The IT Nerd

Nexthink has issued new analysis showing that employer support for AI is lagging real-world U.S. workforce adoption. Drawing on data from Gallup, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JFF, and Forrester – combined with Nexthink usage data from millions of endpoints – the findings show AI adoption has become a game of chance, with employees left to navigate tools without support or guidance.

According to Gallup, 28% of U.S. employees now use AI at work at least a few times a week. Yet research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows just 15.9% of workers say their employer currently offers any AI training – a gap that makes clear employer support is failing to keep pace with AI usage. Nearly six in ten workers who consider AI training important are not being offered it, with the New York Fed finding demand for training (38%) more than double the share of employers providing it.

Despite this, JFF research shows 56% of workers have not been consulted by employers on how AI tools are used in their work. And when they seek guidance, workers turn to social media (31%), news articles (27%), or friends and family (21%) rather than employers (9%).

The scale of unsupported AI use is already visible. Nexthink data, drawn from 4.9 million sessions per day across 3.4 million employees, shows GenAI users engaging with these tools an average of 10 times a day and spending three hours and 14 minutes per week doing so. With adoption at this level occurring without formal guidance, the window for employers to get ahead of adoption is narrowing fast.

The challenge will only become more pronounced as AI becomes a larger part of everyday work. Forrester projects that AI will augment 20% of jobs over the next five years, raising the stakes for employers to understand not only whether AI tools are being used, but whether employees have the support, training and digital experience to use them effectively.

Nexthink, the global leader in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, today announces Mobile Experience, a natively-built solution that extends Nexthink’s comprehensive experience-level insights to Android and iOS devices.  

 With real-time mobile insights delivered directly to the Nexthink Infinity platform, IT teams can:

• Detect device performance degradation early: Monitor memory, storage, and deep battery health trends to identify devices at risk of failing before worker productivity is impacted  
• Understand the root cause of connectivity issues: Continuous Wi-Fi and cellular data network tracking allows IT to distinguish between user-side issues, such as poor signal due to the mobile device antenna, and infrastructure-side issues like weak Wi-Fi coverage in a facility. 
• Gain continuous visibility into compliance and security posture: Track outdated OS versions, missing patches, and encryption status while adding context from device performance and app connections to better assess risk. 

• Optimize hardware and battery refresh decisions: IT can move away from blanket refresh cycles by using a data-driven approach to determine which devices need a battery or full replacement and which can remain in use. 
• Improve visibility into app usage and risks: Gain insights into mobile app activity through network connection trends to better understand app adoption, engagement, AI app usage, and identify any non-compliant apps that could pose potential security risks

Android and iOS add to Nexthink’s growing list of supported technologies. Last year, Nexthink released VDI Experience, which offers enterprises full DEX capabilities for Citrix, Omnissa, AWS WorkSpaces, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Microsoft Windows 365 virtual environments. 

Learn more about Nexthink Mobile Experience or find out how Nexthink can take your IT operations to the next level.  

New research from Nexthink, the global leader in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, reveals that users^[1] of Generative AI (GenAI) tools save a net average of 3 hours and 47 minutes per week.^[2] However, the analysis finds that there are huge discrepancies between the four market-leading tools, with ChatGPT boosting productivity by more than double that of Copilot.

The analysis, based on 4.9m sessions per day across 3.4m employees, also finds users tend to engage with GenAI 10 times per day, for a total of three hours and fourteen minutes per week on average.^[4] However, there are significant numbers of users who are yet to engage with any of the Big Four tools.

While businesses have been quick to embrace GenAI, a lack of visibility around which tools are being used, by whom, and for what purposes, has been a significant problem in understanding the value they are getting from these investments. Nexthink AI Drive solves this problem by consolidating visibility, usage, guidance, and measurement data into a single vantage point. Combining this robust DEX data with user sentiment analysis, it uncovers employee pain points and adoption barriers, enabling organizations to provide better adoption support and employees to gain confidence faster.

To find out more about GenAI adoption or to discover how such tools are being used in your organization, please visit Nexthink’s AI Activation Playbook.

