Why this matters
Do not wait until an AI mistake reaches a customer
A small team can get real value from AI without turning every employee into a prompt engineer. The risk is that AI looks easy enough to use casually: someone pastes a customer file, invents a policy answer, publishes an unsupported claim, or buys a tool without checking data rules. A usage policy sets the floor before workflows scale.
- Approve the use case: writing drafts, summarizing notes, organizing ideas, and creating checklists are different from giving legal, medical, financial, safety, pricing, or policy advice.
- Protect private data: customer records, addresses, access codes, payment details, employee files, contracts, and internal credentials need stricter handling than generic examples.
- Require human review: AI can draft, sort, summarize, and suggest; a responsible person still approves anything customer-facing or operationally risky.
- Track exceptions: repeated corrections should update the prompt card, source document, tool approval, or stop rule.
Copy/paste AI usage policy starter
AI Tool Usage Policy — {business_name}
Purpose: We use approved AI tools to help draft, summarize, organize, and improve routine work. AI does not replace owner judgment, customer care, professional advice, legal review, HR review, bookkeeping review, safety decisions, or final approval.
Approved tools: {approved_ai_tools}
Approved use cases: {approved_use_cases}
Owner: {policy_owner}
Last reviewed: {review_date}
Allowed uses:
- Draft internal outlines, checklists, summaries, SOP drafts, email drafts, social captions, FAQ drafts, and non-sensitive templates.
- Rewrite approved business information for clarity after a human checks facts.
- Summarize non-sensitive notes into next-action lists.
- Brainstorm options that a human will select, edit, and approve.
Forbidden uses without written owner approval:
- Pasting customer private data, payment data, login credentials, access codes, employee records, contracts, or confidential business data.
- Letting AI send messages, make purchases, dispatch staff, approve refunds, quote prices, change policies, or promise timelines automatically.
- Publishing AI-created claims, guarantees, testimonials, case studies, legal language, financial advice, hiring decisions, medical/safety guidance, or compliance language without qualified human review.
- Using unapproved AI tools or browser extensions with company or customer data.
Human review rule:
Anything customer-facing, public, financial, legal, HR, safety-related, policy-related, pricing-related, or operationally binding must be reviewed by {reviewer_role} before use.
Source-of-truth rule:
AI must use approved source documents: {approved_sources}. If a source is missing, the employee must ask for it instead of letting AI guess.
Stop-and-escalate rule:
Stop and ask {escalation_contact} when AI output includes a claim, promise, policy interpretation, customer-specific detail, private data, legal/financial/HR/safety issue, or a recommendation to act without approval.
Correction log:
Repeated AI mistakes are recorded in {correction_log_location}. The owner reviews them weekly and decides whether to keep, fix, pause, or retire the workflow.Approved-use worksheet
| Use case | Allowed? | Review required | Source needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drafting a follow-up email from public service details | Yes | Before sending | Approved service page and tone guide |
| Summarizing a customer call with names and address | Only in approved secure workflow | Before CRM update | Customer privacy rule and CRM policy |
| Creating a refund-policy reply | Draft only | Owner/manager review | Current refund policy |
| Writing an employment warning or hiring decision | No without HR/legal review | Owner/HR/legal | HR policy and applicable law |
| Recommending a purchase or reordering inventory | Draft recommendation only | Owner/bookkeeper review | Inventory count, vendor terms, cash-flow check |
Prompt to turn this into a business-specific policy
You are helping a small business owner draft an internal AI tool usage policy. Use only the facts I provide. Do not invent legal, compliance, HR, pricing, security, or privacy requirements. Ask questions where information is missing. Return: 1) approved AI tools, 2) approved use cases, 3) forbidden uses, 4) data that must not be pasted into AI, 5) human-review rules, 6) stop-and-escalate rules, 7) weekly correction-log review, and 8) a one-page employee version.Pair the policy with the AI tool approval checklist, 30-day AI tool pilot tracker, and AI output correction log.
Weekly owner review questions
- Which AI tool or use case was added this week?
- Which outputs needed fact, privacy, pricing, HR, legal, safety, or policy corrections?
- Which employee needs a clearer example of an approved use case?
- Which source-of-truth document needs updating before AI can help reliably?
- Which workflow should stay owner-only until it passes a 30-day pilot?
Paid playbook
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