# The One-Page AI Policy Template for Your Company > Most AI policies are a long document or a ban, and people use their own tools anyway. One page that pairs your data with approved tools, and gives every agent its own line, changes what they paste. By Vlad Shvets, Partner @ Qvery 路 Published 2026-11-03 路 12 min read Canonical: https://qvery.ai/blog/ai-policy-template/ In a company of a few hundred people, AI is already in the daily work, on accounts the company never chose. People paste customer emails, tenant ledgers and carrier rate sheets into whatever assistant they use at home, and nobody can say which tool now holds which file. The policy, where one exists, is a long document of prohibitions or a one-line ban. Neither tells a person in ten seconds whether this file can go into this tool, so they decide for themselves. The page below works the other way around, from your data outward, with a line for the agents a company starts running next. The policy that holds **fits on one page**. It pairs each kind of company data with the tools approved to hold it, says who checks what comes back before it leaves, names the owner and how to ask for a new tool, and gives every agent a line of its own. Below is that page, the plan settings that do half the enforcing, the agent's line, a rollout team by team, and how we set up the tools and the agents that follow it. It's a template, not legal advice: where your company operates decides the legal lines, and a law firm or a lender adds its profession's rules on top. ## Staff Already Use AI, and Bans Without an Alternative Get Broken Microsoft's research with 2,003 UK employees, in October 2025, measured the gap between what companies approve and what people use. - **71%** have used unapproved consumer AI tools at work - **51%** still do every week - **28%** say their company provides no work-approved option Source: Microsoft UK, Shadow AI research (Censuswide, October 2025) In Software AG's 2024 survey of 6,000 knowledge workers, **46%** said they would keep using their own AI tools **even under a ban**. PagerDuty's 2026 survey of office staff at companies far larger than yours found **two-thirds** had used AI they believed **their policy forbade**, while 86% believed their company had a policy. What a ban changes is where the use happens. It moves to personal accounts nobody in the company can see, and a personal account **leaves with the person**, its chat history with it. The same UK workers who use AI assistants report saving 7.75 hours a week. Say a third of a 300-person company uses AI weekly and keeps only a quarter of that: **about 190 hours a week**, an assumption worth replacing with your own count. The page keeps those hours inside tools the company controls. > Most AI policies are written for the employee who might do something careless. I'd write it for the one who wants to do the right thing and can't find out what that is in under a minute. Give that person a short answer, a tool that's allowed and a name to ask, and you've removed one of the commonest reasons people go around the company: there was no approved way to get the work done. > > Vlad Shvets, Partner @ Qvery ## Sort Your Data Into Four Classes Before You Pick a Tool The same assistant is fine for a job ad and wrong for a client's file, so the page starts from the data, not from the tool. A data class is a label for how much harm a file does in the wrong place, and a company this size needs four: > 馃摉 **Four classes of data** > - **Public:** already published, like your website, listings or price sheets. > - **Internal:** harmless outside but not meant for it, like procedures and meeting notes. > - **Confidential:** anything about a customer, tenant, employee or deal, from a name and an email address to a contract. > - **Restricted:** what law or a contract fences off, like privileged client files, health records, card numbers or anything under an NDA. When in doubt, **use the higher class**. A customer email asking a routine question is confidential the moment it carries an account number. ## The One-Page Template Answers Three Questions Before Anyone Pastes What am I holding, which tool may hold it, and who checks what comes back? Fill in the brackets and the page is done. **The One-Page AI Policy: where each kind of data may go** | Data | Your examples | Where it may go | |---|---|---| | Public | [your website, listings, published prices] | Any AI tool | | Internal | [procedures, meeting notes, drafts] | The approved tools below | | Confidential | [customer, tenant, employee and deal files] | The approved tools, signed in with your work account | | Restricted | [privileged files, health records, card numbers] | Only [the tool named for it], or none | **Approved tools:** [assistant and plan], [the AI inside your email suite]. A personal account is for public data only. **Check before it leaves:** whoever sends AI output to a customer, a court, a lender or a tenant has read it against its source, and answers for it. **A person decides about people:** hiring, firing, pay, credit and evictions. AI may draft; it never decides. **A missing tool:** ask [owner], who answers within [two working days]. Until then, use a listed tool or do it by hand. **Something slipped:** tell [owner] the same day which tool, what went in and when. A reported slip is never punished. **Agents:** every agent the company runs has its own line below. **Owner:** [a business leader] decides what this page says. [IT lead] sets the tools' settings and removes a leaver's