Megan Brake

For many EUC and Digital Workplace leaders, the challenge with digital employee experience (DEX) isn’t the technology, it’s building alignment. You can see the data. You know where friction exists. You can quantify disruption, productivity loss, and inefficiencies. But you struggle to achieve your targets, because you need buy in from other teams, and right now, they don’t want to hear anything about DEX.

Security has different priorities. Application owners are focused on releases. Network teams care about performance and uptime. HR is thinking about engagement. Finance is watching costs.

The answer isn’t more dashboards. It’s better communication grounded in empathy, aligned to outcomes, and anchored in shared value.

A common mistake in DEX programs is leading with what the platform can do.

But DEXOps, by design, is not about pushing technology, it’s about improving outcomes across the business through an employee-first, experience-centric approach.

That requires a shift in how conversations begin. Before presenting insights or use cases, take the time to understand:

This is especially critical when engaging non-EUC teams. At early stages of DEX maturity, awareness and engagement beyond EUC are often limited. Listening first builds credibility. It signals that DEX is not another IT initiative, it’s a way to help each team achieve their own goals more effectively.

Ask other teams what they are working on, what pain points they are having.

Show up to your first meeting with a list of things this team needs to fix.

Translate DEX into their language of value

Once you understand a team’s priorities, the next step is translation. DEX data is powerful but only when it’s framed in terms that matter to the stakeholder in front of you.

The most effective DEXOps organizations align conversations to business outcomes, not technical activity. This is the foundation of value storytelling, connecting use cases to measurable impact on cost, risk, productivity, and experience.

With each new team you want to engage with, start by articulating how DEX can help them solve their own challenges. Learn to share the value of DEX in that teams language.

Here’s how that plays out across teams:

Security teams are focused on business risk, compliance, and posture, so your talk track should too. 

Application owners are focused on performance, adoption, and user behavior. But, they are mainly used to using technical signals only. Employee-centric data may be new to this audience, so start with familiar problems and then expand outward. 

Historically, a tricky team to work with for DEX teams, because there can be quite a bit of overlap. It’s especially important to approach this team (and the application teams above) in the spirit of collaboration, not competition. Focus on reliability, performance, and service quality.

Whether you engage with these teams, will depend on your overall strategy. But if gathering employee sentiment data is part of your long- or short-term goal, you will probably need to get these teams on board. Focus on employee engagement, sentiment, and retention.

Overall, different stakeholders require different metrics and narratives. The same initiative can and should be communicated differently depending on the audience. If you try to share the full scale and scope of your project, you might overwhelm your audience or cause them to lose interest. Stay focused on why DEX matters for them.

 Curate your approach to meet the needs and concerns of each business unit.

Try to showcase the full scope of your DEX strategy with each team.

Anchor conversations around shared outcomes

Alignment accelerates when teams rally around a common goal. 

 this is often defined as a most valuable outcome (MVO), a priority that aligns IT efforts with broader business objectives. We often advise new customers to set a single most valuable outcome to guide their project during it’s first phases, but this concept can be extended when it comes to communicating across teams.

It may be helpful to set a most valuable outcome with each team you seek to engage. Examples include:

The key here is not to define this in isolation. Instead, co-create it with stakeholders across functions. This ensures:

When teams see their priorities reflected in the outcome, DEX stops being “an EUC initiative” and becomes a business capability. When they have skin in the game, they are more likely to want to play.

Identify outcomes that both your team and your collaborating team feel invested in.

Impose new outcomes or goals onto this team which don’t align with their mandate.

But setting a most valuable outcome doesn’t guarantee continued collaboration. Delivering on that outcome does. Buy-in doesn’t come from strategy alone, it comes from proof.

DEXOps emphasizes delivering small, high-impact improvements early in the journey to build momentum and demonstrate value.

This “before and after” storytelling is one of the most effective ways to expand engagement across teams.

 Identify and communicate early wins to support continued collaboration.

 Forget to clearly and frequently communicate 

Create structured, ongoing communication loops

Communication is not a one-time activity, it’s an operational discipline. Within DEXOps, communication is a foundational pillar that drives awareness, adoption, and alignment across both IT and the business. If you fail to invest in this pillar, your entire DEXOps project could be at risk. DEXOps is not a single person or single team initiative, it is a new way of thinking that needs to be adopted broadly to be successful.

