't have visibility of the poor digital experiences that employees have to put up with," said Jon Cairns, VP of Global Solution Consulting at Nexthink. "Every day, employees settle for small IT glitches, slow boot-up times, patchy internet connectivity, programs crashing, etc., but these problems go unreported, unnoticed and amount to more wasted time than we'd like to admit. Combined, all of this hurts productivity, morale, organizational culture, employee retention and ultimately the top and bottom line for millions of businesses. Add in the fact that so many of us are all working remotely during the current crisis and the problem may be much bigger than the research shows."

Methodology: The research, conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, surveyed 1,000 senior IT decision-makers and 2,000 end users at organizations with at least 1,500 employees across the US (400 IT/800 Users), the UK (200 IT/400 Users), France (200 IT/400 Users), and Germany (200 IT/400 Users), to examine the state of IT challenges in the workplace, uncovering similarities and disparities between the groups.

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Employees Lose 2 Weeks Per Year to IT Downtime

Tim Flower

IT challenges and poor digital work experiences are costing businesses tens of millions of dollars in lost work time and that the problem is much bigger than IT leaders realize, according to The Experience 2020 Report: Digital Employee Experience Today from Nexthink, conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne.

With employees saying that only just over half of workplace technology issues they experience are actually reported to IT, the IT department does not have visibility of the problems that exist in their organizations. For a company with 10,000 employees, this could equate to nearly half a million dollars per week and $25 million per year.

Employees lose an average of 28 minutes every time they have an IT-related problem

The research shows that employees lose an average of 28 minutes every time they have an IT-related problem. The report also shows that IT decision makers believe employees are experiencing approximately two IT issues per week, wasting nearly 50 hours a year. However, as only just over half of IT issues are being reported, the numbers are more likely to be nearly double that — close to 100 hours (two work weeks) a year. This has led to a vicious cycle of employees trying to fix IT problems on their own, leading to less engagement with the IT department, which doesn't have visibility into how the technology is being consumed.

There exists a major disconnect between IT departments and employees, with 84% of employees believing that their organizations should be doing more to improve the digital experience at work. However, a staggering 90% of IT leaders believe that workers are satisfied with technology in the workplace, highlighting the discrepancy between perception and reality of the digital employee experience.

Ironically, innovative IT leaders are exacerbating the problem by introducing new technologies and digital transformation projects without having visibility into the success of these projects. These new technologies negatively impact employees' digital experiences because IT cannot measure how the change is impacting their day-to-day work.

Other takeaways and findings from the research include:

When IT issues go unnoticed, things get worse: 79% of respondents agree that when IT issues are not reported, it always leads to bigger issues.

Digital employee experience is highly important across organizations: 82% view it as "very important" to "critical."

Inability to measure new IT rollouts: On average, IT departments only have approximately 56% visibility into the success of new technology roll outs, 58% visibility into adoption of the roll out, and 45% visibility into the issues impacting employees' experiences.

IT issues at work are commonplace: 61% of respondents agree that IT downtime is an accepted norm in their organizations.

"A significant amount of downtime per employee is a reality for many organizations but IT teams don't have visibility of the poor digital experiences that employees have to put up with," said Jon Cairns, VP of Global Solution Consulting at Nexthink. "Every day, employees settle for small IT glitches, slow boot-up times, patchy internet connectivity, programs crashing, etc., but these problems go unreported, unnoticed and amount to more wasted time than we'd like to admit. Combined, all of this hurts productivity, morale, organizational culture, employee retention and ultimately the top and bottom line for millions of businesses. Add in the fact that so many of us are all working remotely during the current crisis and the problem may be much bigger than the research shows."

Methodology: The research, conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, surveyed 1,000 senior IT decision-makers and 2,000 end users at organizations with at least 1,500 employees across the US (400 IT/800 Users), the UK (200 IT/400 Users), France (200 IT/400 Users), and Germany (200 IT/400 Users), to examine the state of IT challenges in the workplace, uncovering similarities and disparities between the groups.

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A new study by the IBM Institute for Business Value reveals that enterprises are expected to significantly scale AI-enabled workflows, many driven by agentic AI, relying on them for improved decision making and automation. The AI Projects to Profits study revealed that respondents expect AI-enabled workflows to grow from 3% today to 25% by the end of 2025. With 70% of surveyed executives indicating that agentic AI is important to their organization's future, the research suggests that many organizations are actively encouraging experimentation ...

Respondents predict that agentic AI will play an increasingly prominent role in their interactions with technology vendors over the coming years and are positive about the benefits it will bring, according to The Race to an Agentic Future: How Agentic AI Will Transform Customer Experience, a report from Cisco ...

A new wave of tariffs, some exceeding 100%, is sending shockwaves across the technology industry. Enterprises are grappling with sudden, dramatic cost increases that threaten to disrupt carefully planned budgets, sourcing strategies, and deployment plans. For CIOs and CTOs, this isn't just an economic setback; it's a wake-up call. The era of predictable cloud pricing and stable global supply chains is over ...

As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption gains momentum, network readiness is emerging as a critical success factor. AI workloads generate unpredictable bursts of traffic, demanding high-speed connectivity that is low latency and lossless. AI adoption will require upgrades and optimizations in data center networks and wide-area networks (WANs). This is prompting enterprise IT teams to rethink, re-architect, and upgrade their data center and WANs to support AI-driven operations ...

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