The Salvation Army UK and Ireland uses Microsoft 365 Copilot as a practical assistant embedded in the tools staff already rely on—Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Word, and Excel. In day-to-day work, staff use Copilot to: - Draft and refine reports that previously took hours, now often completed in minutes. - Summarize long documents and case notes so employees can quickly get to the key points. - Translate emails and documents into target languages to better support diverse communities. - Rewrite content in simpler language, including versions suitable for children or people with lower literacy levels. - Jumpstart ideas for complex projects, helping staff structure their thinking and plan work more effectively. - Support the legal team in reviewing policies and aligning them with current legislation. - Help communications teams quickly create donor updates, event briefs, and other stakeholder communications. Because Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365, staff don’t have to switch tools or copy content into external systems. It becomes a natural part of how they write, review, and search for information, especially when workloads are heavy or deadlines are tight.

Before adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot, The Salvation Army UK and Ireland faced several connected challenges: 1. **Scattered information and hard-to-find documents** - The organization operates through more than 650 corps and community centers across the UK and Ireland, supporting hundreds of thousands of people each year. - Even after moving from legacy N-drives to Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online, staff still struggled to find the right forms, policies, and documents quickly. - Frontline teams, in particular, were spending too much time navigating multiple systems instead of focusing on people. 2. **Heavy administrative workload** - Staff were overwhelmed by tasks like writing reports, capturing case notes, and preparing documentation. - This slowed down decision-making and added stress, especially in areas like housing, food assistance, employment support, addiction recovery, modern slavery helplines, and emergency response. 3. **Shadow AI and data risk** - A security audit found that employees were using nearly 200 different shadow AI tools to cope with their workload. - This created risks around data integrity, privacy, and compliance. Microsoft 365 Copilot helped address these issues by: - **Centralizing and surfacing knowledge**: Copilot works across Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, and other Microsoft 365 apps to make existing content easier to search, summarize, and reuse. - **Reducing time per task**: Staff report saving hours on tasks like report writing and document preparation, with some reports now turned around in about five minutes. - **Lowering stress and cognitive load**: Employees describe Copilot as taking a “weight off their shoulders,” especially when dealing with complex or time-sensitive work. - **Reducing reliance on shadow tools**: By providing a trusted, organization-wide AI solution, The Salvation Army can regain control over data, reduce complexity, and improve security. Overall, Copilot helps the organization rethink how work gets done, so staff can spend more time on human connection and less on manual administration.

The Salvation Army UK and Ireland took a deliberate, people-focused approach to introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot, with an emphasis on trust, learning, and responsible use. Key elements of their adoption strategy included: 1. **Start with a focused early adopter group** - They began with around 150 early adopters rather than a big-bang rollout. - This group received targeted training, “promptathons,” and one-on-one guidance to help them experiment and see where Copilot could genuinely help. 2. **Address concerns openly** - Leadership and the Microsoft 365 team acknowledged staff concerns about privacy and fears that AI might replace jobs. - The message was clear: Copilot is there to support people in their existing roles, helping them work more efficiently and effectively, not to remove the human element. 3. **Focus on real ‘aha’ moments** - Rather than pushing usage, the team created opportunities for staff to discover value themselves. - When employees saw tasks that used to take hours completed in minutes, or felt a complex task become manageable, they began to ask for access on their own. - These positive experiences helped shift skeptics into advocates. 4. **Leverage a Microsoft Center of Excellence** - The rollout was guided by an internal Microsoft Center of Excellence that regularly collaborates with Microsoft. - This group helped shape the strategic integration of Copilot, ensuring it aligned with the organization’s mission, data governance, and security requirements. 5. **Plan for the future with clear principles** - The organization is now exploring AI agents using tools like Copilot Studio—for example, a volunteer chatbot, an agent that flags high-risk case notes, and AI-generated impact reports. - Throughout, they are anchoring AI use in principles of clarity, compassion, and usefulness, ensuring technology supports their mission of practical, person-centered care. By combining structured governance with hands-on experimentation, The Salvation Army has been able to reimagine workflows with AI while maintaining trust, compliance, and a strong focus on human service.