Gartner Says Everyday AI and Digital Employee Experience Are Two Years Away from Mainstream Adoption

Everyday AI & Digital Employee Experience Have a Mutual Relationship and Are the Nearest-Term Transformative Innovations

Everyday AI and digital employee experience (DEX) are projected to reach mainstream adoption in less than two years according to the Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace Applications, 2024.

“Everyday AI promises to remove digital friction, by helping employees write, research, collaborate and ideate,” said Matt Cain, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “It is a core part of DEX, which is a concentrated effort to remove digital friction and improve workforce digital dexterity, which itself is one of the key factors that will drive organizational prosperity through 2030.”

2024 has been a critical year for digital workplace application leaders, as the focus on hybrid and remote work dwindles and the need for a strategic concentration on everyday AI rises. Everyday AI is placed on the Peak of Inflated Expectations on the Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace Applications, 2024 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace Applications, 2024

Source: Gartner (August 2024)

Everyday AI Is Crucial to Enhance Workforce Productivity
“Everyday AI technology aims to help employees deliver work with speed, comprehensiveness and confidence,” said Adam Preset, VP Analyst at Gartner. “It supports a new way of working, where intelligent software is acting as more of a collaborator than a tool. The digital workplace is now entering the era of everyday AI.”

As technology vendors seek ways to improve productivity among workers that go beyond traditional application and feature enhancements, they can look towards everyday AI. This technology not only delivers productivity benefits, but also provides new marketable offerings such as tools to help workers find and synthesize relevant information, answer questions more comprehensively and produce work artifacts more easily.

“Everyday AI will become more sophisticated, moving from services that, for example, can sort and summarize chats and email messages to services that can write a report with minimal guidance,” said Preset. “In many ways, everyday AI is the future of workforce productivity.”

Increased Emphasis on Organizations to Have a DEX Strategy
Nearly all employees are becoming digital employees as they spend more time working with technology than ever before. Because of this, organizations must have a strategy to measure and improve DEX to attract and retain talent to improve employee engagement and maximize discretionary effort and intent-to-stay.

Business leaders are looking for guidance on how technology can help boost productivity and organizational alignment. DEX emphasizes best practices that boost digital dexterity, attract and retain talent, and help employees deliver against business outcomes.

DEX is in the Trough of Disillusionment on the Hype Cycle, meaning that interest is waning as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. To increase the appeal and relevance around DEX, business leaders should take a holistic approach across IT and non-IT partners to build a meaningful environment that empowers employees to adopt new ways of working.