^[1] Employees who log in at least once a week to any GenAI tool

² Based on self-reporting from 5,000 end users between 30^th October – January 29^th of estimated time saved when using GenAI tools.

³ Overall averages reflect usage across all GenAI tools observed and are weighted by real-world usage levels (the four tools shown are the most used, but not used equally)

⁴ Data collected between 30^th October 2025 – 29^th January 2026 from Nexthink products AI Drive and AppEx. Data has been collected as a benchmark of tools across organizations. As such, in-house tools use has not been included in the analysis. All other product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks included in this release are the property of their respective trademark holders, and use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

 Nexthink today announced the launch of Nexthink Spark, the world’s first personal IT agent powered by real-time DEX data. 

Built on the Nexthink Infinity platform, Spark is a personalized, context-aware, fully autonomous AI agent that reaches employees and resolves IT issues before they impact work. Unlike traditional virtual agents that primarily route or log tickets, Spark is designed to fix issues at first contact. 

Already in use by more than 25 of Nexthink’s most DEX-mature customers, Nexthink Spark is fundamentally reforming IT support services. Traditional approaches to IT support have failed, with ticket volumes continuing to rise, employee satisfaction stalled, and costs mounting to around 4% of global IT spend. Consequently, businesses have had to choose between overstaffing IT service teams or accepting chronic employee frustration and decreased productivity. 

Nexthink Spark offers a third way forward. After a very broad early adopter program involving thousands of employees Spark achieved a 77% first contact resolution rate, more than five times the industry average of 15%. This was paired with a major reduction in lost productivity time, as Spark was able to autonomously resolved L1 issues in less than 2 minutes on average.

Key features of Nexthink Spark include: 

• Personalization: Leverages real-time endpoint telemetry to understand each employee’s digital journey, delivering the right resolutions through the right conversations at the right moment.
• Context-aware intelligence: Uses live signals from the Nexthink Infinity platform to understand issues as they occur and apply the most relevant remediation in real time.
• End-to-end automation: Executes fixes using native DEX remote actions and workflows, resolving issues autonomously without complex integrations or external orchestration.
• Governance and guardrails: Built with enterprise-grade controls that allow IT teams to define policies, approve actions, and continuously train models to adapt safely to the organization.

To learn more about Nexthink Spark and how it helps organizations reduce IT support costs while improving employee productivity, visit Spark | Nexthink.  

Nexthink has released ‘Cracking the DEX Equation: The Annual Workplace Productivity Report’ showing that poor DEX directly costs global businesses an average of 470,000 hours per year, equivalent to around 226 full-time employees. This indicates that digital friction is a vital and underreported element of the global productivity crisis.

Nexthink’s analysis – the first of its kind – is based on proprietary data from more than 20m endpoints across 474 global businesses. The report finds that the average employee suffers 14 negative digital experiences a week. These include device crashes, application glitches, or slow load times, and can reduce productivity and collaboration while also increasing employee frustration and stress. Crucially, the research also indicates a strong inverse correlation between an organization’s DEX score and productivity loss. For every 10-point increase to the overall DEX score, employees would recoup an average of 22 productive minutes each week. 

The research also suggests that these consistent disruptions are not just a threat to enterprise productivity, but also to the quality of work employees produce. The average negative event lasts a little under 3 minutes (167 seconds), yet research from the American Psychological Association suggests that even delays of less than 5 seconds are enough to triple people’s error rate. Moreover, research from the University of California has shown that when employees are taken out of their flow state it takes around 23 minutes for them to return, further increasing the amount of lost time.

Averaging lost time by industry shows significant variation with retailers, healthcare providers, and financial service companies suffering 1.7x the time loss of the tech industry. The number of disruptive events per week was almost identical, regardless of industry however, suggesting that the variance in time loss is down to the severity of events rather than the volume.

The figures in this report are derived from aggregated, anonymized telemetry from organizations largely in the early stages of DEX management.

For more information on the impact of DEX on workplace productivity, please read the full ‘Workplace Productivity’ report 

Nexthink is warning that the cost of custom Windows 10 support could reach upwards of $7.3bn based on market share data and business usage estimates.

