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Claim check

“Copilot saves UK civil servants 26 minutes a day”

The figure is in the UK government’s report, but it is what users estimated, not time measured. It comes from one survey question with answers in ranges. HMRC, with licences given at random, put the estimate at about an hour a week. The Department for Business and Trade found no evidence that time saved led to higher productivity.

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The source exists, but the claim gets the year, the population or the wording wrong.

The claim

Microsoft 365 Copilot saves UK civil servants 26 minutes a day.

What the primary source says

The UK government ran a trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI assistant inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. About 20,000 staff in 12 organizations took part, from 30 September to 31 December 2024.

  • The figure. The report’s key finding says: “Trial participants saved an average of 26 minutes a day when using M365 Copilot.”
  • How it was worked out. Users were asked to estimate the average time Copilot saved them each day. They picked a range, from “none or less than 5 minutes” to “more than an hour”. The report took the middle of each range and counted the top range as 60 minutes. 7,115 users answered.
  • What the report says about it. “The time savings presented throughout are self reported.” The report adds that it could not find out how the time saved was spent.

What is wrong with the claim

  • “Saves” states a measurement. This was an estimate. Nobody timed the work. Users guessed, in ranges.
  • The ranges shape the average. Each answer was counted at the middle of its range, so the 26 minutes depends on how the ranges were drawn.
  • Two closer looks found less.
    • HMRC, the UK tax authority, gave 3,000 licences to staff picked at random. Its staff estimated they saved 2–3% of their working week, about 60 minutes a week. HMRC reduced self-reported savings by about 20%, because active users were likelier to answer.
    • The Department for Business and Trade timed some tasks for users and non-users. Some went faster and some slower. It found no evidence that time saved led to higher productivity.
  • Time saved is not time used. Even where staff save time, the trial could not say what they did with it.

For how to measure time saved in your own company, see measure time saved against a baseline.

What to cite instead

In a UK government trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot with about 20,000 staff from October to December 2024, users estimated in a survey that it saved them 26 minutes a day on average. The figure is self-reported, and two departments that evaluated the tool separately found smaller or unproven gains.

Sources

  1. UK Government Digital Service (2 June 2025). Microsoft 365 Copilot experiment: cross-government findings report. gov.uk
  2. HM Revenue & Customs (9 July 2026). Evaluating the impact of Microsoft Copilot in HMRC. Evaluation report, phase III trial. gov.uk
  3. UK Department for Business and Trade (August 2025). The evaluation of the M365 Copilot pilot in the Department for Business and Trade. Report. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk