Digital self-sufficiency reduces IT stress at work

Data card – IT stress in 8 figures

To quickly see where the pain lies, we compile the key figures from the TOPdesk research in one overview. Use this card as a reality check for your own organization.

Data card – IT stress in 8 figures
 

1. 37% of IT professionals experience extra workload because colleagues are not sufficiently digitally self-sufficient. 
2. 43% believe that employees actually cause their own IT problems. 
3. 59% say that many disruptions occur because colleagues do not understand how complex IT is nowadays. 
4. 32% of organizations face major IT disruptions weekly (system failures, hardware problems, or data loss). 
5. 50% experience weekly issues from smaller disruptions such as slow connections and login problems; for 11%, this even happens daily. 
6. According to 41% of IT professionals, this weekly causes extra workload throughout the entire organization, not just in IT. 
7. 43% of IT departments can hardly focus on structural improvements due to all the fire-fighting. 
8. 60% of IT professionals would prefer to have colleagues shadow them for a day to show what happens behind the scenes. 

Tip for the reader: compare your own ticket data and disruption log with these eight figures. Do you recognize the same patterns?

This kind of digital friction is part of the broader Digital Workplace: from login and performance issues to workload and adoption.

Where does it go wrong? The IT department as digital first aid

If you only look at the numbers, IT seems to be accustomed to a constant stream of incidents. In practice, it feels different: many IT teams are more firefighters than architects. Everything that feels vague, technical, or digital ends up as a ticket in IT – from a broken mouse to complex authorization questions. 

There is a difference in perspective behind this. IT mainly sees recurring issues: users who keep getting stuck on the same button, applications being used differently than intended, ad-hoc solutions that later cause new errors. Employees mainly see a rapidly changing digital work environment: new tools, different screens, extra layers of security, and little time to keep up with it all. 

And that friction is not just a feeling. International research on digital friction shows that a large majority of employees experience interruptions weekly due to malfunctioning software, logins, and tools; over half say this delays project deadlines and collaboration. In some studies, nearly a third of employees report having seen colleagues leave due to poorly functioning technology. That tension between the workplace and IT is exactly what business informatics is about.

Interesting detail from the TOPdesk research: especially Generation Z is annoyed when colleagues ask for help too quickly, in their opinion. More than half of these younger IT professionals believe that employees should first try to solve a problem themselves, compared to 42 percent of Generation X. Frustration is therefore rising on both sides: users sometimes find IT unreachable or slow, while IT professionals experience users as dependent and impatient.

What do we mean by digital self-sufficiency?

Not just skills, but also behavior and structure

Digital self-sufficiency is not the same as "being able to use Word and Teams." It involves three things at once:
 

1. Basic skills – knowing how to work with the main systems, how to log in securely, share files, hold online meetings, fill out forms, etc. At the European level, roughly 4 out of 10 adults still lack such basic skills – you can see this reflected one-to-one in the workplace. 
2. Understanding of processes – understanding which tool to use for what, where data should be, which steps belong to a process, and when to go to IT. 
3. Attitude and culture – daring to try, being allowed to make mistakes, asking questions, and feeling the mental barrier not to submit a ticket for every little thing. 

On top of that, there is something we talk about less often: design. A landscape with ten different apps for about the same thing, three ways to log in, and unclear folder structures quickly makes even digitally skilled employees "laggards." Digital self-sufficiency is therefore never just a user problem; it is just as much a design choice. 

The cost of low digital self-sufficiency

If employees consistently struggle with their digital work environment, you pay for it on multiple fronts:
 

• More errors and delays – documents in the wrong place, incorrectly filled out forms, missed deadlines due to login issues. 
• Ticket tsunamis – the same questions keep coming back, IT is mainly busy repeating and explaining instead of improving. 
• Less innovation – 43 percent of IT departments say they hardly have time for structural improvements. Outdated processes and systems therefore persist longer. 
• Worse digital employee experience – employees experience IT as "difficult" or "slow," which colors their perception of the entire organization. Research on digital employee experience shows that poor tools and frequent disruptions are directly related to lower satisfaction and a higher tendency to switch employers. 

In other words: IT laggards are not an occasional inconvenience, but a structural organizational risk.

IT laggards are design, not personal failure

Three typical patterns

In many organizations, you see the same patterns recurring. 

1. Tool spaghetti and context switches

 Over the years, a collection of applications has emerged: a legacy ERP here, a new HR portal there, separate SaaS services from departments that "needed something quickly." Each tool has its own logic and login. For employees, this feels like a digital patchwork. This is the well-known best-of-breed dilemma: if you choose the best individual tool everywhere, you quickly end up with a patchwork; if you focus on coherence, you will consolidate and standardize faster. The more context switches, the greater the chance that people will drop out – regardless of their age or basic skills. 

2. Onboarding as a one-time event

 New colleagues receive one day of explanations, a folder with manuals, and a few links to the intranet. After that, it's "learning on the job." European studies show that a large group of employees receive hardly any structural training in digital skills and mainly have to figure out how it works themselves. Without refresher moments, microlearning, or low-threshold help, knowledge does not keep pace with changes in your IT environment. 

3. IT communication that doesn't land

 Updates, disruptions, and new tools are announced via emails, release notes, and intranet messages. Often with many technical details, little concrete "what will you notice differently tomorrow?" As a result: people do not read it, or do not understand it. IT thinks it has communicated; practice says otherwise. 