Of the 1.4 billion devices powered by Windows, Nexthink estimates that approximately 30% are in use by commercial or public sector organizations, equating to around 420 million enterprise Windows devices. The latest market share data shows Windows 10 still has a 43% market share, which is equivalent to roughly 181 million devices.

According to Nexthink analysis of customer endpoints, there has been a 33% decrease in Windows 10 devices between 19^th May and 1^st August. Assuming a further 33% reduction by the 14^th October, that would leave around 121 million Windows 10 PCs. At $61 per device for the first year of custom support, organizations could collectively be facing a bill of just over $7.3 billion.

Nexthink’s analysis of the digital experience across Windows 10 and Windows 11 shows that Windows 11 devices are currently experiencing a higher level of instability, with more frequent system crashes (1.2% vs 0.6% for Windows 10) and hard resets (9.9% vs 8.5% for Windows 10). While not unexpected in the early years of a new operating system, the findings highlight how factors such as hardware compatibility, drivers and system configuration can impact the employee experience during an OS migration. These risks can be anticipated and mitigated with tailored library packs, which give IT teams ready-to-use insights and guidance to smooth the transition.

Organizations must take a proactive, data-led approach to migration planning, ensuring they understand both the technical requirements and potential impact on the employee experience. To do this, organizations should:

• Pinpoint remaining Windows 10 devices and assess hardware readiness for Windows 11.
• Plan for post-deadline risks, as unsupported devices face greater exposure to malware, phishing, and ransomware.
• Check application compatibility to prevent software issues or loss of support.
• Factor in device performance, as older hardware may slow productivity and limit upgrades.
• Consider IT resource impact, as unsupported OS devices may require more IT support.
• Avoid ‘AI FOMO’ by guiding employees on how they can access and use tools like Copilot, improved multitasking, and enhanced UI features.
• Reduce friction across teams by avoiding inconsistent experiences between Windows 10 and Windows 11 users.

Methodology

The full workings for the Nexthink calculation are as follows:

• There are 1.4 billion devices powered by Windows, of which Nexthink estimates that around 30% of these are in use by commercial or public sector organizations
• This leaves 420m million enterprise Windows devices. If 43% of these are Windows 10 devices, that leaves 180,600,000m Windows 10 enterprise devices
• Assuming a 33% reduction in the 74 days from 1^st August to 14^th October (59,598,000), this will leave 121,002,000 devices due to be upgraded
• At $61 per device, this makes the cost of Windows 10 custom support worldwide to be $7,381,122,000

Nexthink today announced new research exploring the challenges IT leaders face in preparing for the next wave of AI-driven digital transformation. Most IT leaders (92%) believe this new era of digital transformation will increase digital friction and less than half (47%) of employees have the requisite digital dexterity to adapt to technological changes. A further 88% expect workers to be daunted by new technologies such as Generative AI.

The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience report details the findings of a survey of 1,100 global IT decision makers, with 95% of IT leaders saying the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation will be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far. 

But with IT spend set to reach $5.61 trillion in 2025, and $644 billion on Generative AI alone, it is clear that solving digital friction and improving the employee experience must become a priority, or risk undermining the impact of investments. Yet despite this, 42% of IT leaders admit they struggle to put exact monetary value on AI investments, while 93% want to improve their ability to identify underperforming investments. 

The pace of change is relentless

IT leaders anticipate a 43% rise in the volume of applications being used over the next three years. In fact, 66% report that their organization rolls out a new application, tool, or platform every month. But this rapid expansion is stretching IT teams to breaking point, with 69% admitting there are too many users in the organization for IT to provide adequate adoption support for everyone. Without proper guidance, application rollouts suffer, leading to lower productivity (61%), reduced collaboration (51%), increased IT support tickets (46%), and higher employee dissatisfaction (46%).

To keep up with this accelerating change, IT leaders are clear on the need to improve digital dexterity across the workforce. 96% want to enhance their ability to accurately identify users’ digital friction, which would significantly strengthen digital transformation efforts. With AI reshaping the way people work, 96% say they need to enhance digital adoption support to help employees adapt to AI, with 95% highlighting that tailored digital employee experience (DEX) insights are more essential than ever. The impact of improving digital dexterity is clear: faster adoption of new tools (46%), higher productivity (38%), and enhanced innovation (37%).

