Only 20% of U.S. employees have a good digital workplace experience, according to the 2026 State of the Digital Workplace report from Unily and Gallup, released November 11, 2026. The survey of 2,305 U.S. workers found that employees with a good experience are 3.1 times as likely to be engaged and report far less burnout. Companies have built the tools, but not yet the experience around them.
Last updated: November 12, 2026
What are the key findings at a glance?
The Unily and Gallup report finds that 20% of U.S. employees have a good digital workplace experience, and that the gap shows up in engagement, burnout, and trust in AI. The headline numbers give communications leaders a clear place to start.
- 20% of U.S. employees have both strong Digital Enablement and strong Digital Culture.
- Employees with a good experience report 46% engagement, compared with 15% for those with a poor one.
- Burnout is 11% among employees with a good experience and 38% among those with a poor one.
- Tool switching climbs from 33% to 78% as workplace information spreads across more locations.
- 72% of employees have not taken part in employer-provided AI training in the past six months.
Methodology at a glance
Unily and Gallup surveyed 2,305 U.S. workers aged 18 and older from July 6 to 10, 2026, drawing respondents from the Gallup Panel. The maximum margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, and margins are higher for subgroups. The survey is cross-sectional, so the results describe associations rather than causes.
In this article:
- What Unily and Gallup measured
- Who is Unily
- How experience changes engagement and burnout
- Why digital culture counts as much as tools
- How scattered information drives tool switching
- What this means for AI readiness
- What communications leaders can do
- The limits of the findings
- Frequently asked questions
What did Unily and Gallup measure?
The 2026 State of the Digital Workplace report measures digital workplace experience, abbreviated DWX, through two pillars that both have to be strong. Digital Enablement asks whether employees can find, use, and rely on the tools and information their jobs require. Digital Culture asks whether those same systems help people feel connected, informed, and able to grow.
An employee counts as having a good digital workplace experience only when both pillars score well, which is why the headline figure is 20%. Taken separately, 49% of employees have good Digital Enablement and 34% have good Digital Culture, while 36% have neither.
That split is the most useful detail in the report for communications teams. About half of employees say the tools work, but only about a third say the tools help them feel part of the organization. The tools are in place. The sense of connection that internal communications is built to create is the part still missing.
Who is Unily, the company behind the research?
Unily is an employee experience platform company that describes itself as AI-native, offering an employee app, an employee intranet, and internal communications tools for large global enterprises. The company says its platform connects people, content, and tools across desk-based and frontline teams. More detail on the product is available on Unily's employee experience platform site.
According to Unily, organizations including Shell, CVS Health, and American Airlines use the platform, and the company has been recognized as a Leader by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC. Gallup, the analytics and advice firm, is the research partner on this report, and the survey respondents came from the Gallup Panel.
Lokdeep Singh is the CEO of Unily and is quoted in the release. His central argument is that access to more technology has not by itself created a better experience of work, a point the data in this report is designed to test.
How does digital workplace experience change engagement and burnout?
Employees with a good digital workplace experience report 46% engagement, compared with 15% for employees with a poor one, according to the Unily and Gallup report. The differences carry across the other outcomes the study tracked.
| Outcome | Good DWX | Poor DWX |
|---|
| Engaged at work | 46% | 15% |
| Frequently burned out | 11% | 38% |
| Willing to recommend their employer | 44% | 8% |
| Trust AI information (among AI users) | 47% | 26% |
Put another way, employees with a good experience are 3.1 times as likely to be engaged and 5.5 times as likely to strongly recommend their employer. Those are the outcomes that human resources, finance, and communications leaders already track, which gives the digital workplace a place in workforce performance conversations rather than only in IT planning.
Digital culture is linked to higher engagement than digital enablement in the Unily and Gallup data. Employees with good Digital Culture but weak Digital Enablement are more than twice as likely to be engaged as employees with the reverse profile, at 38% versus 17%.
The same pattern holds for burnout. Frequent burnout is reported by 21% of employees with strong culture and weak enablement, compared with 29% of employees with strong enablement and weak culture.
