AI for business · Policy

How to write an Ai policy for your business.

Plain English Ai policy template for UK SMEs. Six sections, ready to adapt, no legal jargon. Plus what to leave out and how to make it stick.

Sections · Plain English

Most Ai policies are written by lawyers for other lawyers. This is a plain English Ai policy template for UK small businesses, written for the owner who needs the policy to actually shape behaviour rather than sit in a folder.

Members of Breezi Membership get the editable Word and PDF versions in the policy library, along with templates for data handling, customer-facing disclosure, and prompt logging. The full template below is free to use as-is.

Why does my business need an Ai policy?

Three reasons. To set expectations so the team knows what is and is not OK. To protect the business from data leaks and reputational risk. To make Ai adoption easier, not harder, by removing the question “am I allowed to use this for that?” before it slows anyone down. The policy is permission, not prohibition.

The six sections every UK SME Ai policy needs

1. What Ai we approve

Name the specific tools you have approved (ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Microsoft Copilot, whichever). Say what each is approved for. “Approved for general drafting, summarising, and analysis. Not approved for storing customer personal data.”

2. What never goes into an Ai tool

Be specific. Customer payment details. Employee personal data without consent. Confidential commercial terms with named third parties. Health information. Legal documents under privilege. Anything you would not paste into an email to your local newspaper.

3. How to disclose Ai use to customers

Be honest. If a substantial proportion of the work was Ai-drafted and a human did not fundamentally rewrite it, the customer needs to know. The line UK customers accept is “Ai-assisted, human-reviewed.” The line they push back on is silence when they later realise.

4. Who is accountable

Name a person, not a role. “Sarah owns Ai use in the business. Bring questions to her.” This solves the “I did not know I needed to ask” problem before it happens.

5. How we log and review

The minimum is a shared sheet listing the prompts and workflows the team uses regularly. Reviewed quarterly. This sounds bureaucratic but does two jobs at once: catches problems early and makes Ai adoption faster because the team is not reinventing the same prompt every week.

6. What to do if something goes wrong

The single most important section. If Ai produces something that turns out to be wrong, defamatory, or contains data that should not have been included, here is what you do: stop using that prompt or workflow, tell the named owner, document what happened, decide whether to inform anyone external. One paragraph. Clear actions.

What should I leave out of an Ai policy?

Definitions of Ai. Lists of every possible tool. Legal disclaimers. Generic risk language. The policy gets ignored if it reads like it was copied off another company’s website. Keep it under one page, written in the voice your team actually talks in. If it does not fit on one page, it is not a policy, it is documentation.

How do I make an Ai policy actually stick?

One 30-minute team meeting to walk through it. A pinned message in the shared workspace. A quarterly review on the calendar. The policy is not the work. The conversation is the work.

What Breezi Membership adds

Members get the editable Word + PDF policy template, plus templates for data handling, customer disclosure, and prompt logging across hospitality, marketing, finance, sales, operations, logistics, data analysis, and legal. Members also get dedicated bespoke hours every month with a senior Ai team to adapt the policy to your specific business. From £89/month.

Next steps

Take the six sections above. Adapt them to your business in plain English. Set a quarterly review date. Pin it somewhere the team will see it. If you want the editable templates plus a senior Ai team to help you embed it, start with Membership from £89/month, or subscribe to the Tuesday Memo for one useful Ai thing every Tuesday, free.

Free guide

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ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and NotebookLM. What each one is for, how to set it up, and what to do in your first hour. Plain English. Ten pages. No fluff.

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How to write an Ai policy for your business: a plain English template for UK SMEs