To read the full report or to find out more about the new era of AI-powered digital transformation, click here.

By Tim Flower, DEX Evangelist at Nexthink

Software supply chain disruptions are the biggest danger to business resiliency today. One response: moving past the traditional ‘break/fix’ model of IT Services.

The last year has seen a spate of high-profile outages that have affected thousands of companies and millions of endpoints around the world. While the events have been different in many ways, there is one underlying commonality – in each case, the root of problem is one that doesn’t get much attention: The software supply chains – i.e. all the existing component parts that underpin new software products – that enterprises and suppliers around the world rely upon, and are largely outside the control of internal IT teams.

Software supply chains are the single biggest danger to business resiliency today, with the average enterprise using nearly 1000 different apps [1] and 96% of codebases [2] featuring open source code.

All of this means that there’s no such thing as an ‘isolated incident’ anymore. Even if companies take every reasonable precaution, there is no guarantee that a mistake three steps down the line won’t cause days of unexpected downtime and millions in lost revenue. Even an unknown compatibility issue can lead to significant headaches during a large-scale deployment. Not to mention the hurdles encountered when the supplier changes versions or discontinues support.   

When disaster strikes

The problem is, when – and it is when, not if – major third-party incidents occur, the vast majority of businesses lack the visibility and capabilities needed to swiftly identify and remediate such issues. This is because many IT service delivery teams are using legacy management platforms that don’t allow them to move beyond a traditional, reactionary model of handling tickets one by one when employees decide to call for help. The employees are essentially providing IT monitoring services. This creates multiple problems, including:

• In the middle of a costly and reputationally damaging crisis, IT teams end up wasting precious time trying to understand the scale of the problem before they can even start to look at how it can be fixed. Indeed, sometimes endpoints can remain out of action for days until an employee opens a ticket with the Help Desk.  
• A lack of visibility also means that it’s impossible for IT service teams to effectively prioritize their remediation efforts to, for example, get customer-facing services up and running first to minimize external disruption.  –
• Additionally, it hampers any attempts at communication to give colleagues and clients information about what has happened and when normal service is likely to resume. 

An evolving function

None of this is to say that IT service teams are redundant or unimportant – far from it. Even when things are going smoothly, strong service teams are worth their weight in gold, never mind when a crisis occurs. In fact, as software supply chains become ever more entangled, the need for skilled IT support experts is only going to grow.

The issue is that, all too often, businesses aren’t providing their IT support staff with the necessary capabilities to proactively identify, understand, and mitigate problems. For instance, in the event of a major third-party outage causing a cascade of endpoints experiencing the dreaded ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSOD), IT support teams need to be alerted to an unusual spike in system crashes in real-time, which ones are being affected, and insights about what the common root cause might be. 

Armed with this information, IT support can take immediate steps to address the problem – for example by halting any application updates on other endpoints – and reduce the number of those affected by BSOD. And as endpoints are remediated, a platform providing real time visibility can provide immediate status details on which systems still need attention and which ones are back up and running. 

Managing the shift effectively

The surge in third-party software issues is a key driver of the transition away from the traditional ‘break/fix’ model of IT Services and towards something more proactive, but it’s not the only motive. Factors such as a desire to improve regulatory compliance, greater demand for upskilling and training from support workers, and changing ways of working are all key reasons why the transition is gathering pace. There is also a growing awareness that the 40+ year practice of reactionary IT is no longer scalable, and actually poses a risk to business viability.  

Taken together, the increased relevance of these issues demonstrates that there is a huge opportunity for IT services to take a larger and more important role in achieving core business objectives, especially as modern IT environments become ever-more complex. IT needs to be a provider of business-enabling services, and no longer a team of expensive fire fighters.   

The next step is for senior leaders to champion this change by providing support staff with the necessary training and the ability to bring in new, modern capabilities that can transform IT Services from a short-term, reactionary function to one that is central to the operation and success of the entire enterprise.

Tim Flower is VP of DEX Strategy at Nexthink and the author of the Wiley book: DEX for Dummies, a Practical Guide for Organizing and Executing an Effective DEX Strategy in Any Organization. 

