What are your thoughts on Windows Copilot? Are you considering it in your org?

Sure Mark - it was a successful pilot and we are now planning a production project. Here are a few key learnings and outcomes:

Benefits Definition - we defined the following as key measures

1. ROI – how many hours saved using Copilot

2. A usefulness rating for the most common Copilot use cases

3. Positive impact to productivity, wellbeing and/or work life balance

4. Any potential duplicate functionality/licenses that could be removed

5. Improves work life for people with a disability or where English is their second language

#1 ROI – how many hours saved using Copilot: 

- Low value: 20% of staff (n=230) saved 5-10 mins per day. Executive assistants, Comms, L&D, Change and administrators topped this category.

- Medium value: 62% saved 11mins to 1 hour per day. Executives, managers, and people with a disability topped this list.

- High value: 16.5% saved 1+ hours per day. Project managers, people with English as a second language and people leaders topped this list.

Based on these results, we removed the low value category and calculated an average of $10,483 per person per annum. We used actual salaries.

#2 A usefulness rating for the most common Copilot use cases

In order of most useful: Teams Recap, Word, Outlook, Teams In-meeting prompting, Teams Chat, PowerPoint

Least useful: Excel (too immature for advanced Excel users but will likely improve over time), Loop (just because it is new and not integrated into people's workflow but I think it has great potential for team-based collaboration generally - better than OneNote put it that way), OneNote and Whiteboard

#3 Positive impact to productivity, wellbeing and/or work life balance

BACKGROUND

34% of staff are regularly working overtime – Executives, Managers and Project Managers top the list

46% of staff have to work overtime on certain occasions – Project Managers top the list, with Managers, Communications/ Change/Education next

Not easily finding information is the top obstacle to productivity with having inefficient meetings coming in second

47% of staff spend 3-4 hours in meetings per day. The more time spent in meetings, the less time spent on actionable activities.

SURVEY

- Staff opinions were strong towards adopting AI for both productivity and wellbeing. Staff agree or strongly agree:

88% - AI needs to be adopted in the department to improve productivity

76% - AI needs to be adopted in the department to improve wellbeing

13% - AI is going to take my job in the future

- Broadly, Copilot had a positive impact on productivity and reduced time to execute certain tasks, especially drafting Microsoft Office-based communications



Department Results (n=230)



Microsoft Global Baseline

helps get to a good first draft faster



92%



85%

helps improve productivity



87%



80%

wish it could do more for them



73%



-

saves time on mundane tasks



73%



71%

helps make work more enjoyable



65%



-

helps focus with important work



64%



67%

- Copilot had a positive impact on creativeness and helped more than 80% of participants to generate new ideas and jump start their creative processes

- Although less of an impact in the work-life balance area, Copilot still produced a positive outcome in reducing workloads and over 60% agreed the ability to use AI would be a factor in their future workplace choice. Staff agree or strongly agree:

61% - the ability to use AI technologies would affect their choice of future workplace

56% - helps reduce their workload

35.7% - improved work life balance

# 4 Any potential duplicate functionality/licenses that could be removed

This will vary per organisation but recommend looking at overlap between existing paid tools e.g. Miro Vs MS Whiteboard.

# 5 Improves work life for people with a disability or where English is their second language

24 participants speak English as a second language

The vast majority of them saved at least 30 minutes of time per day with Copilot

The average annual productivity saving across this group is $9024 (per annum)

ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

Most benefited from:

helps focus on important work

spending less time processing email

getting first drafts faster

saves time on mundane tasks

being more productive overall

DISABILITY

16 participants have a disability

The vast majority of them saved at least 30 minutes of time per day with Copilot

The average annual productivity saving across this group is $8223 (per annum)

 

Most benefited from:

getting first drafts faster

helping to generate ideas for writing

jump starting the creative process

being more productive overall

Key Learnings:

- We made each participant go through 5 hours of mandatory training. It appeared excessive to some individuals at the start but they changed their mind by the end.

- Data security is a problem. Copilot does not allow access to more files but if you have historically poor processes around granting data access then you'll have more cleanup to do prior - and determining the inflection point for risk mitigation Vs acceptance.

- Microsoft Copilot for Office is built into Microsoft Office. Staff who do not use Office regularly e.g. they specialise in a business application (e.g. spatial) or are rarely in front of a computer (e.g. field staff) will gain limited value from this technology and are unlikely to return reasonable productivity or wellbeing benefits, regardless of their role or function. This is because not only do you need to be using the Office products regularly, but you also need to make a mindset change that gets embedded into a regular routine.

- At this stage Excel Copilot functionality is limited and verbal and training feedback indicated it would be one of the least useful functions. This subsequently indicates staff who use Excel most of the day, are unlikely to see a major benefit until the product is improved.