Why Content Fixes Fail When Experience is the Problem
When organizations notice employee confusion around policies, benefits, or processes, the response is typically tactical.
Rewrite the article. Add a FAQ. Update the intranet page. Launch a new microsite.
These actions feel productive because they’re visible. But research across digital employee experience, knowledge management, and enterprise productivity consistently shows that content itself is rarely the root problem.
The problem is how content is experienced - especially in moments of uncertainty.
This often results in wasted time and money: knowledge workers spend nearly 20% of their workweek searching for information required to do their jobs effectively.
That’s not a writing problem. It’s an experience problem.
Content ≠ Experience
Understand this: content is an artifact. Experience is behavior.
Employees don’t evaluate content based on how well-written it is - unless they’re journalists and content creators. They evaluate content based on whether it helps them act with confidence.
Digital Workplace Group research shows that employees frequently know information exists, but still struggle to locate, interpret, or trust it quickly enough to act - especially when systems are fragmented and navigation is inconsistent.
This disconnect explains why organizations can:
invest heavily in content updates
improve accuracy and completeness
deploy new search tools…
…and still see:
repeated questions
low self-service adoption
Slack and email replacing search
This is because for employees, the experience hasn’t changed.
Why More Content Makes Things Worse
When experience issues surface, teams often publish more content in response. But if employees already struggle to find, contextualize, or trust existing content, adding volume increases cognitive load.
Research on enterprise search shows that traditional keyword-based search fails when content is scattered across systems with inconsistent metadata and ownership.
In practice, this means employees:
guess where information lives
open multiple tabs
cross-check answers
ask colleagues “just to be safe”
The Silent Failure Mode
Through your own experience, we’re sure you’ve realized that experience failures don’t trigger alerts.
They show up as:
hesitation
workarounds
informal knowledge sharing
reduced trust in official systems
Ivanti’s Digital Employee Experience research shows that organizations often believe their digital tools are effective while employees report daily friction that erodes confidence over time.
This gap explains why content fixes feel like they should work, but don’t.
Why It Matters → Action
Before fixing content, understand how employees experience it:
Where do they hesitate?
Where do they bypass systems?
Where do they ask for confirmation?
Until the experience is understood, content execution is guesswork.
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If our perspective resonates with you, The Employee Content Experience Playbook goes deeper into how employees actually experience content and why most organizations misdiagnose the problem.
It’s designed to reframe thinking, not prescribe solutions.