Signals that you have an IT laggards organization

A few recognizable symptoms:
 

• Your service desk receives many "how do I ...?" tickets about basic actions. 
• The same questions arise multiple times a week, despite previous explanations. 
• Manuals are hardly consulted, or are scattered across different locations. 
• IT professionals say they explain the same problem "for the hundredth time" – and there is no time to do something about it structurally. 

If you see several points here, then it is time to consciously organize digital self-sufficiency. 

From IT first aid to digital collaboration: 6 measures that work

How do you shift from an overloaded IT first aid to an organization where digital problems are solved faster and occur less often? The following six measures help to make working independently with IT the norm. 

1) Make IT simpler: fewer variants, clear starting point

Digital self-sufficiency starts with simplicity. The more variants, exceptions, and separate tools, the more you ask of users.
 

• Standardize where possible: one office suite, one primary storage location, one way to log in (for example, Single Sign-On). 
• Provide a clear "digital homepage" or portal where employees start their day: most used applications, report button for disruptions, link to manuals and status page. 
• Dare to say goodbye to outdated tools that only cause confusion. 

IT laggards are often the end product of years of "buying on the side." Simplicity is not a luxury, but a prerequisite. 

2) Build digital self-service that is actually used

In many organizations, there is a self-service portal, but it is hardly used, or feels like a PDF graveyard. Then you gain little.
 

• Set up a portal with short, task-oriented how-tos ("Logging in to...", "Working from home: how to connect", "Resetting your password"). 
• Use the user's language, not product names or internal abbreviations. 
• Add simple forms for common requests (new employee, laptop, access to application).
• Ensure a good search function and clear categories. 

Promote the portal everywhere: in onboarding, in the signature of IT emails ("Question? Check the self-service portal first"), during team meetings. The more people know the starting point, the less "I didn't know where to go." 

3) Microlearning in the flow of work

Digital skills do not stick after one training per year. People learn the most at the moment they need to do something.
 

• Replace long classroom sessions with short microlearnings: videos of 3–5 minutes, click-by-click instructions, or interactive demos.
• Prevent microlearning from becoming a 'check-the-box training': read here 5 mistakes companies make with cyber education programs (and how to correct them).
• Link them to concrete events: submitting the first expense report, a new HR system, new security measures. 
• Make them easy to find from the application itself (help button, built-in tips) and from the self-service portal. 

Important: managers must actively create time to practice. "Just playing with the new system" is not a luxury, but an investment. 

4) Digital buddies & shadowing IT

Research shows that 60 percent of IT professionals would prefer to have colleagues shadow them for a day. That is a strong signal: awareness helps.
 

• Organize short "IT shadowing internships" for key roles such as team leaders, HR, and finance. Show what is involved in a disruption, change request, or security incident. 
• Appoint one or more digital buddies or "power users" per department who can handle first-line questions and help colleagues with new tools. 
• Give those buddies a direct line to IT, so that patterns and bottlenecks come to light more quickly. 

This way, you build a bridge between the workplace and IT, instead of a wall. 

5) Measure the digital experience, not just ticket volumes

Many organizations focus on numbers: how many tickets, how many disruptions, how much resolution time. But that tells little about how user-friendly and understandable your digital workplace is. A mature digital employee experience approach adds experience to that.
 

• After tickets, measure not only "resolved: yes/no," but also short feedback: "how easy did you find this?" 
• Look at recurring issues per application or process: where is there structural friction? 
• Conduct periodic mini-surveys on digital job satisfaction: "Can you normally do your work with the current tools?", "Where do you most often get stuck?" 

This way, you develop digital empathy: IT sees not only the log files but also what users experience daily. 

6) Make digital self-sufficiency an explicit KPI

As long as digital self-sufficiency remains implicit, urgent substantive work will always take precedence over "just practicing with the system."
 

• Work with HR to ensure that basic IT skills are part of job profiles, onboarding, and development discussions. 
• For managers: add digital skills and exemplary behavior to their evaluation. A manager who "lets IT solve everything" creates laggards. 
• Give teams concrete goals, for example: fewer repeat tickets about basic issues, X percent of employees have completed microlearnings, increased IT satisfaction. 

Make it clear: digital skills are not a bonus competency, but part of professional work. 

Conclusion: the importance of digital self-sufficiency

The figures from TOPdesk paint a recognizable picture: IT departments are working overtime as digital first aid, while employees struggle to find their way in an increasingly complex digital workplace. One in three IT professionals feels extra workload due to digital incompetence, a third of organizations experience major disruptions weekly, and structural improvements are under pressure. 

At the same time, European and international studies show that the problem is broader than "clumsy colleagues": millions of workers lack basic digital skills, receive little structural training, and work daily with fragmented tools and processes. IT laggards arise where tooling is fragmented, onboarding is fleeting, communication is unclear, and learning is something for "when things are quiet." 

The solution therefore lies not only in even more IT capacity but in a different way of organizing: a simpler IT landscape, good self-service, microlearning, buddies, better measurements, and explicit attention to digital skills in HR and workplace strategy. Those who take digital self-sufficiency seriously now win doubly: IT teams gain breathing room for innovation and security, while employees can work more smoothly and with less frustration. 

That is ultimately what it is all about: technology that supports rather than hinders – and an organization where IT is not a last resort but a shared responsibility.

Methodology

This article is based on European research by TOPdesk into challenges, trends, and priorities for IT teams in 2026. This research was conducted among 6,000 IT managers, of whom 1,000 in the Netherlands. The participants work in organizations of various sizes and sectors. The research included questions about IT disruptions, employees' digital self-sufficiency, the experienced workload in IT departments, and the collaboration between IT and the rest of the organization.