The finding is encouraging for communications teams because culture is the part of the digital workplace they shape most directly. Clear announcements, visible leadership updates, recognition, and a sense of what colleagues are working on all sit in the Digital Culture pillar. The report's reading is that removing friction from workflows matters, and that connection and belonging are what turn a working system into an engaging one.
Tool switching rises sharply as workplace information spreads across more locations. Among employees who say workplace information lives in a single location, 33% frequently switch between tools to finish their work, according to the report.
| Where information lives | Employees who frequently switch tools |
|---|
| One location | 33% |
| A few locations | 62% |
| Many locations | 78% |
Company size makes the pattern harder to manage. Good digital workplace experience falls from 22% of employees at organizations with fewer than 500 people to 15% at organizations with 10,000 or more. The report describes a complexity trap in which friction, information trust, and communication overload all worsen as headcount and geographic spread grow.
For large employers, the practical reading is that every additional place an announcement, policy, or form can live makes it harder for an employee to know which version is current. Internal communications teams that consolidate where official information lives address the first number in the table directly.
What does this mean for AI readiness at work?
Digital workplace experience is linked to how much employees trust the information AI tools give them. Among AI users, 47% of those with a good experience trust that information somewhat or a great deal, compared with 26% of those with a poor experience.
Training is the other gap. The report finds that 72% of employees have not taken part in employer-provided AI training or learning activities in the past six months, so many people are forming their view of AI from the digital workplace they already use.
Lokdeep Singh, CEO of Unily, said in the release that if the underlying information is fragmented or untrusted, AI will magnify those weaknesses. The mechanism is straightforward. A workplace AI assistant answers from the pages, policies, and announcements it can retrieve, so an outdated benefits page or two conflicting policy documents produce an uncertain answer. Communications teams that keep one accurate, current source for each topic improve what employees see from both people and AI tools.
What can communications leaders do with these findings?
Communications leaders can act on the Unily and Gallup findings by improving where information lives, who owns it, and how it is measured. Each step below follows from a number in the report.
- List where each of your five most requested topics lives today, such as pay, benefits, time off, policy, and product news. The report ties more locations to more tool switching, rising from 33% to 78%.
- Name one owner for each official source, so a person is responsible for correcting an out-of-date page. The report links good experience to higher trust in AI information, 47% versus 26%.
- Add context to operational updates, including who is affected and why the change matters. The Digital Culture pillar measures whether employees feel connected and informed, and culture showed the larger link to engagement.
- Offer AI training that uses your own intranet and policies as the examples. With 72% of employees untrained in the past six months, a short session on finding and checking company information fills a visible gap.
- Ask both questions in your next employee survey: can people find what they need, and does the system leave them feeling informed and connected? Compare answers by office size, since good experience falls from 22% to 15% as organizations grow.
These steps sit within the broader work described in EPR's internal communications strategy guide, and they depend on the line between corporate and internal communications staying clear so that employees hear the same message in both places. Teams comparing platform options can review EPR's Firstup platform profile as one example of the category.
What are the limits of the Unily and Gallup findings?
The Unily and Gallup findings describe associations, not causes, and the authors say so directly. The survey is cross-sectional, taken at one point in time, so it cannot show that a better digital workplace produces higher engagement. Engaged employees may also simply rate their workplace systems more favorably.
The sample is large enough to be useful, with a maximum margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, but subgroup figures such as company size carry wider margins. Unily, which sells an employee experience platform, produced the research with Gallup, and readers can weigh the findings with that in mind. The full wording of the release is available through the Unily and Gallup release on PR Newswire.
The direction of the results is consistent across every measure the report tracked, and that consistency is what makes it a useful planning input. Communications teams looking for sources to follow on this topic can start with EPR's list of internal communications voices to follow.
Disclosure: Unily is a client of 5W, a PR, creative and AI Visibility agency, and 5W is the media contact for the research release. Everything-PR News LLC, which publishes EPR, is owned by a shared interest group that includes the founder and chairman of 5W.