seat the day they go. Next review: [date]. If you operate in the EU, add one line: no AI that infers employees' emotions at work, banned since February 2, 2025. AI that screens applicants or decides on staff becomes a regulated high-risk use on December 2, 2027. The check carries the most weight, because the company answers for the output whoever wrote it. A British Columbia tribunal held Air Canada **responsible for its chatbot's answer** to a customer about bereavement fares. [The time a check takes](https://qvery.ai/blog/ai-verification-tax/) is the price of that line, and it's the last one to cut. A company this size can leave out the apparatus written for bigger ones: an AI review board, a monitoring product, a security team that triages a reported slip within 15 minutes. One owner and the plan's settings do that work. ## Approve the Business Plan of a Tool People Already Use The plan you pay for does **the data half** of the enforcing, and the terms differ by plan more than by brand. On ChatGPT's plans for individuals, OpenAI may use what people type **to train its models** unless each person switches it off. Its business plans don't by default, and give you admin roles and sign-in with your work account. Copilot Chat, used by an organization, runs under Microsoft's data protection terms, isn't used to train its models, and follows your retention and audit settings. Gemini in Google Workspace doesn't use your prompts to train models outside your company without permission. Approve a plan only if it keeps your content out of training, lets your admin decide who has a seat, and has people sign in with their work account. Among the plans that pass, pick **what people already use**, or the one inside your email suite: 41% of those UK workers said they reach for an unapproved tool because it's what they use at home. The settings don't cover the check, the decisions about people or the agents' limits; those stay on the page. ## Give Every Agent Its Own Line on the Page An assistant waits for a person to type, and an agent acts on its own, so its limits have to sit where its permissions are set. A climbing gym owner described what happens when they don't. Asked to move one class on the website from 6:30 to 7:00, their agent also rewrote the day-pass waiver and set three youth class prices back to a 2024 price sheet it found in a folder it could read. The instruction said to change only the time; the permissions **allowed the whole page**. Telling an agent to change one field while it holds the key to the whole site is like handing a contractor the master key to fix one hinge. OWASP's list of top security risks in AI applications calls this excessive agency; its fixes are the minimum permissions, a person's approval for high-impact actions, and a log. ![Two panels: an agent with access to a whole gym website and a shared folder, beside the same agent limited by its line to class start times, with waivers and prices out of reach.](https://qvery.ai/blog/ai-policy-template/illustration-agent-scope.webp) *Drawn from a climbing gym owner鈥檚 account of an agent asked to move one class time.* Fill in one line like this for each agent before it runs: > 馃搶 **One line per agent** > - **Job:** [the one thing it does] > - **Reads:** [the systems and folders it needs, with one current source for prices and policies] > - **May change:** [the fields it writes, nothing else] > - **Never touches:** contracts, prices, payments and anything legal > - **Proposes, a person approves:** [refunds, messages to a court or a regulator, anything a customer sees first] > - **Answers for it:** [a name] > - **Its record:** every change, with the value before it > - **Stopped by:** [a name], by switching off its access, within [minutes] The stop line is the one most companies haven't written. In ISACA's 2026 poll of more than 3,400 IT audit, governance, security and privacy professionals, **56%** did not know how long it would take to **halt an AI system** in a security incident. ## How Qvery Sets Up Approved AI and the Agents That Follow the Page We begin with how your teams work and which files each one touches, and we fill in the page with you from that. Then we set up your team's AI tools on business plans with the page's settings switched on, connected to the systems you already use, and train each team on the check for its own work. Where a job repeats every day, we build **a custom agent** that runs it on its own, on autopilot, beside the people who own the work. It ships with its line already filled in: what it reads, what it may change, who answers for it and how it stops. A first working result arrives in **two weeks**, and we count every agent in **hours saved and errors avoided**, every week it runs. If your people paste company files into tools you never approved, bring us the list of those tools. Have Us Write Your AI Policy and Set Up the Tools: https://calendly.com/qvery-vlad/30min ## Roll the Page Out Team by Team, Then Review It Every Quarter Start with what people already connected. The admin console of your email system lists the outside apps people signed into with their work account: Google Workspace shows each with its number of users, and in Microsoft's, by default anyone may connect one. Personal accounts **never appear** on that list, so a way to ask for a tool matters more than the block. Mark the tools you keep before you block anything, and give people on personal paid plans a few weeks to move. **Tips** > A block with no request path moves it to personal accounts