Someone in your business pasted a client email into a chatbot last week. Nobody signed anything, nobody agreed it was allowed. The AI Policy Workshop is a one-day session for UK small businesses that trains your people to use AI safely and sends you home with your own written AI acceptable use policy. Not a plan to write one. The actual document.
An AI acceptable use policy is one plain-English page that tells your staff which AI tools they can use, what they can use them for, and what must never go anywhere near a chatbot. It is the difference between AI helping your business and AI quietly leaking it.
Most small businesses learn how to use AI and never stop to decide how their team should use it. So people improvise. One person drops a customer list into ChatGPT to tidy it up. Another sends a client a quote the AI wrote and nobody checked. It works fine, right up until the day it doesn't.
This is a practical day on implementing AI in a small business without the compliance headache. We look at the tools worth using, the jobs AI should and shouldn't do, and the lines your team must not cross under UK GDPR. Then we write the policy with everyone in the room, so it fits how you actually work rather than sitting in a drawer.
It is built for owners, directors and the people who do the work, from sales and marketing to finance, HR and operations. You leave with your tools agreed, your rules by department set, your gatekeepers named, and a finished AI acceptable use policy your staff can follow on Monday morning.
If your team already knows the tools and wants to go deeper on one discipline, look at AI for Marketing Teams or Intro to GEO. This day is the one that sets the ground rules underneath all of them.
Half a day of admin now, or a very bad afternoon later. Your choice.
Most training covers the first. Almost nobody covers the second. This workshop does both, because the risk lives in the gap between them.
Prompting, drafting, summarising, getting real work done faster. Useful, and most of your team is already having a go, with or without you.
Deciding the tools, the rules and the red lines, so all that speed doesn't come with a data leak, a GDPR breach or a client email the AI wrote and nobody read.
One focused day, four sessions and a proper lunch. You walk out at the end with the policy written, not promised.
An honest look at what's already happening, and the risks nobody has priced in yet.
Agreeing what you allow, what you don't, and exactly which jobs AI does here.
Marketing's freedom is finance's nightmare, so each team sets its own limits.
The part where it stops being a conversation and becomes a document.
Seven sections, and you have an AI policy for your UK business. This is the exact structure we build with you on the day, and it doubles as an AI policy template for a UK small business.
Golden rule running through every section: AI drafts, a person decides. Nothing leaves the building on the machine's say-so alone.
Give the whole business one blanket rule and you either strangle marketing or expose finance. On the day, each team agrees its own green light and its own red line. Here's the starting point.
| Department | Fair game | Off limits |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | Drafting outreach, summarising calls, prepping for meetings | Real customer data in public tools. Auto-sent quotes |
| Marketing | Content drafts, campaign ideas, image mockups, editing | Publishing unchecked. Passing off AI images as real photos |
| Finance | Explaining reports, drafting policies, spotting anomalies | Live financial or bank data. Final numbers without a human |
| HR | Job specs, policy drafts, interview question sets | Candidate or staff personal data. Hiring or firing calls |
| Operations | Process notes, supplier emails, rota first drafts | Anything with names, health or contract data attached |
Swipe the table sideways to see the off-limits column.
Fewer tools, used well, beats a drawer full of half-learned apps. We help you pick the shortlist and set the tier each one needs to stay on the right side of GDPR.
Writing, analysis, drafting, summarising and planning, with Anthropic's AI.
General tasks and quick answers. Use the business tiers for anything sensitive.
AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, with enterprise-grade security for Microsoft 365.
Plugged into Gmail, Docs and Workspace for teams already living in Google.
Graphics, social posts and simple brand work, no designer required.
Whatever fits your business. On the day, we write it down and set the rules.
A policy written by one person in a back office gets ignored. A policy the team helped write gets followed. Bring the people who actually use the tools. Small enough to decide things, broad enough that nobody feels done to.
Your own AI acceptable use policy, finished on the day, in plain English a new starter can follow in five minutes.
Staff who know which tools to use, what AI is for, and the data that must never go near a chatbot.
The rules agreed, the gatekeepers named and a review date set, so AI is something you run rather than something that runs off with your data.
The questions UK small businesses ask us most about AI policy, GDPR and training staff to use it safely.
A 10-minute intro call first. Tell us how your team is using AI and where you're nervous, and we'll tailor the day to your business, your tools and your risks.
The Oxford AI School