Senior employees have a better experience with Copilot than their early-career colleagues. Here's why

At the beginning of this year, the early access program to Microsoft 365 Copilot was launched. Within months, tens of thousands of people began using it as a regular part of their workday. And we learned something surprising: more experienced managers adapt to new technology more easily than their less experienced colleagues.

This wasn't what we expected. As Jared Spataro , Microsoft's vice president of Modern Work and Business Applications, noted, we assumed that less experienced workers would more easily adopt the new way of working. But it turns out that Copilot transforms anyone into a manager – and these skills are essential to getting the full value of the technology.

Of course, Copilot automates some of the more routine, mundane aspects of work by finding that deck a co-worker shared in a meeting the previous day. However, the greatest value for users comes from assigning Copilot more complex tasks, such as writing an email from scratch with a tone tailored to a specific audience, or analyzing a dataset and suggesting an appropriate visualization format.

In this sense, Copilot has the capabilities of a very well-skilled but novice employee. To realize its full potential, you need skills that most people develop as they grow into roles in which they manage the work of others.

You have to think like a manager.

These skills include

Dividing work into smaller parts
Assign work in a way that clearly defines expectations and provides the necessary context and parameters
Grading the work that comes in, reviewing it and offering feedback
Effective decision-making and task implementation

Senior leaders are typically more familiar with these management techniques than early-career employees, which means preparing an organization for generative AI is not about developing employees' technology skills. It's about developing ' human skills - basic leadership and management skills.

They need to be trained, offered guidance and, most importantly, given opportunities to lead, both formally and informally. This will be essential in the new era – and organizations that prepare their people will be the ones who reap the benefits.

Source: How Copilot Turns Everyone Into a Manager (microsoft.com)