In short
A digital workplace is every tool your people use to get work done: the intranet, chat and meetings, email, communities, business applications and the devices and accounts that connect them. It works when the right information reaches the right people at the right moment. We explain what it includes in Microsoft 365, where information gets stuck, and the evidence that tells you whether yours works.
Key takeaways
- Deloitte defines the digital workplace as all the technologies people use to get work done, from HR and core business applications to email and instant messaging.
- In Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index, 62% of 31,000 surveyed workers said they spend too much time searching for information.
- Gartner found in 2023 that 47% of digital workers struggle to find the information they need to do their jobs, and that desk workers use 11 applications on average, up from six in 2019.
- Microsoft 365 telemetry shows employees are interrupted every two minutes during core hours, and receive 117 emails and 153 Teams messages a day on average (2025).
- A working digital workplace is proved by reach: the share of the intended audience that saw a message, by department, country and role, across channels.
What is meant by digital workplace?
The simplest definition comes from Deloitte: the digital workplace is the natural evolution of the workplace, and it encompasses all the technologies people use to get work done, from HR applications and core business applications to email, instant messaging, enterprise social media and virtual meeting tools[1].
There is no single official definition. The Digital Workplace Group has catalogued eight common ones, from “the intranet plus other connected enterprise software systems” to Chris Tubb’s “the collection of all the digital tools provided by an organization”, Jane McConnell’s view that it “lives at the intersection of people, organization and tools”, and Paul Miller’s “the virtual, digital equivalent of the physical workplace”[2]. The definitions differ in emphasis, not in substance: a digital workplace is the whole set of tools, seen from the employee’s side.
Three distinctions keep the term useful:
- Digital workplace vs intranet. The intranet is one part of the digital workplace: the place for official news, policies and resources. Microsoft’s own intranet guidance says an intranet “can be the foundation of your digital workplace”, not that it is the whole of it[3]. See what is an intranet for that narrower definition.
- Digital workplace vs digital workplace platform. Vendors sell platforms, usually an intranet or employee app, that become the front door to the digital workplace. Buying one does not give you a digital workplace; it gives you one more tool inside it.
- Digital workplace vs employee experience. The digital workplace is the toolset. The experience is what employees live through when they use it: whether they find what they need and hear what they should.
What does a Microsoft 365 digital workplace include?
Most organisations that run Microsoft 365 already have the building blocks. The question is which tool does which job, and whether employees know it.
| Job | Microsoft 365 tool | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Official news and resources | SharePoint communication sites and the home site | The intranet: news, policies, department portals and search across them |
| A daily starting point | The SharePoint app in Teams (formerly Viva Connections) | SharePoint news, a dashboard, announcements and resources inside Teams, on desktop and mobile |
| Communities and conversations | Viva Engage | Connecting people with leaders, coworkers and communities; questions, knowledge sharing, leadership posts |
| Daily work, chat and meetings | Microsoft Teams | Team channels, chats, calls and meetings; files stored in SharePoint |
| Direct messages to everyone | Outlook and email newsletters | Announcements and newsletters that reach people in their inbox |
| Files | OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries | Personal and shared storage, co-authoring and version history |
| Identity and audiences | Microsoft Entra ID | Accounts and groups that decide who can see what, and who a message is targeted to |
Microsoft describes the split between its two employee communication apps clearly: Viva Connections, now the SharePoint app in Teams, is “where people start their workday and quickly catch up with organizational news, tasks, and resources”, while Viva Engage “brings community and conversations into the workplace”[4][5]. Around these sit the business applications that are not communication tools at all: HR, payroll, CRM, ERP and IT service desks. They belong to the digital workplace, but internal communication rarely owns them.
For how these tools compare as channels, see Teams vs Viva Engage and our Viva Engage guide.
What does a digital workplace look like day to day?
Three short, generic examples show how the same toolset reaches people differently.
- An office-based project manager opens Teams first, sees the SharePoint app with two company news posts and a dashboard card for expense approvals, works in a project channel all day, and reads the weekly newsletter in Outlook on Friday.
- A frontline technician has no fixed desk and a shared tablet. Company news reaches them through the SharePoint app in Teams on mobile and a site Viva Engage community; the newsletter in an inbox they rarely open reaches them late or not at all.
- A new joiner needs the onboarding pages on the HR hub, the right Teams channels and an introduction in the company Viva Engage community. If any of the three is missing, they ask colleagues instead, and the official information never reaches them.
The tools are identical in all three cases. What differs is which surface actually carries information to each group, and that is what a digital workplace has to be judged on.
Where does information get stuck?
The evidence points the same way: the problem is rarely a missing tool and more often too many surfaces competing for attention.
- In Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index, based on a survey of 31,000 people in 31 markets, 62% said they struggle with too much time spent searching for information in their workday. “Not easily finding the information I need” was one of the top five productivity disruptors[6].
- A Gartner survey of 4,861 employees in the US, UK, India and China found that 47% of digital workers struggle to find the information or data they need to do their jobs effectively, and that desk workers use an average of 11 applications, compared with six in 2019[7].
- Microsoft 365 telemetry published in 2025 shows employees are interrupted every two minutes during core working hours by meetings, emails or chats. The average worker receives 117 emails a day and 153 Teams messages per weekday[8].
Two gaps follow from this for internal communication. The first is volume: an important announcement competes with more than a hundred emails and as many chat messages that day. The second is personalisation: when everything is published to everyone, people learn to ignore most of it. SharePoint and the SharePoint app in Teams support audience targeting by Entra ID group, but it only helps if those groups are maintained and used. Gartner’s advice to digital workplace leaders is to create a process through which employees agree on which applications they use for which work[7], and the same applies to communication: decide which channel carries which kind of message, and say so.
