What is digital friction and how can it negatively impact your business?

Even if you're unfamiliar with the term “digital friction,” you’ve likely experienced it. Gartner defines digital friction as any unnecessary effort an employee must exert to use data or technology to complete a task. It can appear as slow or crashing applications that disrupt your workflow. Or it could be the hassle of juggling incompatible digital tools. Or it could be too many alerts or notifications causing “digital noise” and distracting you from your deep work.

This frustration extends beyond employees, impacting businesses on multiple levels. Let’s take a closer look at some of these effects.

Technological impacts

While annoying for end users, digital friction can also signal issues on the backend. Business systems that are not well integrated can result in data silos and the loss of or failure to transmit critical information. This can increase security risks and the likelihood of errors.

Employees often turn to unsanctioned apps or personal devices—known as “shadow IT”—to bypass poor digital tools. This increases security risks and jeopardizes intellectual property. In fact, in our “State of Digital Workspace 2026” report, data showed that employees adopting AI apps on enterprise-managed devices are often using unsanctioned apps, which fall outside of IT’s ability to monitor, support, and quickly address should issues surface.

Operational impacts

The use of the term “friction”—of two things working against each other—automatically connotes a waste of energy and resources, and the frustration of not being able to make progress. When business tools don’t work, often employees can’t work. In a CIO report sponsored by OpenText “Digital Friction Holds Back Today’s Businesses,” employees report decreased efficiency as the top impact of digital friction. And as small delays snowball, you might start seeing missed deadlines, compressed workflows, and carefully designed plans thrown out of whack.

Financial impacts

If time is money, then this loss of employee productivity inevitably impacts a company’s bottom line. According to the CIO-OpenText report, 40% of employees reported lower satisfaction due to digital friction. Poor employee morale can create charged working environments, where it becomes increasingly difficult to collaborate and complete projects—affecting business outcomes. It can also increase employee churn, eroding the knowledge and skills cultivated within a workforce that can take months or even years to replace.

Poor employee experience can also bleed into poor experiences for customers, especially in service industries where employee experience is customer experience. This is key within the retail industry, where the right technology should be easy to use, up-to-date, and seamlessly support mobility for staff, thus enabling staff to focus on providing the best experience possible for customers.

Learn more about preventing digital friction

Digital friction affects employees, operations, and customer experiences, ultimately impacting your bottom line. Addressing it is not just an operational necessity but a business imperative. 

Want to eliminate digital friction in your organization? View our guide, “Eliminate digital friction,” where we discuss the capabilities of digital employee experience (DEX) tools, including the features to look out for, what they do, and how they can improve experiences for employees within your organization.