1 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report: Insights from over 1000 IT Leaders

2 2024 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report

25% of new IT hires who have an underwhelming or terrible onboarding experience quit their role, putting pressure on organizations to eliminate onboarding friction in the race for tech talent

Nexthink, the leader in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, is warning that failing to align IT and HR to improve the onboarding experience will hamper businesses in the race for the best talent, and cause US organizations to waste $2.2bn on rehiring IT and tech talent every year. 

“The role of IT in securing and retaining top tech talent cannot be overlooked,” commented Tim Flower, DEX Strategist, Nexthink. “It’s not just having the right device, but getting all the necessary permissions and installing applications, often with precious little guidance from hiring managers as to what is actually needed.”

Too often, IT is given just days to equip new starters, leading to rushed setups, tech issues, and bad first impressions. Organizations cannot afford to let talent slip through their fingers this easily, which is why HR and IT must become an employee experience ‘Super Team’, collaborating to understand all the tools a new starter needs. These discussions should happen in advance, with HR and IT working together to project hiring plans that detail the roles, locations, seniority, and digital needs of new hires. Not doing this can be costly not just for rehiring, but for other issues like negotiating software licenses – organizations risk overpaying instead of securing better bulk rates upfront.”

Based on Nexthink analysis of the US labor market, IT salaries, rehiring costs and research around onboarding issues, 117,711 IT or tech hires each year will have an underwhelming or terrible onboarding experience, with 29,428 leaving their role. This equates to 8% of the projected IT roles that will be created each year in the US from 2023-2033. With the average cost of replacing a technical role estimated to be $76,703, US organizations are wasting $2.2bn annually replacing IT or technology hires lost to poor onboarding processes.

This is why organizations must rethink how HR and IT work together and break down silos to create collaborative “Super Teams” that will ensure a smooth, efficient onboarding process. To do this, organizations should: 

Develop a Shared Understanding – IT and HR must collaborate from the outset to ensure that IT recognizes that every tech initiative impacts the employee journey, while HR should deepen its understanding of IT tools and decisions. 

Integrate Feedback & Data – IT and HR must adopt a united front by combining technical performance data with real user feedback to understand pain points, align on metrics, and make improvements to the onboarding experience.

Automate Where Possible – Reduce manual effort in onboarding by leveraging automation that integrates with IT and HR workflows to automate routine tasks, such as notifying IT about new joiners.

 “In my experience in the trenches, a cumbersome on-boarding process can have all sorts of consequences,” said Flower. “From slow new-hire ramp up to productivity, to staff churn and negative online reviews, and internal reputational damage as business areas get frustrated with the process. So HR and IT, along with the business partner, need to be in lockstep for every single on-boarding process step to ensure a great first impression, faster employee ramp-up, and long-lasting careers within the organization.”

 Nexthink has announced research showing that Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) procurement and management processes are riddled with contradictions. The survey of 1000 frontline IT workers found that:

• 92% say the employee experience is an important consideration when choosing a VDI solution
• However, 91% admit that cost considerations trump performance when choosing a provider
• 95% believe that VDI offers an equal or better experience than desktops
• Yet 92% confess that it has primarily been designed to make life easier for IT, rather than the end-user

The cost of these contradictions is significant, with a third of organizations (31%) reporting daily VDI issues that require L3 VDI specialist support, and a further 40% having them on a weekly basis, as L1 and L2 support are often unable to manage the complexity of VDI. This means that, despite a key driver of VDI deployment being the ability to better control costs, enterprises are having to spend huge sums on operationalization and maintenance.

The confusion over VDI is further compounded by the fact that a substantial proportion of these escalated issues were not necessarily specific to VDI. Application functionality failures (54%) and slow performance (47%) accounted for two of the top three most reported issues to IT teams, neither of which are necessarily related to VDI.

In order to address these issues, businesses need a unified view over all VDI sessions with end-to-end visibility and automated workflows to enable remediation with minimal interruption to the user experience. Moreover, having instant insight into where problems are occurring can remove the blame game between functions and enable better collaboration both within IT departments and with the wider organization. 

To find out more about the challenges of VDI management, click here for the full report.