Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, costing an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity worldwide, according to Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report. Australian organisations are not immune. The pressure to retain skilled people, support hybrid teams, and keep everyone connected has never been higher.
The digital workplace is the answer most organisations are reaching for. But building one that actually works means understanding where the technology is heading, not just where it has been.
Here are the 10 digital workplace trends shaping productivity in 2026.
A digital workplace connects people, processes and tools into a unified environment accessible from any device, any location. When it works well, it reduces friction, improves communication and gives every employee what they need to do their job.
#1: What role does employee experience play in the modern digital workplace?
Employee experience is now the primary lens through which digital workplace decisions are made. Organisations that treat it as a secondary concern tend to see higher turnover, lower adoption of internal tools, and disengaged frontline teams.
For far too long digital workplaces have been made up of fragmented employee experiences that can leave workers, particularly frontline staff, feeling disconnected and unsupported.
Organisations are now shifting focus to creating a cohesive and accessible digital workplace that delivers a great experience at every role and at every level.
Vita Group, a publicly listed lifestyle company, built a central communications hub where employees access self-service options, wellness support, training via eLearning modules, knowledge base, policies and procedures, forms, and other data to complete their work. The hub links off to other systems via single sign-on, automatically signing staff in. Key data from third-party systems is also pulled into the central hub.
Most importantly, this hub works from any location and device. That matters for their deskless retail staff who have no access to a laptop or computer. The result is a seamless experience and a positive workplace culture, no matter how geographically dispersed the team.
Further reading: How to Deliver a Great Employee Experience
#2: How do organisations support employees working beyond physical boundaries?
Hybrid work is now the dominant operating model globally. Organisations that make it easy for people to work well from anywhere, not just tolerate it, have a clear retention and productivity advantage.
Many organisations have now adopted a hybrid working model, and the data backs the staying power of that shift. According to Cisco's 2025 Global Hybrid Work Study, 69% of employers reported improved employee retention after introducing hybrid policies.
Around 83% of workers favour a mix of remote and in-office days, and 97 of the top 100 companies recognised for employee satisfaction now offer remote or hybrid work models. (Yomly, 2026 Remote Work Statistics)
Organisations need to rise to the challenge of effectively supporting employees that work beyond borders.
Modern intranet software enables the creation of team and project workspaces where collaboration is intuitive and takes place right there on the same page.
Organisations need to continue prioritising investments that support hybrid work, and look at ways to simplify and integrate technology into one cohesive experience. Following the rise of remote working, more organisations are experiencing firsthand how key intranet benefits can streamline their workforce.
A healthcare organisation, for example, can use a video conferencing tool to provide staff with product training including lunch-and-learn sessions. All on-demand videos can then be hosted on a section of their intranet, with taxonomy making videos appear on contextually relevant sections throughout the platform.
Further reading: How to Inspire Confidence and Engagement in a Distributed Workforce
#3: How does virtual collaboration and communication work in a digital workplace?
Effective digital collaboration means employees can do almost everything they once needed to be in the office for. Virtual meetings, project workspaces, a searchable staff directory, and social forums all replace the need for physical co-location.
Digital collaboration in the workplace is a key trend that continues to grow in significance. Screen sharing and file-based collaboration allows team members to work on the same project in real time. One study found that companies which promoted collaborative working were five times as likely to be high performing.
Microsoft Teams is one of the most used platforms for remote collaboration. It centralises team interactions through video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing, and task management. The Elcom intranet integrates with Teams to take this a step further:
- Staff can view all their Teams channels within the intranet, allowing for real-time messaging and seamless communication.
- Staff members can see all files from channels they are a member of, as well as channels for a specific team.
- Directly message colleagues from their intranet profiles, with visibility into their availability thanks to Teams presence and status indicators.
Further reading: 15 Essential Collaboration and Communication Platforms and Software to Use | Essential Tools for Managing a Hybrid Workplace
#4: Why do digital workplaces need a formal strategy and roadmap?
