Digital employee experience management firm Nexthink, has released research showing that as businesses grapple with falling employee productivity and staff overwhelmed by the growing complexity of the digital workplace, IT leaders believe merging departments could help turn the tide.

The report, titled The Experience Silo: The Future of HR and IT, which surveyed 1,100 IT leaders, finds that 93% believe bringing IT and HR together would increase productivity, boost employee satisfaction and drive engagement, with 64% predicting a complete merger will happen within five years.

A further 31% stop short of a full merger but expect far closer collaboration to drive digital transformation and improve employee experience.

Such a merger is expected to deliver a range of significant benefits, including fewer delays and more successful outcomes in digital transformation projects, with 85% and 94% of respondents highlighting these improvements respectively.

According to the report, it would also support faster employee adoption of new digital tools (97%), streamline onboarding processes for new hires (95%), and enhance overall employee productivity, engagement, retention, and satisfaction (93%).

The findings come against the backdrop of significant challenges.

Productivity remains sluggish and employee engagement continues to fall, costing the global economy an estimated $430 billion in lost productivity. And the situation is set to get worse, with employees struggling to adapt to rising workplace complexity and tech sprawl, the average number of applications workers use is 11, compared to six applications in 2019 and IT leaders say the number of applications in their environment is set to rise by an average of 43% over the next three years.

“Virtually every business is facing this crisis of falling engagement and sluggish productivity, although some more than others,” said Vedant Sampath, CTO, Nexthink.

“This shows that businesses are considering radical changes in response. This isn’t just about smoother onboarding or faster tech support; it’s about fundamentally reimagining the workspace in a way that allows employees to bring their best selves and produce their best work.”

Bringing together the two departments could be a complex process and respondents identified a number of issues which could cause problems, including a lack of clear ownership over new and existing responsibilities (58%), poor communication between HR and IT teams (50%), and differing priorities between the two departments (49%).

However, despite these concerns, more than half (52%) said that their organisation was ‘very ready’ to start the process in order to improve their digital transformation efforts.

Interestingly, a plurality (40%) say that this new merged department shouldn’t be led by a CIO or chief people officer, but a new role such as chief experience officer (CXO).

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The new department will likely have a much broader remit than either traditional HR or IT, including but not limited to; measuring and improving the digital employee experience (62%), ownership of all workplace technology & collaboration tools, including automation & AI (69%), employee digital training (61%), and insight over all workforce analytics such as productivity scores (51%).

“We’re moving towards a future where the employee experience is going to be just as important as the customer experience,” added Sampath.

“Whether HR and IT merge or not, it’s essential that businesses invest in giving their workers great experiences. Nobody is able to be properly productive if they’re constantly battling delays, poorly functioning tools, and disjointed processes.

“The businesses that address these frustrations and properly marry people and technology will be the ones that attract top talent, reduce friction, and build high-performing, adaptive teams.”

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