3 ways to evolve your digital culture in 2025

Last month, in the heart of our new London Paddington headquarters, we met with industry leaders to kick off the 24th Customer Innovation Forum (CIF).

CIF offers a safe space for candid conversation between senior leaders about the opportunities and challenges UK organisations are facing.

The dominant theme this time: with the pace of technological change so fast, there is a risk that businesses are losing out on the full opportunities of tech.

So what can be done to ensure you’re staying ahead in 2025?

Watch the video below to hear some thoughts we captured live on the day and read on to explore the key advice from our knowledge-sharing event.

AI remains, of course, a hot topic. We know that it is having a huge impact on the technology landscape and that the pace of change is only getting faster.

In our digital culture report we explored how, although most businesses class themselves as digital leaders, almost none of them increased or improved their use of digital technology between 2021 and 2023, missing out on an £111 billion economic opportunity.

Ant Morse, Futurist and Technology Consultant, explained that organisations are still finding it tricky to unlock that opportunity, particularly when it comes to finding practical use cases for new tech like AI and the concerns around a lack of structured tech regulation and data security.

Overcoming these challenges is about getting the basics right. For example, a hybrid workforce can’t make the most of AI tools if your organisation isn’t fully implemented into the cloud to allow for seamless data sharing.

And data security can be compromised by old and outdated legacy tech that doesn’t have the same level of support, a particular concern for small businesses who can’t afford costly setbacks.

Without overcoming these basic challenges, the opportunities presented by tech can be lost, with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) missing out the most.

SMEs would have seen a proportionally greater increase in turnover than large businesses if they had capitalised on the opportunity of digital culture, according to our SME findings.

So whatever size your organisation, work with a digital partner to review your tech stack and ensure your infrastructure is capable of keeping up with the pace of change. With a strong foundation, you’ll find it easier to keep abreast of new innovations.

New tools, new ways of working, and new places to work from: employees in 2025 have a lot to contend with. A dispersed workforce facing these challenges remotely can hold employees back from development.

Technology can solve these problems, but without the right culture the opposite is also true – it can be at the root of them.

That’s because employees who don’t feel properly equipped or empowered to use technology can get frustrated or resistant to change.

At the forum, we discussed how a culture of resilience can help with ensuring employees have the right skills and mindset to try new tools and get the most out of their tech.

As Bruce Daisley, Workplace Culture Expert explained, at the heart of a culture of resilience is what’s known as ‘psychological safety’ – the ability to speak freely and openly without fear of retribution.

Teams with high psychological safety outperform all others, according to Google.

Or, as Bruce put it, ‘The best teams weren’t the ones that made the fewest mistakes. They were the ones who admitted the most mistakes.’

This can be especially true for large enterprises, who are naturally dealing with workplace culture on a larger and more complex scale.

Large digital leaders secured the most growth throughout 2021-2023, according to our large enterprise findings. But the most commonly cited barrier for large organisations with weak digital culture was ‘cultural change’.

To counter this, leaders should focus on building a culture that is open, honest and transparent and listen to your employees to ensure they have what they need to feel comfortable.

An environment where employees can fail and learn on their own terms? That’s where technology can really help your organisation thrive.