How to Measure Digital Employee Experience (DEX)

Why DEX Matters, and Why Measuring DEX is Important 

In today’s workplace, digital technology isn’t just a tool – it’s the backbone of productivity. Every app, system, and device an employee interacts with shapes how efficiently they can do their job. A positive digital experience directly translates into higher employee productivity, enabling teams to focus on meaningful work instead of battling slow systems, glitches, or unintuitive processes.  

Yet many organizations still rely on traditional IT metrics focused on infrastructure health, often missing the bigger picture. These methods often overlook the real-time experiences and sentiments of employees, leading to a disconnect between IT performance and user satisfaction.  

Poor DEX doesn’t just frustrate employees; it can lead to burnout, reduced productivity, and higher turnover rates. Research shows that organizations with compelling workforce experiences see 22% higher employee engagement, and their employees are four times more likely to stay compared to those with less compelling experiences. When employees struggle with their tech, the impact extends far beyond IT, affecting HR, operations, and overall business performance. 

As Gartner predicts, “By 2025, 70% of digital business initiatives will require I&O leaders to report on the business metrics from digital experience, up from less than 15% today. 

That’s why knowing how to measure digital employee experience with the right metrics and tools is essential. It gives leaders a true picture of how digital experiences shape day-to-day work and where improvements can drive the biggest impact. 

Traditional IT KPIs and metrics 

It’s no longer enough for IT to rely on metrics that show system performance without reflecting the human experience behind it.

Modern IT measurement needs to include broader KPIs that capture how employees interact with their technology and the impact it has on their work. Examples include: 

• Employee engagement data – collecting insights from surveys or engagement campaigns helps understand how employees feel about their tools – highlighting pain points, adoption barriers, and opportunities for improvement.
• Adoption data – measuring whether employees use the tools they are provided and identifying areas of low adoption can expose hidden friction. Understanding why tools are underused allows organizations to take targeted action to improve both effectiveness and satisfaction. 

When IT leaders gain a complete view of the digital employee experience – one that connects technical health with adoption, engagement, and sentiment, they move from simply managing systems to truly empowering people. This holistic approach allows IT to best prioritize objectives according to what will have the greatest impact on employee performance. By measuring what truly matters, IT becomes a strategic driver of productivity, engagement, and long-term business success.

From IT Metrics to Experience Metrics: The DEX Score 

The traditional metrics discussed above have long been the standard for measuring IT performance. While important, they focus more solely on the technology rather than the people using it. This creates an experience gap: these metrics show how systems perform, but not how employees feel or how efficiently they can work. 

In 2025, measuring digital employee experience requires blending technical performance data with human sentiment. This is where the DEX Score comes in. 

What is the DEX Score?

Definition: The DEX Score is the central metric used to quantify the employee’s digital experience across devices, applications, network connectivity, and sentiment. 

The DEX score combines Technology and Sentiment scores to represent both the performance of IT systems and the productivity and satisfaction of employees. It provides a simple, actionable way to monitor the real digital experience of employees and to identify opportunities for improvement.  

Unlike traditional metrics, a DEX Score is primarily focused on employees, not just their devices, allowing IT teams to manage experience holistically. Shifting focus from purely technical SLAs to Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) ensures IT is measured on the outcomes that matter to employees and the business. With a DEX Score, experience becomes the new KPI for IT. 

Benefits: 

• Continuous monitoring: With a single score updated daily, IT can understand, compare, and continuously improve the digital experience in the short term and strategically plan for long-term investment and improvement. 
• Actionable insights: By integrating both performance and sentiment data, DEX Scores highlight where investments or interventions will have the greatest impact on productivity, engagement, and retention, helping teams to prioritize objectives according to greatest impact. 

With a DEX tool like Nexthink, organizations can see both sides of the experience equation to transform IT from a reactive, device-focused function into a proactive driver of employee productivity and organizational performance. 

Building a Framework for Measuring DEX

Aim to give practical steps for IT leaders.  

