Microsoft lets bosses spot teams that are dodging Copilot

Microsoft is adding Copilot adoption benchmarks to Viva Insights, a tool that lets managers monitor teams to spot those that are gulping down the AI Kool-Aid fastest.

Viva Insights is Microsoft's vaguely creepy monitoring tool, designed to slurp data from employee activities, verfiying how their teams stack up against everyone else in their own organization and at other corporations.

Since one of the uses of the tool is to track productivity through metrics, it is inevitable that Microsoft would add benchmarks for the adoption of Copilot.

Microsoft has repeatedly insisted that the tool is a boon for productivity, even if some customers are not so sure.

The rollout of Benchmarks in the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard allows cohorts to be compared based on company manager types, regions, and job functions in terms of the percentage of active Copilot users, adoption by app, and return a percentage value.

"The cohort result looks at the role composition of the selected group, and constructs a weighted average expected result based on matching roles across the tenant," Microsoft said.

It will also be possible to compare an organization's percentage of active Copilot users with other companies. The numbers are calculated using randomized mathematical models, according to Microsoft, so no one company's data is used, and it isn't possible to work out who is in the benchmark against which your own company's Copilot adoption is being measured.

According to Microsoft, an "active Copilot user" is one who "performed an intentional action for an AI-powered capability in Copilot within Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (work), Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, or Loop."

It makes sense to track Copilot use - those licenses aren't cheap - but benchmarking adoption may be seen by some as a step too far for something still struggling to prove its worth, especially with the risk of turning it into a leaderboard game.

Microsoft has been coming up with ever more creative ways of increasing Copilot adoption in recent weeks. Earlier this month, it announced it would allow users to bring their own Copilot licenses into the workplace, raising the specter of shadow IT.

Curiously, the benchmarking does not currently break out personal Copilot usage from licenses bought by employers or employee. Rather, "these insights help identify adoption trends and provide broader context and new opportunities to improve Copilot engagement," according to Microsoft.

For now, the benchmarks are only available to private preview customers. Microsoft said they will roll out to all customers later in October. ®