UK civil servants saved 26 minutes per day when using Microsoft 365 Copilot – equating to nearly two weeks of time annually – during a trial of 20,000 employees across 12 different government organisations.
The Government wants to target £45 billion in productivity savings annually across the public sector, with artificial intelligence (AI) tools central to its strategy.
M365 Copilot is an AI-powered assistant integrated into Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, offering context-aware suggestions and data-driven insights.
The results of the trial, which was the largest deployment of M365 Copilot in all organisations, have been published by the Government Digital Service (GDS). They show that more than 70 percent of users reported that Copilot reduced the time spent searching for information and performing routine tasks, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities. Furthermore, 82 percent of participants indicated they would prefer not to return to their pre-Copilot working conditions.
GDS reported that perceived user concerns with security and the handling of sensitive data led to reduced benefits in a minority of cases. Also, limitations were observed when dealing with complex, nuanced, or data-heavy aspects of work.
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However, user sentiment was “overwhelmingly positive,” with 82 percent expressing they would not want to return to their pre-Copilot working conditions.
“Users not only experienced time savings but also felt the tool represented a positive step forward for both themselves and their organisations. An additional insight was the positive impact on users with accessibility needs, indicating untapped potential in this area that warrants further exploration,” said GDS.
For specific tasks, M365 Copilot achieved the most significant time savings with content creation, and most often with drafting documents with savings of 24 minutes. Nineteen minutes of time savings were observed for creating presentations.
Teams was the most popular tool for M365 Copilot and remained dominant throughout the trail with a maximum adoption of 71 percent. Conversely, adoption within Excel and PowerPoint remained low, with highest achieved adoption of 23 percent and 24 percent respectively.
