Aberdeen City Council adopts Microsoft 365 Copilot, freeing staff capacity to better serve residents

Local governments around the world are increasingly adopting AI solutions to help free up staff capacity to better serve the populations in their care. This is especially true in today’s environment of budget cuts and workforce shortages. Aberdeen City Council in Scotland, a local government office of 8,000 employees, understands this issue well.

The spiked demand for healthcare, mental health, and housing services at the same time as significant budget cuts throughout the UK public sector, caused administrative overload for the Aberdeen City Council and strained its staff’s ability to meet the needs of its 230,000 residents.

Despite being the energy capital of Europe, Aberdeen has a pronounced wealth gap, creating ever-increasing demand for social services. With a reputation as a technology trailblazer, Andy MacDonald, Executive Director of Corporate Services for the Aberdeen City Council, looked to AI as a solution. He needed help relieving staff of their most repetitive and time-consuming daily tasks, such as the production of formal meeting minutes, reports, policy guidance documents, and translation services.

Supercharging staff productivity with Copilot

MacDonald turned to Microsoft 365 Copilot as a holistic, AI-driven solution that could help offload these tasks, freeing up workforce capacity to more responsively manage the care of residents. Already users of Microsoft 365, the Council had designated technology champions closely follow its tech adoption and change management processes to roll out Copilot to 700 users across its diverse portfolio of services.

“It has truly been a seamless process, with immediate productivity and capacity gains for staff serving urgent needs across mental health services and housing,” says MacDonald. “In fact, the credit goes to our tech champions, who call themselves the Copilot flight crew.” He added that it was their excitement about the use case advantages in using Copilot that inspired its fast, successful adoption by staff, driving improved outcomes in productivity, job satisfaction, and new initiative development.

“One of the exciting areas, for me, that emerged from our staff adoption and training is that our neurodivergent employees are now powerfully supported with Copilot capabilities,” says MacDonald. “It’s a lovely way that technology is truly adding value.”

Boosting job satisfaction and creativity

User surveys have documented average weekly time savings and usage. The Council is also capturing work productivity and job satisfaction metrics and how that links to increased levels of community engagement and satisfaction within service areas.

“We project a 241% ROI in time savings and improved productivity, saving an estimated $3 million in US dollars annually,” says MacDonald. “Staff capacity creation is always the driver for me, and Copilot adoption allows me to turn it into financial savings, too.”

MacDonald added that more efficient operations have the added benefit of redirecting staff time and talent toward new initiatives that directly benefit citizens. “In modernizing our systems with Microsoft, and using all available data points, we can even predict population harm and potentially divert a crisis before it happens,” says MacDonald.