Imagine: an employee is looking for a document. Is it on SharePoint? In a Teams channel? On the shared drive? Or perhaps in an email attachment from three weeks ago?
It may seem like a small problem, but the impact is greater than many organisations realise. According to the Coveo EX Relevance Report 2025, knowledge workers spend an average of nearly three hours per day searching for information, switching between systems, and trying to identify the right context.
And that is only the beginning.
It starts with searching. It ends with frustration.
Time loss is the most visible cost of a fragmented digital workplace, but certainly not the greatest. When employees cannot find information quickly, it is not only their work that slows down. Communication, collaboration and decision-making also come under pressure.
Strategies that are clear at management level become fragmented along the way. Teams work alongside each other rather than together. Employees miss important updates, lose overview and feel less connected to their colleagues and the organisation.
Digital fragmentation is therefore not an IT problem. It is an organisational problem with consequences for productivity, engagement and, ultimately, retention.
Three hours per day. €600,000 per year.
Even with a conservative estimate of 30 minutes per week, the impact is considerable. For an organisation of 500 employees, this means:
0.5 hours × 48 weeks × €50 labour cost × 500 employees
= €600,000 per year
Capital that disappears into the search bar, rather than being invested in clients or innovation. It does not appear anywhere in your annual accounts – but it is there.
And time loss is only one part of the equation.
The Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025 indicates that employees spend an average of 57% of their working day on emails, chats and meetings. In organisations where information is spread across different systems and channels, this share is often even higher. Employees must follow up, verify and interpret the same information in multiple places.
The least visible cost is, however, often the greatest. When people structurally feel that they are missing information or are not up to date with what is happening, their engagement declines. This has a direct impact on motivation, performance and retention. Gallup mapped these effects again in the State of the Global Workplace Report 2026.
Nobody chose this. Yet here it is.
Digital fragmentation rarely arises from a single wrong decision.
It grows gradually. An organisation grows. New teams emerge. Departments create their own SharePoint sites, Teams channels or shared drives. Each choice is in itself logical and well-intentioned. But over time, the overview disappears.
The result is a digital workplace that has grown organically, but was never deliberately designed. A clear information architecture, a central knowledge structure and a shared way of working are all missing.
And it is precisely there that the real cost begins to become visible.
Take the test: Count how many channels and tools your organisation actively uses for internal communication and information storage. More than five? There is a good chance that information is becoming dispersed without anyone being aware of it.
The most common mistake
When organisations recognise digital fragmentation, they often reach for a new solution. A new intranet. An additional knowledge platform. Yet another communication hub.
But adding another tool does not solve a structural problem.
After a few months, there is simply one more system in which employees must search for information.
The cause of fragmentation is usually not a shortage of technology. It is a lack of architecture, governance and clear agreements about where information belongs.
Four pillars for a coherent digital workplace
Organisations that successfully address digital fragmentation do not do so by adding more technology. They build their digital workplace around four fundamental pillars that reinforce one another.
If even one of those pillars is missing, the whole loses its effectiveness.
Which four pillars those are, how they relate to one another, and where to start in order to achieve results quickly, is explained step by step by Walter Van Hecke in this whitepaper. You will also find a practical action plan to make progress without having to redesign your entire digital workplace at once.
In addition, you will find research results from McKinsey demonstrating the productivity gains organisations can achieve when information, communication and collaboration are better aligned.
How fragmented is your workplace today?
Answer five concrete questions and you will know within minutes. That self-assessment – plus the full cost analysis, the four-pillar framework and a concrete action plan to get started – can be found in the whitepaper “Everything is somewhere. Nothing is where it should be.”
Or calculate in 2 minutes what fragmentation is costing your organisation today with our free ROI calculator.
Doing nothing is also a decision. And it is one of the most costly decisions you can make. – Walter Van Hecke, Co-founder Involv Intranet
Sources: Coveo EX Relevance Report 2025 · Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025 · Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026 · McKinsey Global Institute, The Social Economy 2012
