What builds employee support for our digital transformation?

Digital transformation is easier to engage with when employees can understand specific changes to everyday work, the immediate benefits and a manageable route to achieving them. Communication needs to address resistance, doubt and inertia rather than simply describe the overall ambition.

IBM Garage illustrates that approach: its consultancy model applies agile collaboration to a rolling series of individual business challenges. The launch campaign for IBM stressed how that approach removed some of the risks from digital transformation. The communication principle is to make each practical change understandable, including its benefits and what achieving it involves.

A 2025 Gallagher finding, reported by the Institute of Internal Communication, found that 44% of internal communication professionals globally identified employee change fatigue as a major barrier to success, second only to limited team capacity. Breaking a broad ambition into practical changes gives communication a more concrete focus.

Employee support for digital transformation requires attention to behaviour as well as technology. People cannot be expected to change their working practices, or become champions for change, without effective and empathetic communication.

Rather than waiting to map out the entire transformation journey, take it step by step and build consensus and momentum along the way. Treat communication as part of that continuing process, not simply an announcement of a finished technology roadmap. The aim is to help people understand and support successive changes in how work gets done.

A 2025 Gartner finding among mid-to-senior business leaders found that only 32% said the last change they led achieved timely employee adoption without damaging performance, engagement or wellbeing.