Key Takeaways
Every tool your employees touch (from HR portals and chat apps to dashboards and daily workflows) shapes how they experience their jobs. And as the workplace goes increasingly digital, that experience is no longer limited to office culture or manager check-ins. It’s embedded in software, screens, and systems.
In this environment, internal communication depends on what employees actually see. It’s no surprise that 81% of organizations now have a formal communication strategy, and 66% say they play an active role in internal comms, a sign of how essential digital clarity has become.
That shift has sparked a new priority: digital employee experience (DEX). It’s not just about providing tools but ensuring they’re intuitive, connected, and built to support how people work.
When systems are clunky or buried behind too many logins, they slow teams down and quietly erode engagement. But when DEX works, it becomes a force multiplier — boosting engagement, productivity, and alignment across hybrid and distributed teams.
In this guide, we’ll explore what DEX really means, why it matters now, and how to design an experience that helps every employee thrive.
The main components of the digital employee experience
To design an effective digital employee experience, it’s critical to understand its core building blocks. These components work together to shape how employees interact with technology, access information, and stay connected across your organization.
Why digital employee experience matters more than ever
The way we work has changed. What used to happen in face-to-face conversations, shared offices, and team huddles now happens across dozens of apps, tabs, and tools. More often than not, asynchronously and across time zones.
In this new environment, the digital layer has become the workplace. And that means the quality of the digital employee experience now directly affects how well people work, connect, and perform.
That clarity and ease directly strengthen employee engagement, helping teams stay motivated and connected to the work that matters most.
A strong digital employee experience also:
- Supports hybrid and remote work by making information accessible across locations
- Improves onboarding and retention by reducing friction early on
- Increases tool adoption by reducing digital fatigue and cognitive load
- Enhances productivity and alignment by making performance and goals visible
- Enables faster decision-making with clear, timely communication
- Boosts engagement by making updates visible (53% of employees feel more engaged when messages appear on digital screens).
As companies continue to invest in digital transformation, many are realizing that infrastructure alone isn’t enough. It’s the experience layer (the way digital tools show up in daily work) that determines whether those investments succeed or stall.
What a great digital employee experience looks like
If you’ve ever worked in an environment where systems just “flow” (meaning that tools feel seamless, updates are easy to access, and teams stay aligned without constant reminders), you’ve experienced strong digital employee experience firsthand.
So what separates a high-performing DEX from a suboptimal one?
Here’s what the best setups have in common:
Employees don’t have to jump through hoops to find what they need. Everything from HR systems to project tools is centralized, fast, and secure. With minimal logins and zero guesswork.
Onsite or remote, employees stay aligned on key updates and goals. And with office digital signage, real-time reminders and priorities stay visible, not lost in tabs or Slack.
Tech has to support the way people work, not fight against it. Forms, approvals, dashboards, and internal requests feel effortless and fast, not like a digital maze.
Interfaces and communications adapt to individual roles. A marketer sees different dashboards than a shift manager. A new hire gets onboarding prompts that a senior leader doesn’t need.
Key metrics, milestones, and employee recognition are surfaced where people see them, not buried in monthly reviews or forgotten dashboards.
This last piece of the puzzle is often overlooked. But visibility plays a critical role in helping employees stay connected to what matters. It’s one of the reasons digital signage is increasingly being used to reinforce DEX in physical spaces, especially for hybrid and frontline teams.
If you’re ready to make goals, updates, and wins impossible to miss, it might be time to explore what digital signage can do for your teams.
Common challenges in digital employee experience
Obviously, most organizations don’t set out to create a frustrating digital experience. It just happens slowly, as systems grow and teams scale. Before long, the digital workplace starts to feel scattered, and as a result, the employee experience suffers.
Here are some of the most common barriers to great digital employee experience:
| DEX Challenges |
|---|
| Too many tools, not enough clarity The average employee uses over a dozen apps daily. When systems don’t integrate well, or when there’s no clear source of truth, people waste time switching between platforms just to stay up to date. |
| Communication that doesn’t reach everyone Not all employees check Slack. Not everyone reads email. Remote workers, frontline staff, and shift-based teams are often the last to hear about updates, if they hear about them at all. In fact, 8% say they still don’t receive updates clearly or on time, citing confusing messages, slow delivery, or simply not knowing where to look. |
| One-size-fits-all experiences When every employee sees the same dashboards, announcements, or workflows, the result is generic and easy to ignore. Relevance matters — and without it, adoption drops. |
| Limited visibility into goals and performance If people don’t know how their team is tracking — or what progress looks like — engagement suffers. Performance loses context. And recognition opportunities disappear. |
| Disconnect between HR, IT, and Comms DEX lives at the intersection of people, tools, and messaging. But when these functions operate in silos, the experience feels disjointed — even if each department is doing its job well. |
And these issues aren’t isolated. According to Yodeck’s internal communication trends report, lack of engagement is the top challenge for 56% of organizations, followed by technical problems (44%), limited reach (42%), and high costs (39%). These barriers don’t just create momentary friction; they compound over time.
