SACE: Giving Employees Control of Their Time and Wellbeing
How Italy's financial services firm used Copilot and Viva to transition from a traditional "command and control" culture to a flexible, outcome-based workplace—saving hours per week and boosting satisfaction.
1The Challenge
Until recently, SACE's culture was traditional and hierarchical, typical of many state-run institutions. Employees spent excessive time on low-value transactional tasks, approvals, and "controlling" activities rather than outcomes.
- •Rote Work: Risk analysts spent hours just locating documents before starting actual analysis.
- •Meeting Overload: Large, unproductive meetings and excessive email management (7.2 hours/week).
- •Lack of Autonomy: A "command and control" structure with 7 hierarchy layers stifled agility and psychological safety.
2The Solution
SACE launched a radical "Flex4Future" transformation, decentralizing decision-making and betting on wellbeing and productivity. They deployed Microsoft Copilot alongside the Viva Suite (Insights, Glint, Pulse, Engage) to drive adoption and measure impact.
Data-Driven Cohorts
Used Viva Insights to identify 300 "early adopters" based on work patterns (e.g., heavy email users) to pilot the technology first.
The "Time Back" Deal
Leadership made a clear promise: "All the time you free up using technology is yours—to learn, rest, or give back, as long as you deliver outcomes."
Adoption Strategy:
- Viva Engage Community: Created a "Prompt of Fame" where employees shared their best Copilot prompts, driving bottom-up adoption.
- Feedback Loops: Used Viva Glint and Pulse to gather real-time feedback from the pilot group, allowing them to fix "teething issues" before full rollout.
- Targeted Use Cases: Focused on high-pain tasks like loan application reviews, where Copilot could summarize financial statements instantly.
3The Impact
The cultural shift has been profound. SACE moved from 7 hierarchy layers to just 3, and is now trialing a 4-day workweek for all 1,000 employees—made possible by the efficiency gains from AI.
"It’s impossible to achieve in four days what we used to accomplish in five without the use of technology... The winning formula has been: all the time freed up by leveraging AI tools is given back to you."