Across government, Microsoft 365 Copilot is moving from pilot to wider rollout. The expectation is clear: improved productivity, better quality outputs, and more efficient ways of working. And in many cases, those benefits are real.
But what’s also becoming clear is that simply giving people access to Copilot doesn’t automatically change how work gets done.
In most organisations, the pattern looks familiar. People try Copilot once or twice. The results are reasonable, but not remarkable. Then they go back to writing emails, creating documents, and running meetings in the way they always have.
The issue isn’t that Copilot can’t help; it’s that people aren’t always confident in how to use it. That uncertainty shows up in different ways.
Lisa Taillard, director of Change, Adoption and Learning at Hitachi Solutions
- Am I using it properly?
- Can I trust what it’s giving me?
- Is this actually saving me time?
Without clear answers, people hesitate. And when they hesitate, they disengage.
What we’ve seen from published government pilots is that adoption isn’t about capability, it’s about confidence.
Where organisations invested in helping people understand where Copilot fits into their day-to-day work, adoption was significantly stronger. Not just in terms of usage, but in the quality of outcomes as well. Because people didn’t just experiment; they integrated it into how they worked.
That shift matters because it changes how work gets done. It moves people away from starting from scratch and towards guiding, reviewing, and refining. Something that only happens when people trust it enough to use it properly.
To help with trust, we encourage organisations to be upfront about the realities of Copilot.
Copilot is very effective for certain tasks, including summarising meetings, drafting content, and structuring information. But AI is less effective where nuance, judgement, or complex context is required and not communicated. When expectations aren’t set clearly, that gap can lead to frustration.
The organisations seeing the most value are the ones that are clear about both sides, the strengths and limitations, and they support their people accordingly.
They also treat adoption as an ongoing process. Not a single training session, but a process of building habits, sharing examples, and learning over time. This is where most of the real work sits.
Because once people understand how to use Copilot in the context of their own role, it becomes less of an experiment and more of a normal part of how they get things done. That’s when value starts to build.
I’ll explore this in more detail in my upcoming webinar, looking at what published government pilots teach us about Copilot adoption, and what organisations can do to embed it effectively into everyday work.
Mastering M365 Copilot Adoption: Lessons from Government Pilots
Thursday 30th April 2026 | 12:30 PM – 13:15 PM
Online (Microsoft Teams)
Register here