The good news? Many of these challenges can be solved without a full tech overhaul. Even small improvements in visibility and simplicity can dramatically elevate the digital employee experience.
Where digital signage fits in a DEX strategy
Most DEX strategies focus on systems you log into: intranets, apps, portals, and dashboards. But what about the moments when employees aren’t in a tool or aren’t even at a desk?
This is exactly where digital signage adds unique value. It acts as a passive, ambient communication channel that surfaces key content without requiring any clicks, logins, or reminders.
Whether it’s a monitor in a break room, a screen in a shared workspace, a conference room display, or a warehouse screen, digital signage brings information into the physical flow of work.
Here are a few examples of how organizations use digital signage to support their digital employee experience:
- Team schedules, events, and upcoming milestones on digital calendar displays
- Onboarding messages for new hires on their first day
- Recognition screens that highlight team wins and milestones
- Goal-tracking TV dashboards that update in real time
- Digital sales boards that visualize performance, targets, and daily wins
- HR and IT updates that reach frontline and shift-based teams
- Company news, KPIs, and operational updates on digital information boards
- Cross-location messaging that keeps every office or site aligned
- Urgent alerts and time-sensitive updates on digital notice boards
By making updates and metrics visible at a glance, signage reduces noise and increases clarity, without adding more meetings or messages to check.
It’s also an easy win. Solutions like Yodeck let you connect content to screens in minutes, schedule updates remotely, and pull data directly from the tools you already use.
How to improve your digital employee experience
Improving your digital employee experience doesn’t necessarily mean rolling out new platforms or investing in expensive overhauls. In many cases, it starts with rethinking how people interact with the tools you already have and how visible and usable those tools are.
Here’s a simple DEX framework to guide your approach:
1. Start with the employee journey
Map out how different roles experience work digitally. Where are the friction points? What updates get missed? Where is tool fatigue highest? Focus on real workflows, not just licenses or feature sets.
2. Audit your visibility gaps
Are key metrics and messages buried in tools no one checks? Are some teams disconnected because they don’t use Slack or email regularly? Identify where your communications break down, especially for remote, frontline, or shift-based staff.
💡 Your employees may already be telling you. Based on our internal communication statistics, 64% of respondents say digital screens help them stay informed, yet most workplaces underutilize them. Pairing your digital tools with highly visible screens can close the gap between ‘sent’ and ‘seen.
3. Simplify and personalize
Reduce noise by making tools feel relevant. Centralize key updates and tailor dashboards or signage screens to each team. A digital calendar display keeps schedules and deadlines visible at a glance. Use digital signage to surface what matters without adding more inbox clutter.
4. Measure adoption, not just uptime
Use DEX-specific metrics like tool engagement, self-service usage, sentiment, and time-to-information. Pair IT performance data with qualitative feedback from employees.
5. Collaborate across functions
The best DEX strategies aren’t owned by HR, Comms, or IT alone — they’re co-owned. Establish a cross-functional team to align messaging, evaluate tools, and champion visibility as part of the employee experience.
Real-world DEX: How Swissport uses digital signage to reach deskless employees
Swissport, the world’s largest provider of ground and cargo handling services, operates in nearly 300 airports with a global workforce of over 60,000. Ensuring critical information reaches every employee (especially cargo handlers and other deskless employees who can’t access mobile devices on the job) is a major internal communication challenge.
To solve this, Swissport implemented Yodeck’s digital signage platform across its operations. Each location manages its own screens through Yodeck workspaces, allowing teams to tailor content while maintaining consistency.
From safety alerts and operational updates to key announcements, templates and playlists ensure that the right messages reach the right people at the right time.
By integrating digital signage into their communication strategy, Swissport improved visibility, strengthened alignment, and ensured that even their most hard-to-reach teams stay informed.
Final thoughts: DEX starts with visibility
The more digital the workplace becomes, the more important it is to make sure employees don’t just have access to tools but that they actually see the information that matters.
In fact, you don’t need more tools to improve the digital employee experience. You need more visibility.
In a world of scattered systems and screen fatigue, making key updates, goals, and recognition visible in the flow of work is what brings DEX to life.
Digital signage helps you do exactly that: reach every team, across every space, without adding noise.
Want to explore how digital signage fits into your digital workplace? Try Yodeck out and set up your first digital sign in just a few minutes, completely for free!