--- title: "UK trials put Copilot's saving at 12 to 43 minutes a day; the stricter, the lower" summary: "Four UK public-sector Copilot trials and an NBER study of 5,179 support agents: what AI measurably saved a team, and who gained most. As of September 2026." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/benefits-artificial-intelligence-growing-startups format: Note desk: "AI in the enterprise" published: 2025-04-01 facts_checked: 2026-09-30 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["AI","Microsoft 365 Copilot","productivity","UK government trials","NBER","SMB","startups","DPDP"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/benefits-artificial-intelligence-growing-startups.png --- # UK trials put Copilot's saving at 12 to 43 minutes a day; the stricter, the lower *Four UK public-sector Copilot trials and an NBER study of 5,179 support agents: what AI measurably saved a team, and who gained most. As of September 2026.* Note · AI in the enterprise · By TechBag · Published 2025-04-01 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/benefits-artificial-intelligence-growing-startups The best-measured benefit of workplace AI is a few minutes a day, and the number shrinks as the measurement gets stricter: 43 minutes when NHS staff reported it, 12 when HMRC trimmed its own survey answers.[1] [4] The 2023 original of this piece asked what AI could do for a growing business and answered with consultancy percentages. By September 2026 there is better evidence: large trials with thousands of users, some of them against a group that did not get the tool. ## Four trials, four answers The UK government has run the largest public trials of Microsoft 365 Copilot. The NHS put it in front of more than 30,000 staff in 90 organisations and reported an average of 43 minutes a day saved.[1] The Government Digital Service gave it to 20,000 civil servants in 12 organisations from September to December 2024 and reported 26 minutes a day, from users’ own estimates.[2] The Department for Work and Pensions compared 1,716 users with 2,535 colleagues who had no licence and found 19 minutes.[3] HMRC allocated 3,000 licences at random, cut its staff’s self-reported savings by about 20% for optimism, and landed on roughly 60 minutes a week.[4] **Figure: The more carefully a UK department measured Copilot, the fewer minutes it found** *Average time saved per user per working day with Microsoft 365 Copilot, minutes, UK public-sector trials reported June 2025 to July 2026* NHS, 30,000+ staff reported; method unpublished 43 min Government Digital Service, 20,000 self-reported, no comparison group 26 min DWP, users vs non-users compared with 2,535 non-users 19 min HMRC, random allocation self-reports cut by about 20% 12 min | | Value (min) | | --- | --- | | NHS, 30,000+ staff | 43 | | Government Digital Service, 20,000 | 26 | | DWP, users vs non-users | 19 | | HMRC, random allocation | 12 | Source: DHSC; Government Digital Service; DWP evaluation as reported by The Register; HMRC evaluation · as of 30 September 2026 · HMRC's 60 minutes a week divided by five working days. Methods differ; the order is the point, not the gap between bars ReportedReported The NHS report’s methodology was not published with the figure; Office Watch, reviewing it in September 2026, put the report’s own “4 hours a month” at about 12 minutes a working day.[5] ## Who gains most: the newest people The strongest controlled evidence is outside the office suite. Erik Brynjolfsson and colleagues followed 5,179 customer-support agents as a generative-AI assistant was rolled out: issues resolved per hour rose 14% on average and 34% for novice and low-skilled agents.[6] That is the benefit a growing business should care about. It hires faster than it can train, and the tool narrows the gap between the person who joined last month and the one who has done the job for years. TechBag countTechBag count Our earlier version cited seven firms (Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, McKinsey, Forrester, KPMG and BCG) and six percentages, from 20% to 50%. None named a report or a date, so none could be checked, and all are dropped here. Our view Our view: run your own DWP-style test. Give the assistant to five people, leave five doing the same work without it, and compare output on two named tasks for one quarter. What a seat costs in each suite is set out in our [note on SMB and enterprise AI prices](https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/unleashing-power-ai-smbs-can-compete-big); twelve minutes a day is about four hours a month, which is the number to set against it. **In India**, the suite assistants are listed in USD; bought through an Indian reseller the invoice is in INR plus 18% GST, and imported directly the GST falls on you under reverse charge.[7] Prompts and the documents they draw on carry customer and employee names, so they are personal data under the DPDP Act: the Rules were notified on 13 November 2025 and the security-safeguard and breach-notice duties apply from 13 May 2027.[8] CERT-In’s Directions of 28 April 2022 already require a reportable incident, including a compromised AI-enabled account, to be reported within six hours.[9] How we did this Figures as of 30 September 2026 Minutes are each trial’s headline average per user per working day, as published by the department or, for DWP, as reported by The Register from its evaluation. HMRC published about 60 minutes a week; the 12 minutes a day is TechBag arithmetic (60 ÷ 5). The trials differ in method, population and dates, so the chart ranks them by rigour rather than comparing them as like for like. The Department for Business and Trade’s trial, which reported no clear productivity gain without a minutes figure, is not charted. The statistics in the 2023 original were counted, not verified. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [Department of Health and Social Care, Major NHS AI trial delivers unprecedented time and cost savings (30,000+ staff, 90 organisations, 43 minutes a day)](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-nhs-ai-trial-delivers-unprecedented-time-and-cost-savings) — 21 October 2025 2. [Government Digital Service, Microsoft 365 Copilot Experiment: Cross-Government Findings Report (20,000 staff, 12 organisations, 30 September to 31 December 2024)](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/microsoft-365-copilot-experiment-cross-government-findings-report) — 2 June 2025 3. [The Register, DWP finds Copilot saves civil servants 19 minutes a day (1,716 users, 2,535 non-users, October 2024 to March 2025)](https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/04/dwp_finds_copilot_saves_civil/) — 4 February 2026 4. [HMRC, Evaluating the impact of Microsoft Copilot in HMRC (3,000 randomly allocated licences; about 60 minutes a week after a 20% adjustment)](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-report-phase-3-trial-of-microsoft-copilot/evaluating-the-impact-of-microsoft-copilot-in-hmrc) — 9 July 2026 5. [Office Watch, Copilot saves “43 minutes a day”? The real number is 12](https://office-watch.com/2026/copilot-43-minutes-a-day-nhs-claim/) — 2 September 2026 6. [Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, Generative AI at Work, NBER Working Paper 31161 (5,179 agents; +14% on average, +34% for novice and low-skilled workers)](https://www.nber.org/papers/w31161) — April 2023, revised November 2023 7. [India Briefing, Digital services in India: OIDAR, GST applicability and reverse charge](https://www.india-briefing.com/news/tax-digital-services-oidar-in-india-gst-applicability-and-compliance-22465.html) — updated 29 September 2023 8. [Legismith Partners, DPDP Rules 2025 commencement timeline](https://legismith.com/dpdp-rules-2025-timeline/) — Rules notified 13 November 2025 9. [CERT-In, Directions under section 70B(6) of the IT Act, 2000 (six-hour reporting)](https://www.cert-in.org.in/PDF/CERT-In_Directions_70B_28.04.2022.pdf) — 28 April 2022 Related on TechBag: the [Microsoft Copilot page](https://www.thetechbag.com/microsoft/microsoft-copilot) covers what a pilot should measure; the [data security posture guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/data-security-privacy/dspm) covers the tools that find over-shared files before an assistant does. **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [Microsoft Copilot](https://www.thetechbag.com/microsoft/microsoft-copilot) — what a Copilot pilot should measure, and the licence it needs - [Data security posture management guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/data-security-privacy/dspm) — find over-shared files before an assistant answers from them