and then you cannot see it at all, which is worse than where you started. > ([r/ITManagers 路 Aug 2026](https://www.reddit.com/r/ITManagers/comments/1w3mm8i/any_tips_for_rolling_out_an_ai_policy_without/p71gvj4/)) > Any employee that uses their personal login to AI tools gets to keep access to everything they share with AI after they leave the company... > ([r/sysadmin 路 May 2026](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1tiea2n/anyone_had_a_real_chatgpt_data_leakage_incident/omtrej6/)) > People use tools to solve a problem. The key to not pissing people off is to give them an approved solution to that problem. > ([r/ITManagers 路 Aug 2026](https://www.reddit.com/r/ITManagers/comments/1w3mm8i/any_tips_for_rolling_out_an_ai_policy_without/p72c4fe/)) Then walk each team through the page with its own files: which of them are confidential, and which tool holds them. Teach the check on the team's real work; [AI training](https://qvery.ai/blog/ai-training-for-employees/) does the rest. Make the owner a business leader, with IT enforcing. Every quarter the owner reads the requests for tools not yet listed, the slips people reported and each agent's record. The next tool to approve is **usually in the requests**. Before any of that, list five confidential files your team handled this week and the tool each went into. That list is the first row of your page. Plan Your Company's AI Transformation With Us: https://calendly.com/qvery-vlad/30min ## Frequently asked questions ### What should an AI acceptable use policy include? Where each class of data may go, the approved tools, the check before AI output leaves, the decisions a person always makes, how to request a new tool, how to report a slip, and the owner. If you run agents, add one line per agent: what it reads, changes and never touches. ### Should we ban ChatGPT at work? Banning it without an alternative usually moves the use to personal accounts you can't see. Approve a business plan instead, whether ChatGPT's or the assistant inside your email suite, and limit personal accounts to public information. The business plans don't train on your content by default and let your admin control who has access. ### How do I stop staff using unapproved AI tools? Make the approved route easier than the unapproved one. Give people an approved tool for confidential work, a named person to ask for anything else, and an answer within a couple of days. Then review the apps people connected with their work sign-in and retire the ones you didn't approve, with notice. ### Which AI tools should a company approve? Start with the business plan of the assistant your people already use, or the one in your email suite. Approve it only if it keeps your content out of training, lets your admin manage seats, and signs people in with their work account. Name each tool with the highest class of data it may hold. ### Who should own the company AI policy? A business leader, not IT. The owner decides which tools are approved and answers requests; IT sets the tools' settings, adds and removes seats, and enforces the page. In a company of a few hundred people, that's usually the head of operations or whoever already owns data protection. ### How often should we review our AI policy? Every quarter, and whenever you add a tool or an agent. The review reads the requests for tools nobody approved yet, the slips people reported and each agent's record of changes. The requests are the most useful part, because they show what people need before they find it elsewhere. ### Is it safe to use a personal ChatGPT account for work? Only for public information. On individual plans, OpenAI may use conversations to train its models unless the person turns that off, and the account and its history leave with the employee. A business plan keeps company content out of training by default and under your admin's control. ### Does an AI policy need to cover AI agents? Yes, separately from people. An agent acts without someone typing each step, so its limits must be set in its permissions, not only its instructions. Give each agent one line: its job, what it reads, what it may change, what it never touches, who answers for it, its record and who stops it. ### What should we do if an employee pastes client data into an unapproved tool? Find out which tool, what went in and when, the same day. Delete what can be deleted, check the tool's terms on training and retention, and decide who must be told under your contracts or professional rules. Keep reporting free of penalty, or people stop reporting slips. ### Do we need a lawyer to write our AI policy? Not to write the page, but have one read the lines that touch your obligations: client confidentiality, employment decisions, privacy law and any industry rules. A law firm or a lender has professional duties the template doesn't cover. Most of the page is operational and belongs to the business. ### Does the EU AI Act require an AI policy? It doesn't ask for a document by that name, but some lines belong on the page if you operate in the EU. AI that infers employees' emotions at work has been banned since February 2025, and AI used to screen applicants or decide on staff becomes high-risk from December 2027. ### How does Qvery help with an AI policy? We fill in the page with you, set up your team's AI tools on business plans with the right settings, connect them to your systems and train each team on the check. Where work repeats daily, we build a custom agent that runs on its own inside its line on the page.