Knight Frank is a leading global real estate consultancy with thousands of employees operating across multiple regions. It provides high-end residential and commercial property services, including sales, leasing, valuations, and advisory. In Australia, they operate with a significant network of over 25 offices, providing local expertise backed by a global footprint.
Client
Knight Frank
Service
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Enablement & Adoption
Organisation size
Large
Industry
Real Estate
Context
In late 2025, the organisation took a decisive step in its AI journey by enabling Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat in Microsoft Teams for its entire workforce, alongside a pilot of 30 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences for advanced users.
This move gave employees immediate access to generative AI for drafting content, finding information, and automating everyday tasks. However, Knight Frank recognised that simply switching Copilot Chat on would not guarantee value. To truly benefit from AI, employees needed the skills, confidence, and guardrails to use it responsibly and effectively.
With strong Microsoft 365 foundations already in place, including SharePoint Online as the organisation’s content backbone, and an internal enterprise AI platform in development, Knight Frank saw Copilot Chat as a critical step in building AI capability at scale.
To ensure adoption translated into measurable productivity and cultural change, Knight Frank engaged with Engage Squared & Choir Digital, to design and deliver a people-first Copilot Chat enablement program.
Challenge
Rolling out Copilot Chat enterprise-wide introduced several interconnected challenges:
- Low AI literacy and trust: Many employees were new to generative AI and sceptical of its reliability. Concerns around accuracy, bias, and over-reliance meant staff were unsure when Copilot could be trusted in real work scenarios.
- Risk, privacy, and responsible use: Leadership was particularly focused on ensuring safe AI use from day one. There were concerns about employees sharing confidential client data with public AI tools, as well as broader ethical and compliance risks if AI was used incorrectly.
- Adoption and change management: Without a clear adoption strategy, there was a real risk that Copilot Chat would see low or inconsistent usage. Early signals showed some teams continuing to experiment with public AI tools out of habit, creating shadow IT and security exposure.
- Mixed licensing and value perception: With most employees using Copilot Chat and only a small pilot group holding full Copilot licences, Knight Frank needed to ensure everyone could extract value, while also proving ROI to support future licensing decisions.
- Unclear, role-specific use cases: Finally, the organisation needed to move beyond generic AI demos and identify practical, high-value use cases aligned to commercial real estate roles – from analysts and agents to marketing and support teams.
Solution
Engage Squared designed and delivered a comprehensive Copilot Chat adoption and enablement program, combining structured change management, hands-on training, and ongoing support to drive meaningful, sustainable adoption.
Phase 1: Discovery & Planning
We worked closely with Knight Frank stakeholders to understand business priorities, user needs, and risk considerations. This phase produced a clear enablement roadmap and supporting collateral strategy. Through workshops and stakeholder interviews, we:
- Identified priority Copilot Chat use cases across roles and functions
- Surfaced employee concerns and knowledge gaps around AI
- Designed a tailored training and communications approach aligned to Knight Frank’s culture and industry
Phase 2: People Enablement & Training Delivery
Across two months we delivered 40 live training sessions to approximately 900 employees, using a mix of in-person and virtual formats to support a distributed workforce. This framework became a cornerstone of responsible AI use, reinforcing Copilot Chat as the approved, secure AI tool and discouraging reliance on public AI services. This included:
- Six role-based training streams, ensuring content and examples were directly relevant to different teams (analysts, support staff, sales, marketing, project teams, franchise offices, and more)
- Interactive 1-hour workshops featuring live Copilot Chat demos, real-world scenarios, prompt-writing best practices, and open Q&A
- Hands-on participation, with employees encouraged to use Copilot live during sessions to solve real tasks
To address trust, risk, and ethics, we co-developed a simple and memorable framework: “Be SAFE with AI”, covering:
- ‘Starts and Ends’ with a human to maintain human oversight
- Assure data privacy to protect client and company information
- Fact-check to verify AI outputs
- Ethics when using AI responsibly and without bias
To sustain momentum beyond training, the program also included:
- Bespoke Copilot Chat user guides and quick-reference cheat sheets
- Eight targeted SharePoint Online training sessions, strengthening the digital foundations Copilot relies on
- Six post-training drop-in clinics (“office hours”) for real-world questions, troubleshooting, and peer learning
- Strong executive sponsorship and internal communications, positioning Copilot as a strategic priority
Results
The Copilot Chat adoption program delivered strong outcomes across capability, culture, and productivity across five main themes:
Widespread adoption and confidence
- Over 900 employees were trained, creating enterprise-wide awareness and a strong base of AI-confident users
- Program participation was extremely high, with over 75% of the 1500 workforce attending at least one session
- Use of AI tools by program participants increased by 155% for engaged users of AI tools
- Survey data shows that employees are at least 20% more efficient when using AI for day-to-day tasks
- Significant uplift in trust and understanding of AI, with sceptical users becoming active advocates
- Employees now confidently discuss prompts, factchecking, and AI limitations as part of everyday work
Productivity and quality gains
Teams quickly began applying Copilot Chat to real tasks. These improvements delivered clear time savings, faster turnaround on deliverables, and improved consistency without compromising quality. These included:
- Drafting routine emails and documents in minutes instead of hours
- Summarising meetings and action items in real time
- Accelerating marketing content creation and research briefs
Stronger ROI and license value
- Copilot Chat usage increased significantly following training
- Pilot users with full Copilot licences became internal champions, showcasing advanced use cases
- Early results are informing Knight Frank’s broader Copilot investment strategy, helping justify future licence expansion
Safe, governed AI use
- Reduced reliance on public AI tools and shadow IT
- Employees now understand how to use AI securely
- The SAFE framework is being considered as a model for broader AI governance initiatives
Cultural impact
- Most importantly, the program shifted mindsets. Employees now feel more empowered, innovative, and confident experimenting with AI. Peer-led knowledge sharing has emerged organically, reinforcing long-term adoption and learning.
Final thoughts
By combining targeted enablement, clear guardrails, and practical, role-based training, Engage Squared helped Knight Frank transform Copilot Chat from a new feature into an everyday productivity tool. The organisation now has a workforce that is AI-literate, confident, and responsible, laying the foundation for future AI initiatives including its broader enterprise AI platform.
This engagement stands as a strong example of people-first AI adoption, where investment in change management and education delivers lasting business value.
