Invest in a people-centric digital work environment
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The way we work has changed dramatically in recent years. The transition to hybrid working and the adoption of the cloud have significantly increased the complexity of the digital work environment. In the past, all servers, data, and applications were located in a single physical location, usually in the company’s own data center at the office. Now, the IT infrastructure is a mixture of the company's own data center and various cloud platforms, employees often use company and private devices interchangeably, and data is exchanged between numerous cloud applications. In addition, AI is on the verge of large-scale adoption. This is increasing the pressure on organizations to be more productive, secure, and sustainable. The Future of Work 2025 survey by Motivaction and KPN among IT, change, and HR professionals across six sectors shows that sixty percent of organizations are now actively working to optimize their digital work environment. At the same time, it is clear that there still too often is an imbalance: companies invest either more in technology or more in people. While IT professionals focus primarily on technological innovation, security, managing complexity, and reducing costs, HR professionals emphasize the well-being and development of employees, while the organization’s management focuses on increasing productivity.
Concerns about AI
The Future of Work survey shows that the main concerns in the digital work environment relate to AI and cybersecurity. AI is widely used in all sectors for automation, data analysis, and innovation. At the same time, sixty-four percent of professionals believe that AI without clear ethical frameworks poses more risks than benefits. To address this concern, IT's reflex is often to put on the brakes and act as a traffic light: this is allowed and this is not. This restrictive attitude can be at odds with employee well-being. For example, excessive security measures, such as frequent and annoying authentication pop-ups, lead to frustration and lower productivity. This approach also poses a direct risk of ‘shadow IT’. For example, when an organization prohibits tools such as ChatGPT without offering secure, equivalent alternatives, employees will independently seek solutions outside the authorized infrastructure. This undermines the very security that IT is trying to ensure.
Do not slow down, enable
Of course, the implementation of AI requires great care. The core of a digital working environment is trust: in employees, customers, citizens, or patients. That is why it is important to thoroughly analyze the risks in advance. It is also wise not to deploy AI full-blown right away, but to experiment with it on a small scale first, especially since many organizations do not yet have a sufficiently robust digital foundation. While the impact of AI is often overestimated in the short term, it will radically change the working environment in the long run.
The discussion should focus on the opportunities offered by AI as a driver of innovation and process optimization, rather than on the risks of certain tools and the resulting ban on them. Security should instead function as a strategic enabler, comparable to guardrails or roundabouts, that enables the organization to operate safely and agilely within clear, predefined frameworks, without unnecessarily slowing down business operations. At KPN, for example, we have KPN-GPT, which allows everyone to experiment in our own environment without worrying about what happens to the data. Many organizations do not provide their employees with enough of these controlled alternatives. If you want to facilitate ease of work and job satisfaction without compromising on security or other preconditions that are important to IT, you will have to learn from each other. To bring together the needs of the business and the technological possibilities, joint innovation labs can be set up, for example. Within such labs, IT can become a source of inspiration by discussing not the technology itself, but its potential value for the business: what bottlenecks can be solved? How have other, similar organizations successfully deployed technology?
Mapping the Employee Journey
Optimizing the digital work environment must go beyond simply investing in tools or processes. The experiences, skills, and well-being of employees are just as crucial to success. No less than eighty-five percent of professionals in the Future of Work survey believe that employees should receive more support in developing digital skills. Although large companies are leading the way in training and coaching, more is needed to prevent ‘digital stress’.
Technology adoption is still too often seen as a project, when in fact it has become an ongoing process of ensuring that employees are still able to do the things they want to do. Suppliers such as Microsoft are constantly releasing updates. This continuous stream of changes – what is that new button in Teams for? – distracts employees from their primary processes. Many organizations do not have a good answer yet for how they can continue to support their employees in this regard.
Of our customers we know when they visit our website, what they are searching for, when they place an order, and how satisfied they are with the way their complaints are handled. Just as companies map out the customer journey, HR and IT should work together to identify and resolve problems employees are experiencing more quickly through regular feedback sessions and data analysis, among other things. What does a working day look like? Which systems does someone use? How does it work and where does it not work? How satisfied are people with the support they receive? Ultimately, it is about the experience of the way of working. IT can facilitate this with tools (Digital Employee Experience, or DEX) to measure the experience, but interpretation of the data improves when done together.
No one size fits all
If the work environment does not adequately reflect the way people want to work, their job satisfaction decreases. The digital workplace in particular is still too often a one size fits all solution. Everyone receives the same set of tools and rules, regardless of role, working style, or location: at home, at the office, at the customer’s site…
The trick is to recognize different work scenarios and tailor the right support and technology accordingly. There is simply no universal solution; differentiation is crucial. The challenges when it comes to the adoption of innovations vary not only by role, but also by sector. The Future of Work study shows that, in health- and social care, the digital workplace primarily guarantees the quality of care and relieves the burden on staff, which means that ease of use and training are paramount. In the public sector, the focus is on maintaining operational continuity, and the need for modernization is driven by the risk of disruption from outdated IT and the challenge of attracting and retaining sufficient staff. The focus here is more on creating an attractive, modern working environment within tight IT budgets.
Attractive to Talent
The future of work demands that ‘people’ and ‘technology’ work more closely together and that more emphasis is placed on digital skills. Organizations that succeed in restoring the balance between people and technology have a head start in retaining talent, increasing productivity, and boosting their innovation capacity in a persistently tight labor market. Companies that invest in a people-oriented digital working environment in the coming years will be more attractive to talent, more agile, and more innovative. Talent, on the other hand, will leave companies where they are unable to make progress and where they become frustrated with either the physical or digital workplace. In an increasingly fast-changing market, these companies run the risk of falling behind.
Essay by Jurgen de Jong, VP Cloud & Productivity at KPN. Published in Management Scope 01 2026.