1. Define the right metrics – go beyond traditional metrics to MTTR and ROI. True DEX measurement should consider for employee productivity, satisfaction, adoption and ease of use of digital tools. These metrics provide a fuller picture of whether technology is truly enabling employees to do their best work.  
2. Capture both perspectives – data alone can’t tell the full story. Combine telemetry and performance metrics with real-time employee sentiment to understand both the technical and human side of digital experience. 
3. Benchmark & contextualize – establish a baseline measurement for digital employee experience but make sure this accounts for different teams, departments, and geographies. Context is critical, what could be acceptable in one role or location may be unacceptable in another. Benchmarking allows IT leaders to compare against the performance at other enterprises by industry, size and location.  
4. Prioritize high-impact areas and set clear goals – focus on the applications, devices and workflows that cause the most digital friction. By identifying critical pain points, IT can make improvements where they deliver the greatest business value. Set clear goals for each area – for example improving the DEX score by a specific amount for key applications or workflows to ensure that progress is measurable.  
5. Close the feedback loop – collecting the data to make improvements is not enough, IT should act on the insights and communicate improvements back to employees. Closing the loop builds trust and reinforces that their digital experiences are a priority.  
6. Showcase value to the business – translate improvements in digital experiences into business outcomes that leadership understand. For example, if IT identifies a key collaboration tool is causing delays and frustrations, resolving the problem could reduce project turnaround times by X amount. Framing DEX in business terms ensures IT secures the investment to drive lasting change.  

Best Practices for Measuring DEX 

Effectively measuring DEX requires both a structured approach and continuous focus. The following best practices align closely with a robust DEX framework, helping organizations gain actionable insights and drive meaningful improvements. 

• Segment data – employees may have very different experiences depending on the context, for example, the department, location, or the technology they use. Segmenting your data helps uncover specific pain points and allows for more targeted solutions. 
• Automate monitoring where possible – use automated tools to continuously measure the digital employee experience, capturing real-time data on system performance, application usage, and user interactions. Automation ensures consistent, accurate measurement, enabling IT teams to identify trends, detect issues early, and track improvements over time. 
• Communicate progress and share insights cross-functionally – DEX affects the whole business, not just IT, so communicate it widely. Share insights across teams to help everyone understand how digital experiences impact productivity and engagement and encourage collaborative problem-solving. 
• Treat DEX as a continuous improvement process – measuring DEX is not a one-time activity. Employee experiences evolve as technology, workflows, and business needs change. Continuously assess, learn, and refine your approach to ensure that digital tools are consistently supporting employees. 

By following these steps, IT leaders can build a repeatable, scalable approach for measuring digital employee experience across the organization.

The Campbell’s Company Serves Up Better Employee Experiences with the DEX Score

At Nexthink Experience Boston, Campbell’s shared how they’re transforming their digital workplace by using the DEX Score to rethink their overall digital workplace strategy.

Inspired by Gartner’s insight that DEX tools can optimize refresh cycles, Campbell’s decided to test that theory with Nexthink. By mapping DEX Scores by device age, they confirmed that performance typically declines over time - but in many cases, older machines still maintained high DEX Scores, proving that device age alone isn’t a reliable measure of user experience.

This discovery led to a more intelligent refresh strategy. Instead of a fixed four-year cycle, devices are now replaced only when their warranty expires, and their DEX Score falls below 70. Campbell’s continuously tracks these scores each month, using the data to guide refresh decisions and demonstrate the business value of experience management.

The result is a smarter, experience-led IT strategy that enhances employee satisfaction, maximizes resources, and unlocks potential savings of roughly $300K annually.

Measuring and Continuously Improving DEX with Nexthink 

As Gartner warns, “Through 2028, IT executives will replace more than half of the end-user services leaders who fail to measurably improve the digital employee experience.” This highlights a critical truth: organizations that don’t actively measure and optimize DEX risk falling behind, both in terms of the productivity of the business and the satisfaction of the employees.  

Gaining this level of insight requires tools that can see the full digital experience of every employee. Nexthink empowers IT teams to proactively detect, diagnose, and resolve issues before they impact productivity, while AI-driven insights help uncover patterns, identify friction points, and measure the true impact of IT on employee experience. 

In short, you cannot improve what you cannot see. Nexthink equips organizations with the tools to not only measure digital employee experience but to continuously enhance it, ensuring that every employee can work efficiently in an ever-evolving digital environment.  

Ready to improve the digital employee experience of your employees? Learn how Nexthink can help your organization measure, monitor, and improve DEX today.