RCS England has seen clear, measurable productivity gains since introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot. Based on its pilot and early rollout: - 71% of employees reported an increase in productivity. - Average time savings are more than 2 hours per user, per week. - Some employees report saving up to 5 hours per week. - The organisation estimates cost savings of around £775 per user, per month. Employees are using Copilot across the Microsoft 365 suite to: - Transcribe and summarise meetings so they can focus on discussion instead of note-taking. - Quickly analyse and theme large volumes of data from workshops and collaborative sessions. - Draft and refine content in tools like PowerPoint and Excel without starting from scratch. These gains are not just about speed. Staff say Copilot helps them be more strategic with their time, stay present in meetings, and produce more accurate outputs, such as clearer minutes and action lists.

For RCS England, data protection and regulatory compliance were the biggest considerations when exploring AI tools. The organisation wanted employees to experiment with AI confidently, without increasing risk. They chose Microsoft 365 Copilot because: - It includes enterprise-grade data protection as part of the licence, so they did not need to invest in separate security tools. - It supports compliance with regulations such as GDPR, which was a key concern for a not-for-profit handling sensitive information. - Copilot works within the existing Microsoft 365 and Azure environment RCS England was already using, so it respects existing permissions and access controls. Leaders at RCS England highlight that this combination of built-in security, compliance alignment, and familiar tools made Copilot a practical way to reimagine how staff use AI, while still protecting organisational and customer data.

RCS England has taken an incremental, role-focused approach to adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot, starting small and expanding based on proven value. Adoption approach: - Began with a limited pilot across different business areas to identify which roles would benefit most. - Used Microsoft Forms to collect feedback and success stories, helping build an internal community of users. - Gradually extended licences to employees with heavy meeting, email, and admin workloads, such as administrators and directors. - Continued to scale as teams demonstrated clear time savings and productivity improvements. Practical use cases across the organisation include: - Meetings and collaboration: Copilot transcribes and summarises meetings, captures actions, and lets participants focus on discussion instead of typing notes. - Learning operations: The learning team uses Copilot to compare complex curricula with other documents or webpages, ensuring nothing is missed and improving the quality of outputs. - Feedback analysis: With over 1,500 student feedback forms each year, Copilot helps identify themes and trends in large volumes of text so services can be better aligned to student expectations. - Content creation and analysis: Staff use Copilot in Excel for formulas, in PowerPoint for content creation, and in Whiteboard for brainstorming and retrospectives. - Accessibility and inclusion: Copilot supports website language reviews for accessibility, flags accessibility issues in PowerPoint, and helps make job descriptions more gender-neutral. RCS England now plans to use Copilot Studio to build agents that will automate customer service, admin, and HR tasks, further reshaping how teams work while staying within a secure, compliant environment.