Employees’ Reflections on Trust and Autonomy in AI-Mediated Work: Insights from Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption in a multinational corporation

This chapter examines employee attitudes towards a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) productivity tool, Microsoft 365 Copilot, with a focus on the relationship between trust and autonomy. Drawing on a survey that combined measures of trust, autonomy, confidence, and delegation with qualitative reflections on AI-mediated work practices, the study shows that confidence provides the foundation for trust, and trust supports task delegation. Autonomy appears both as a precondition for engaging with AI-enabled tools and as an outcome associated with the redistribution of routine work. Qualitative insights indicate that employees developed trust through continual calibration, retaining authorship and oversight to safeguard professional standards and interpretative authority. The results depict a dynamic cycle linking confidence, trust, delegation, and autonomy, influenced by organisational clarity, training provision, and data governance. The study identifies ethical and organisational considerations required for sustainable GenAI adoption and highlights the need for future research on work identity, competence, and meaningful work.