pladis Employees Save Over 12 Hours Per Month with Microsoft 365 Copilot

Headquartered in London, pladis is a global snacking brand with over 180 years of baking heritage. The company employs around 16,000 people and reaches consumers in more than 110 markets worldwide. With its simple purpose to bring happiness with every bite, pladis aims to deliver on this promise at a global scale by finding smarter ways to support teams.

However, the business faced a challenge: colleagues spent hours each week on routine tasks such as drafting content, summarizing documents, and building reports. This not only wasted time but also hindered creativity, collaboration, and decision-making. To address this issue, pladis needed a structured and measurable way to help teams work more efficiently.

In 2025, the company set out to deliver a comprehensive approach to reshape everyday work, building skills and confidence in AI technology. At the heart of its strategy was Microsoft 365 Copilot, which brought AI directly into existing workflows such as Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Rather than positioning AI as an experimental add-on, pladis made it a practical productivity accelerator.

The ‘Steal Back 10 Hours’ program was launched to help colleagues reclaim time lost to mundane tasks. The initiative paired hands-on training with careful measurement of the productivity gains each participant achieved. Its goal was to reinvest this reclaimed time in strategic and critical thinking. With an eight-week program, pladis aimed to accelerate adoption and drive measurable results.

Through its partnership with Mindworks, a Microsoft partner, pladis delivered training and masterclasses alongside Microsoft 365 Copilot. The company’s Head of Digital Technology, Merve Gülşen, emphasized the importance of surrounding AI technology with people: ‘We had to find a great partner.’ This approach kept momentum high and prevented sessions from being derailed by highly technical questions.

The program was designed for HR, finance, procurement, marketing, R&D, and operations teams. Colleagues were encouraged to draft content faster, summarize meetings and long documents in seconds, analyze data more efficiently, and strip out repetitive administration. The goal was not only to save time but also to build confidence in AI technology.

The results were impressive: of the 70 colleagues trained, 48 completed all masterclasses and reported a significant productivity gain. Together, they saved an estimated 580 hours per month, averaging just over 12 hours each. Some colleagues even reported saving up to 20 hours per month. At Carlisle, the safety agent alone saved around 800 hours per year.

The impact was not limited to individual productivity gains; it also led to a shift in mindset across teams. What began with hesitation became genuine enthusiasm for AI technology. Employees started identifying new use cases and advocating for its adoption across departments. This change in culture was just as important as the numbers, proving that the tooling had been successfully integrated.

The company’s Vice President of Data, AI, and Digital Transformation, Nataliya Otluoglu, highlighted the importance of using AI to eliminate repetitive work: ‘We use AI to help eliminate repetitive work and give our people more time to focus on strategic and critical thinking at pladis.’ The Copilot technology enhanced how employees worked today.

Pladis is now scaling its enterprise-wide adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot, expanding it to new cohorts, regions, and functions. The company aims to unlock end-to-end capabilities with AI technology, rather than focusing on individual tasks. This approach will help pladis increase productivity while maintaining its heritage and agility.

The company’s focus is on increasing AI literacy across the organization and modernizing how work is done today without losing what makes it distinctive. As Otluoglu emphasized: ‘Our focus is to increase AI literacy across the organization and modernize how we work today without losing what makes us distinctive and agile.’

Pladis’ experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot serves as a model for other organizations looking to integrate AI technology into their workflows. By surrounding AI with people, providing training and support, and measuring productivity gains, companies can unlock the full potential of this powerful tool.

The company’s commitment to innovation is evident in its willingness to experiment with new technologies like Microsoft 365 Copilot. As Gülşen noted: ‘There was a fear around AI.’ Now, pladis has turned it into a completely positive environment.