A digital workplace without a strategy tends to grow into a patchwork of disconnected tools. A proper roadmap keeps it usable, central and relevant over time, and signals to employees that the investment is ongoing, not a one-off project.
The digital workplace has, for many organisations, replaced the central physical workplace. With the rise in the need for effective digital workplaces, organisations need to be more strategic and proactive to ensure long-term success.
Whether building a new digital workplace or optimising an existing one, having a proper digital workplace framework, strategy and roadmap is key. It is equally important to allocate internal resources to governance, to ensure your digital workplace remains usable and relevant over time. This is a small but vital investment in what is now critical IT infrastructure.
The State of the Digital Workplace report from Reworked found that only 35% of organisations believe they have a strategy or program that is "well established". Looking at responses over the last four years, this number has slightly declined, indicating that organisations feel they are falling behind with new advancements in AI and digital workplace technology.
Further reading: How to Build a Productive and Engaged Digital Workplace
#5: What does democratised technology mean for the digital workplace?
Democratised technology means giving every department the ability to manage their own digital content and processes, without relying on IT or developers. Low-code and no-code tools make this practical at scale.
There is a clear trend towards digital workplaces that are more democratised. Rather than relying on one or two people at head office to handle digital requirements, organisations are choosing options with low-code and no-code development tools built right in. This allows employees from different departments to easily create and maintain content themselves.
This includes drag-and-drop form fields to create online forms, intuitive content publishing, and simple access permissions to provide personalised content to specific users. Advanced analytics now make useful data available and interpretable to more people across the business, not just technical teams.
Employees now navigate an average of 11 applications per day, switching tools up to 25 times. Democratised platforms reduce this burden by enabling self-service within a single environment. (Powell Software, 2026)
#6: How are organisations using digitalisation and automation in the workplace?
Digitalisation and automation move work off paper and out of email chains. When forms, approvals and onboarding processes are automated, organisations save hours per employee per week and reduce the errors that come with manual handoffs.
Moving to hybrid working highlighted the need to shift away from manual and paper-based processes. Workflow management has been a pain point for many organisations, but modern digitalisation and automation solutions are now widely embraced.
It is now possible to set up business process automation so that once a form is filled in, it triggers a notification to the relevant person to approve. If approved, it passes to the next person in the workflow chain. If rejected, it returns to the previous relevant person for revision. Approvals, applications and forms can be digitalised and automated.
One of the key challenges for organisations is onboarding employees when they are not in the same location as their colleagues. This leads to more organisations adopting online onboarding portals with eLearning courses, company information, staff directories, checklists of tasks and more, all accessible online at the employee's own convenience.
Further reading: How to Automate and Improve Business Processes Across Your Organisation
#7: Why are mobile apps essential in the digital workplace?
Mobile apps give every employee, including frontline and deskless workers, access to the digital workplace from their phone. Push notifications, self-service tools and real-time access to rosters and forms are table stakes for any workforce that is not desk-based.
It is no surprise that mobile app functionality for digital workplaces is becoming increasingly requested. It acts as a central communication hub and front door to the digital workplace for staff on the go.
Employees can receive instant alerts on their phone for urgent updates, access contact information and central data away from their desks, submit timesheets, and access self-service areas like up-to-date rosters and forms.
For example, Better HR, a leading HR and employment relations service, built a mobile app for their online HR portal system. This allows employees to quickly fill in timesheets, check rosters and perform other tasks quickly on their mobiles.
We can expect mobile access to become even more important as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is becoming the new norm in many workplaces. Bring Your Own Thing (BYOT) could also bring wearable watches, voice assistants, smart earbuds and headsets into the ‘mobile’ sphere.
#8: How should organisations approach integration in a digital workplace?
Integration is about reducing login fatigue and tool sprawl. When employees can access everything they need through one front door, with single sign-on, they spend less time switching between systems and more time getting work done.