This creates a cycle of continuous improvement. Over time, this rhythm shifts DEX from isolated initiatives to an embedded, organization-wide capability. And, it positions DEX, as well as your DEXOps approach, as an enabler rather than as an owner of outcomes. Sometimes, the most important thing you can do, is let other teams take credit.

One of the most important mindset shifts is this:

 to create a shared operating model for improving digital experience.

DEXOps provides the visibility, insights, and mechanisms to improve those outcomes, but the project as a whole is only successful if all stakeholders work together.

Communicating the value of DEX is ultimately about relevance. Approach your communication strategy with empathy, understand what your peers are working on, where their pain points and frustrations lie, and help them understand how DEX can help them solve their problems. When you listen first, align to stakeholder priorities, and consistently demonstrate measurable outcomes, conversations change from combative to collaborative.

This is how organizations move from reactive support models to proactive, experience-driven operations, and how DEXOps becomes a strategic capability across the enterprise.

For many EUC and Digital Workplace leaders, the challenge with digital employee experience (DEX) isn’t the technology, it’s building alignment. You can see the data. You know where friction exists. You can quantify disruption, productivity loss, and inefficiencies. But you struggle to achieve your targets, because you need buy in from other teams, and right now, they don’t want to hear anything about DEX.\nSecurity has different priorities. Application owners are focused on releases. Network teams care about performance and uptime. HR is thinking about engagement. Finance is watching costs.\nSo how do you bring them together?\nThe answer isn’t more dashboards. It’s better communication grounded in empathy, aligned to outcomes, and anchored in shared value.\nStart with listening, not positioning\nA common mistake in DEX programs is leading with what the platform can do.\nBut DEXOps, by design, is not about pushing technology, it’s about improving outcomes across the business through an employee-first, experience-centric approach.\nThat requires a shift in how conversations begin. Before presenting insights or use cases, take the time to understand:\nWhat are this team’s top priorities right now? \nWhere are they experiencing friction or risk? \nHow are they measured? \nWhat does success look like for them? \nThis is especially critical when engaging non-EUC teams. At early stages of DEX maturity, awareness and engagement beyond EUC are often limited. Listening first builds credibility. It signals that DEX is not another IT initiative, it’s a way to help each team achieve their own goals more effectively.\nDO: \nAsk other teams what they are working on, what pain points they are having.\nDON’T: \nShow up to your first meeting with a list of things this team needs to fix.\nTranslate DEX into their language of value\nOnce you understand a team’s priorities, the next step is translation. DEX data is powerful but only when it’s framed in terms that matter to the stakeholder in front of you.\nThe most effective DEXOps organizations align conversations to business outcomes, not technical activity. This is the foundation of value storytelling, connecting use cases to measurable impact on cost, risk, productivity, and experience.\nWith each new team you want to engage with, start by articulating how DEX can help them solve their own challenges. Learn to share the value of DEX in that teams language.\nHere’s how that plays out across teams:\nSecurity teams\nSecurity teams are focused on business risk, compliance, and posture, so your talk track should too. \nUse DEX data to identify non-compliant devices or risky configurations \nShow how  proactive remediation improves compliance and reduces exposure \nFrame outcomes as reduced risk and stronger security posture \nApplication owners\nApplication owners are focused on performance, adoption, and user behavior. But, they are mainly used to using technical signals only. Employee-centric data may be new to this audience, so start with familiar problems and then expand outward. \nProvide visibility into application crashes, latency, and usage patterns \nHighlight friction in the user journey and its impact on productivity \nConnect DEX insights to improved adoption and better release outcomes \nNetwork teams\nHistorically, a tricky team to work with for DEX teams, because there can be quite a bit of overlap. It’s especially important to approach this team (and the application teams above) in the spirit of collaboration, not competition. Focus on reliability, performance, and service quality.\nCorrelate endpoint experience with network conditions \nIdentify where issues are truly network-related vs. device or application \nReduce noise and improve root cause clarity \nHR and employee experience teams\nWhether you engage with these teams, will depend on your overall strategy. But if gathering employee sentiment data is part of your long- or short-term goal, you will probably need to get these teams on board. Focus on employee engagement, sentiment, and retention.