Driving Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption: Public sector workforce saves 7,280 hours through change management
Our client is a major public sector organisation committed to improving how its people work, collaborate and deliver services to the communities they support. With a large and diverse workforce, our client is focused on modernising employee experiences, strengthening digital capability and unlocking new opportunities through responsible AI adoption.
Client
With held
Service
Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Dashboard
Organisation size
Large
Industry
Public sector
Context
Following an initial investment in Microsoft 365 Copilot, our client was ready to expand access across a significantly larger employee group and unlock greater productivity through modern ways of working. Early adoption had shown strong potential, but the organisation recognised that successful scale required more than assigning licences.
Engage Squared partnered with the client and Microsoft to support the next phase of Copilot adoption through a structured change and enablement program designed to establish clear foundation build confidence, strengthen governance and help employees apply Copilot in everyday work. We worked closely with the client to establish the foundations for scale, including governance, stakeholder alignment, delivery planning, refreshed learning collateral and clear adoption measures.
From discovery through to launch support and value realisation, Engage Squared delivered practical training, champion enablement, executive coaching, user feedback activities and adoption reporting to help employees confidently apply Copilot in their everyday work. This hands-on partnership helped embed Copilot into the organisation’s modern ways of working and created a sustainable path for continued adoption across the business.
Challenge
Our client had already invested in Microsoft 365 Copilot and was preparing to scale adoption to a much broader audience. The organisation’s priority was not simply to increase Copilot usage, but to ensure that adoption translated into practical and measurable business value.
As access expanded across the workforce, employees needed clear guidance on how Copilot could support real work patterns and deliver meaningful productivity improvements. Success would depend on moving users beyond awareness and experimentation towards consistent, repeatable use that translated the rollout into practical business value. Clear guidance on how Copilot could support real work patterns, including finding information, summarising meetings, drafting communications, analysing content and improving productivity in Microsoft 365 apps was imperative to the success of the roll out.
At the same time, several challenges needed to be addressed:
- Existing learning materials required updating to reflect the rapidly evolving Microsoft 365 Copilot capability.
- Delivery ownership and responsibilities needed to be coordinated across the client, Engage Squared and Microsoft.
- Leaders needed the confidence and capability to role model effective Copilot use.
- The organisation required a sustainable path into business-as-usual operations, including governance, adoption insights, community support and emerging guidance around Copilot agents.
Our client recognised that achieving long-term value would require a structured approach to change, enablement and adoption, not just technology deployment.
Solution
Engage Squared delivered a structured 12-week change and adoption program designed to build confidence, support launch activity and convert Copilot awareness into repeatable work habits. The engagement began with project kick-off and discovery to confirm governance, roles, responsibilities, audiences, success measures and the required collateral updates.
Establishing the foundations
The engagement commenced with discovery and planning activities to align governance, ownership, success measures, stakeholder groups and rollout objectives. Working closely with client stakeholders and Microsoft, Engage Squared developed a comprehensive engagement plan covering launch activities, enablement, communications and value realisation.
Making Copilot practical
To help employees understand how Copilot could support their day-to-day responsibilities, Engage Squared reviewed and refreshed learning collateral, quick reference guides and staff-facing resources.
Scenario-based training sessions focused on common work patterns, including:
- Creating and refining content
- Drafting communications
- Managing meetings and meeting recaps
- Finding information and organisational knowledge
- Analysing and summarising information
This practical approach ensured users could immediately connect Copilot capabilities to their own ways of working.
Activating leaders and champions
Recognising that adoption is driven by people as much as technology, Engage Squared established and supported a champion network across the organisation.
- Champions participated in onboarding sessions, enablement activities and ongoing support forums, helping drive peer-to-peer learning and knowledge sharing.
- Leadership enablement and executive coaching were also delivered to equip senior stakeholders to demonstrate effective Copilot usage and reinforce adoption throughout the organisation.
Reinforcing adoption and measuring value
To maintain momentum beyond launch, Engage Squared supported awareness and engagement activities through communications, Viva Engage campaigns, surveys, focus groups and adoption reporting. The engagement also introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot agents and emerging agent concepts, helping the organisation understand future opportunities while establishing the governance considerations needed to scale responsibly.
Results
The rollout demonstrated strong adoption and measurable value across the client’s scaled Copilot user base. In the final four-week reporting period, the client recorded 2,034 active users from 2,506 assigned licences, 158,813 Copilot actions, 7,280 hours saved and approximately $379K in value created. Based on the agreed assumptions, this represented a 3.64x licence return on investment for the reporting period. Copilot became embedded in common knowledge work patterns, with the strongest usage across Copilot Chat, Teams, Outlook and Word.
Users achieved measurable productivity gains through knowledge discovery, meeting recaps, email drafting, document summarisation and content creation. Post-rollout survey feedback showed strong sentiment, with 81.1% of respondents rating their experience as very good or excellent and 95.8% saying they would recommend a Copilot license to others. The program identified the next wave of value, including deeper enablement in Excel and PowerPoint, reusable prompt templates, stronger meeting recap habits, a formal champion and community model, and a governed pathway for agents. The recommendations report gave the client clear, prioritised actions to move from strong rollout adoption to scaled business value and sustainable business-as-usual ownership.
Final thoughts
Scaling Microsoft 365 Copilot successfully requires more than licence deployment. It requires practical enablement, strong leadership advocacy, community-driven adoption and a clear strategy for measuring value. Through a structured change and adoption program, Engage Squared helped our client move beyond early experimentation and establish Microsoft 365 Copilot as a trusted part of everyday work. The result was strong employee engagement, measurable productivity benefits and a clear foundation for future AI-led transformation.