Do digital workplace platforms differ for internal communication?
Yes, though less than vendor marketing suggests. In our Digital Workplaces Benchmark 2026 we reviewed 12 intranet and employee communication platforms, including SharePoint, on user experience, publishing, targeting, administration and analytics[9]. In our comparative matrix, which plots user experience against suitability for internal communication, all 12 platforms fall in the top-right quadrant. This is Tryane’s own assessment, not an analyst placement.
The differences lie in focus. Some platforms are specialised internal communication tools; some extend SharePoint with extra features; some are mobile-first and built for frontline engagement. SharePoint itself scored 68/100 overall and 45% on analytics, and our one-line verdict was that it is “a must-have platform, but requires customization to be truly effective for internal communications”. If you are choosing or reviewing a platform, download the Digital Workplace Benchmark 2026 for the scores and criteria of all 12, and see the best digital workplace is the one people actually use for how to weigh them.
How do you build a digital workplace strategy that works?
A digital workplace strategy does not need to start with new technology. Five steps, in order, get most organisations further than a platform change.
- List every surface that reaches employees. Not the ones in the strategy deck, the ones in use: intranet sites, Teams channels used for announcements, Viva Engage communities, newsletters, the SharePoint app in Teams, digital signage. Note an owner for each.
- Define your audiences from Entra ID or HR data. Department, country, site, role and whether people have a work email address and a device. That population is the denominator for every reach figure you will report.
- Decide which channel carries which message. Official news on the home site, community and dialogue in Viva Engage, team work in Teams, must-read announcements by email. Publish the rule.
- Target, then publish. Use audience targeting so people see what applies to them, and post on the site whose reach matches the audience.
- Measure whether information arrived. Check reach against the intended audience, by group, after every important message.
Ownership questions, who decides on tools, governance and budgets, are covered in the digital workplace guide.
How do you check that information reaches employees?
This is where most digital workplace reporting goes wrong. Each tool counts something different, and the totals are often added together as if they were the same unit.
| Surface | What native reporting counts | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| SharePoint news and pages | Unique viewers and site visits, for 7, 30 and 90 days, per site or hub[10] | Readership by department, country or role |
| Viva Engage | People reached (viewed, reacted or replied) and people engaged per conversation; community post views are not unique[11] | How Engage reach compares with SharePoint or email for the same message |
| Microsoft Teams | Active users, active channels, messages posted, meetings[12] | Who read a message: these are usage metrics, not readership |
| Email newsletter | Opens and clicks, depending on the sending tool | Opens depend on how the tool detects them, so they are not comparable with page views |
Three pieces of evidence show whether a digital workplace works for communication:
- Reach against the intended audience. The share of the people a message was meant for who saw it, on at least one channel, counted once per person.
- Reach by group. The same figure by department, country, site and role. The company-wide average hides the groups you are missing, which are usually frontline and deskless employees.
- Channel contribution. Which surface added people that the others did not reach. That tells you where to publish next time.
Adding SharePoint views, Engage views and newsletter opens produces a large number that is neither reach nor engagement, because the same person appears in several channels and each counter has its own rule. Our article on measuring cross-channel internal communications explains how to deduplicate, and digital workplace analytics covers the data model.
This is the job Communication Insights does. It brings SharePoint, Viva Engage, the SharePoint app in Teams and email newsletters into one dashboard, joins the activity to your organisational structure, and shows reach by department, country and role, so you can see where information stops and adapt your channel plan. To see whether your messages reach employees across your digital workplace, book a 15-minute call with Jérémy via his Calendly.
Frequently asked questions
What is meant by digital workplace?
It is the full set of technologies people use to get work done: intranet, email, chat and meetings, communities, business applications, and the devices and accounts that connect them. Deloitte describes it as the natural evolution of the workplace.
What is an example of a digital workplace?
In a Microsoft 365 organisation, a typical digital workplace combines a SharePoint intranet, the SharePoint app in Teams as the daily starting point, Viva Engage for communities, Teams for chat and meetings, Outlook for email, OneDrive for files and Entra ID for accounts and groups.
What is the difference between a digital workplace and an intranet?
The intranet is one part of the digital workplace: the home of official news, policies and resources. The digital workplace also includes collaboration, communities, email, business applications and devices.
What are digital workplace tools?
Any tool employees use for work: intranet and employee apps, chat and meeting tools, enterprise social networks, email, file storage and search, business applications such as HR and CRM, and the identity services that control access.
Who owns the digital workplace?
Usually no single team. IT or a digital workplace team owns the platforms, identity and security; internal communication owns news, the intranet and communities; HR and business units own their applications. A clear split of who decides what is part of a working strategy.
How do you know if a digital workplace is working?
Check whether important information reaches the people it was meant for. Measure reach against the intended audience, broken down by department, country and role, and count each person once across channels instead of adding up views from different tools.
Sources
Further reading
• The Digital Workplace Guide: Components, Ownership and the Decisions Nobody Wants to Make
• Digital Workplace Analytics: Decide the Data Model Before You Choose the Tool
• Measuring Cross-Channel Internal Communications
• The Best Digital Workplace Is the One People Actually Use
• Connecting the Digital Workplace to a Measurement Layer: The Three Joins That Decide Everything
If you want to see what cross-channel reporting looks like against your real data, Tryane runs a 15-minute walkthrough with no slides. Book a slot with Jérémy.