From Copilot Rollout to AI Workplace: Adoption, Agents & Real Business Value with Christoffer Besler Hansen [MVP]

Microsoft 365 Copilot has moved beyond the question of “What can generative AI do?” The harder challenge is now turning AI into something thousands of employees actually use, trust, and derive measurable business value from. In this episode of M365 FM, Mirko Peters talks with Microsoft MVP Christoffer Besler Hansen, Head of AI Workplace at Atea Group, about what it takes to move from a Copilot rollout to a genuine AI-powered workplace. Drawing on experience supporting AI adoption across more than 8,000 employees, Christoffer shares lessons on Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption, training, agents, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, governance, security, extensibility, FinOps, and measuring business value.

WHAT IS AN AI WORKPLACE?
An AI workplace is much broader than simply giving employees Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. At Atea, the AI Workplace team is responsible for how more than 8,000 users incorporate AI into their daily work. Microsoft Copilot is a major component, but the strategy also includes Copilot Studio, agentic AI, Foundry, experimentation with other technologies, and—critically—continuous user adoption. The objective is not to deploy one AI product. It is to change how people work with information, applications, and business processes.

TECHNOLOGY MOVES FAST. PEOPLE NEED TIME.
New AI models and capabilities can appear every week. Human working habits don't change at the same speed. Christoffer explains why organizations need to spend substantial effort helping employees feel comfortable changing established workflows. At Atea, this includes training throughout the year, sometimes every other week, with sessions designed for different audiences such as managers, consultants, salespeople, beginners, and advanced users. AI adoption therefore isn't a launch event. It is an ongoing organizational capability.

BUYING 5,000 COPILOT LICENSES ISN'T A STRATEGY
What should happen after an organization purchases thousands of Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses? According to Christoffer, the organization first needs to determine why it purchased them. What is the objective? What should employees accomplish differently? How will the organization support adoption? How will success be measured? Simply assigning licenses and expecting employees to teach themselves isn't enough. Employees already have jobs to perform and cannot realistically follow every weekly change across rapidly evolving AI products.

WHY EARLY COPILOT ADOPTION OFTEN DROPS
AI naturally generates curiosity. When users initially received Copilot without structured adoption support, Christoffer observed strong engagement for approximately the first four weeks. Employees experimented with the technology. But when they struggled to turn those experiments into new working habits, usage declined. After structured training was introduced, users were more likely to continue using Copilot over time—and began asking for additional training as the products evolved. Initial excitement gets people through the door. Continuous education helps keep them there.

HOW DO YOU MEASURE COPILOT ROI?
One of the hardest enterprise AI questions is determining whether Copilot is actually creating value. Usage alone isn't enough. An employee opening Copilot 50 times doesn't necessarily mean the organization has become more productive. Christoffer argues that organizations need to identify what matters to their particular business and then measure whether AI improves those outcomes. That could include completing work faster, handling more customer cases, improving quality, or increasing business capacity.

MEASURE OUTPUT, NOT JUST AI USAGE
One example discussed in the episode involves an employee who previously handled two cases simultaneously but could use AI to work across six while still receiving better customer feedback. That represents something more meaningful than a Copilot usage statistic. The...