\nBring employee sentiment and experience data into the conversation \nLink digital friction to employee satisfaction and productivity \nPosition DEX as a continuous feedback loop between employees and IT \nOverall, different stakeholders require different metrics and narratives. The same initiative can and should be communicated differently depending on the audience. If you try to share the full scale and scope of your project, you might overwhelm your audience or cause them to lose interest. Stay focused on why DEX matters for them.\nDO:\n Curate your approach to meet the needs and concerns of each business unit.\nDON’T: \nTry to showcase the full scope of your DEX strategy with each team.\nAnchor conversations around shared outcomes\nAlignment accelerates when teams rally around a common goal. \nIn DEXOps,\n this is often defined as a most valuable outcome (MVO), a priority that aligns IT efforts with broader business objectives. We often advise new customers to set a single most valuable outcome to guide their project during it’s first phases, but this concept can be extended when it comes to communicating across teams.\nIt may be helpful to set a most valuable outcome with each team you seek to engage. Examples include:\nReducing technology disruptions \nImproving employee productivity \nLowering software or hardware costs \nEnforcing compliance standards \nThe key here is not to define this in isolation. Instead, co-create it with stakeholders across functions. This ensures:\nShared ownership \nClear prioritization \nFaster buy-in \nWhen teams see their priorities reflected in the outcome, DEX stops being “an EUC initiative” and becomes a business capability. When they have skin in the game, they are more likely to want to play.\nDO: \nIdentify outcomes that both your team and your collaborating team feel invested in.\nDON’T: \nImpose new outcomes or goals onto this team which don’t align with their mandate.\nBuild trust through early, visible wins\nBut setting a most valuable outcome doesn’t guarantee continued collaboration. Delivering on that outcome does. Buy-in doesn’t come from strategy alone, it comes from proof.\nDEXOps emphasizes delivering small, high-impact improvements early in the journey to build momentum and demonstrate value.\nLook for opportunities to:\nResolve a known, recurring issue proactively \nImprove a high-friction application experience \nReduce ticket volume for a specific team \nOptimize a visible cost driver \nThen communicate the result clearly:\nWhat was the problem? \nWhat changed? \nWhat is the measurable impact? \nThis “before and after” storytelling is one of the most effective ways to expand engagement across teams.\nDO:\n Identify and communicate early wins to support continued collaboration.\nDON’T:\n Forget to clearly and frequently communicate \ntheir \nwins.\nCreate structured, ongoing communication loops\nCommunication is not a one-time activity, it’s an operational discipline. Within DEXOps, communication is a foundational pillar that drives awareness, adoption, and alignment across both IT and the business. If you fail to invest in this pillar, your entire DEXOps project could be at risk. DEXOps is not a single person or single team initiative, it is a new way of thinking that needs to be adopted broadly to be successful.\nEffective programs establish:\nRegular cross-functional forums to review priorities and progress \n\nClear roles\n (e.g., DEX Director, Leads, Sentiment Analysts) to coordinate communication and feedback \nConsistent channels such as dashboards, internal communications, and campaigns \nFeedback loops to capture employee sentiment and iterate \nThis creates a cycle of continuous improvement. Over time, this rhythm shifts DEX from isolated initiatives to an embedded, organization-wide capability. And, it positions DEX, as well as your DEXOps approach, as an enabler rather than as an owner of outcomes. Sometimes, the most important thing you can do, is let other teams take credit.\nOne of the most important mindset shifts is this:\nDEX is not something EUC delivers to the business.\nIt’s something the business and IT achieve together.\nDEXOps brings together \npeople, process, technology, communication, and value\n to create a shared operating model for improving digital experience.\nThat means:\nSecurity owns security outcomes \nApplication teams own application performance \nHR owns employee engagement \nDEXOps provides the visibility, insights, and mechanisms to improve those outcomes, but the project as a whole is only successful if all stakeholders work together.\nFrom alignment to momentum\nCommunicating the value of DEX is ultimately about relevance. Approach your communication strategy with empathy, understand what your peers are working on, where their pain points and frustrations lie, and help them understand how DEX can help them solve their problems. When you listen first, align to stakeholder priorities, and consistently demonstrate measurable outcomes, conversations change from combative to collaborative.\nThis is how organizations move from reactive support models to proactive, experience-driven operations, and how DEXOps becomes a strategic capability across the enterprise.\n\n


How to Communicate the Value of DEX Across Your Organization