Policy Assistant answers staff questions about your organisation’s policies, procedures and governance framework, grounded entirely in your own indexed documents rather than in outside assumptions. Beyond open questions, six buttons cover compliance checking, correspondence, review-date tracking, contradiction-spotting, regulatory updates and new starter induction — the full reference is on a second page, linked below.
There is nothing to set up for a general question. Ask it something and it answers straight from your indexed governance framework. The buttons that check content — Compliance Check, Compose email reply, Identify required document revisions — need that content ready first.
Before you start
- Your policies and procedures need to already be in your indexed governance framework. This is the assistant’s sole source of organisational fact, for every workflow. If a document isn’t there, the assistant cannot see it — it says so rather than guessing, so a gap in your indexed governance framework shows up as a gap in the answer.
- For the content-checking workflows, have what you want checked ready. The document or text for Compliance Check, the email and the tone you want for Compose email reply, or the updated regulation or guidance for Identify required document revisions.
- Nothing else is required for the informational workflows. Finding review dates, identifying contradictions, general policy questions and building an induction programme all run entirely from the indexed governance framework, with no upload and no wait.
- Supported file types: PDF, TXT, CSV, MD, DOCX, DOC, XLS and XLSX. XLS and XLSX are read worksheet by worksheet, not just the first sheet. Scanned pages and handwriting are readable too, via optical character recognition. Files stay in your browser rather than being sent anywhere, so there’s no fixed size limit beyond what your device can handle.
How it works
It won’t make the call on an individual situation. Ask for a legal, HR or disciplinary ruling on a specific case — including sensitive matters like grievance, safeguarding, whistleblowing, disciplinary or health — and it answers the process factually and signposts the formal route, rather than the specifics of your case. That judgement belongs to a person, not the assistant.
It won’t guess from general knowledge. A question your indexed governance framework doesn’t cover gets an honest “I don’t know” rather than a plausible-sounding answer. Governance is organisation-specific, and an assumption here can be actively unsafe. The one exception is flagged clearly inside Compose email reply — see the workflow reference for what changes there.
It shows you a conflict rather than picking a side. Where your own indexed documents disagree with each other, it presents both and flags the inconsistency instead of quietly choosing one. It can read as indecisive; it’s actually being honest about what your source material says.
Try it now
The quickest way to see what Policy Assistant does is to ask it a real question.
- Open Policy Assistant.
- Ask a question about a policy or procedure you’re genuinely unsure of.
- Read the answer, and where it points you if your framework doesn’t cover part of it.
You will know it worked when the answer names a specific document, not just a general summary of the topic.
The six buttons
Each button is covered in full on the workflow reference page: Policy Assistant: workflows.
In brief: Compliance Check reviews content against your policies; Compose email reply drafts a policy-grounded response (with one flagged exception); Find document next review dates lists what’s due; Identify Contradictions finds where your own documents disagree; Identify required document revisions compares new external guidance against what you hold; New starter induction builds a four-week self-study programme.
Getting better results
- Ask about a specific policy area, not a broad topic. A named policy or procedure gets a sharper answer than a general question.
- Treat “insufficient information” as a real answer, not a failure. It means your indexed framework doesn’t cover that area yet — tell us, and we can look at closing the gap.
- Check the general-terms flag in Compose email reply before you send. It marks a point your policies don’t cover; verify it yourself rather than treating it as the organisation’s position.
- Run Identify Contradictions after any batch of updates, not only when something feels wrong. Conflicts often surface between documents that were never compared to each other.
- Don’t treat version handling as guaranteed. Where more than one version of a policy could exist in the indexed data, double-check the date yourself before relying on it for anything time-sensitive.
- Tell us when an answer should have found something it didn’t. Name the document you expected. That is the fastest way to tell whether the gap is in your indexed governance framework or in the assistant’s instructions.
What it will not do
- Give a legal, HR or disciplinary ruling on an individual case.
- Answer policy questions from general knowledge, other than the single flagged exception inside Compose email reply.
- Fabricate policy content, procedures, contact details, document titles or section numbers.
- Handle the substance of a sensitive matter — it answers the process and signposts the formal route instead.
- Guarantee it has found the current version of a policy where more than one version exists in the indexed data. This depends on how clearly each document is dated and tagged on the way into your indexed governance framework, and isn’t something to rely on for anything time-critical.
Common questions
Why won’t it tell me how to handle a grievance or disciplinary situation?
It isn’t the right channel for an individual case. It will explain the process and point you to the formal route instead.
It told me there’s insufficient information to answer. Is something broken?
No. It means your indexed governance framework doesn’t cover that area, and it’s telling you honestly rather than guessing.
Why did Compose email reply answer something I know isn’t in our policies?
That’s the one deliberate exception: for a point outside your indexed framework, it’s allowed to give a general-terms answer, clearly flagged as outside policy. Check it before you send it.
Two documents seem to disagree — which one is right?
Ask Identify Contradictions to confirm. Where your own documents genuinely conflict, Policy Assistant will show you both rather than pick one, since that decision is yours to make.
Can I trust it to always use the newest version of a policy?
Not guaranteed. If more than one version could exist in your indexed data, verify the date yourself before relying on it for anything time-sensitive.
Next steps
Try it on a policy question you already know the answer to, so you can judge the response, then move on to whichever button matches what you’re responsible for this week.