Many employees are experiencing login fatigue. Research from Netskope finds that the average enterprise uses over 1,181 cloud app services, the vast majority of which are not enterprise-ready.
Organisations are increasingly looking to develop a central digital workplace using their intranet as the front door and integrating essential third-party tools for a seamless, single-login experience.
For example, files hosted on SharePoint can be displayed on contextually relevant sections of the intranet, such as a Hybrid Working hub, and edited straight from the intranet interface. This speeds up development even for non-technical teams and improves the overall employee experience.
GJK Facility Services, with over 2,500 field-based staff, built a single intranet-centred digital workplace that gave frontline workers mobile self-service access without needing a corporate email address. That kind of integration, purpose-built for Australian workforces, is increasingly what organisations are looking for.
#9: How do digital workplaces manage data security risks?
Security in the digital workplace means more than strong passwords. It covers permissions management, two-factor authentication, BYOD policies, employee training, and compliance with Australian data obligations under the Privacy Act 1988.
Modern digital workplaces bring modern risks, from hacking and data breaches to sophisticated phishing scams, particularly as more staff work from home on personal devices.
The global average cost of a data breach in 2024 was USD 4.88 million, a 10% increase over the previous year. (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024, ibm.com)
Organisations are stepping up their security processes, including two-factor authentication, BYOD-appropriate security, meticulous access permissions, compliance controls and regular prompts to update passwords. Intranets enable detailed permissions management, giving organisations precise control over what different roles can see and do within the system.
In Australia, the Cyber Security Act 2024 and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme increase organisational accountability for employee privacy and data handling. Security is no longer purely an IT concern. It is a whole-of-business capability.
There will continue to be an increasing need for organisations to invest in eLearning and cybersecurity knowledge bases to keep staff informed and prepared.
Further reading: Getting Authorisation Right for an Integrated Single Sign-On Portal
#10: How is artificial intelligence changing the digital workplace in 2026?
AI in the digital workplace has moved from experimentation to everyday use. In 2026, the organisations seeing the most impact are not just those who deployed AI, but those who embedded it into real workflows and built the governance to support it.
The shift is significant. In Australia alone, 84% of employees in office roles now use AI at work, with over a quarter using it daily. But only 35% of workers have received formal AI training, and 72% fear breaching data or regulatory rules. The capability gap is real.
According to the McKinsey State of AI report, 71% of organisations report regular use of generative AI in at least one business function. AI is becoming a standard part of operations, not an experiment. (McKinsey, 2025)
The State of the Digital Workplace report from Reworked found that AI and machine learning have the most impact when automating simple, repeatable processes (27%) and helping employees find content, people and apps they need (19%).
Agentic AI is the next step. Where earlier AI tools waited for a prompt, agentic AI can reason across systems, plan multi-step actions, and complete workflows on its own. Organisations using platforms like Elcom, with its OpenAI Connector, can embed AI directly into intranet workflows, search, and content management.
In 2026, AI-powered intranets are acting as productivity platforms. They centralise knowledge, surface insights, and enable seamless access to tools across hybrid environments. MIT reports that 95% of generative AI pilots fail, mostly because employees do not adopt the tools. The organisations getting real value are those weaving AI into everyday workflows, not deploying it as a standalone experiment.
Beyond productivity tools, chatbots continue to support overwhelmed service teams. Smart scheduling saves time across the business. And AI-assisted content creation has become a genuine part of internal communications workflows for many Australian organisations.
Build a productive digital workplace for your team
Digital workplaces that work well share one thing: they were built with the employee in mind, not just the technology. The 10 trends above point to the same conclusion. Connected, accessible, intelligent and secure environments give employees what they need to do their best work, wherever they are.
Australian organisations have a real advantage here. Elcom has spent 25+ years building digital workplaces for Australian teams, with local hosting, same-timezone support, and unlimited user licensing so you are not penalised for growth.
Ready to see what a modern digital workplace looks like in practice? Download our free guide or book a demo with the Elcom team.