If you care about having policies to guide your day-to-day activities, you will sometimes see your policy documents going out of date. Outdated policies will lead to inefficiencies in the company and employees’ activities.
Chances are, you’ve experienced the frustration of revising policies by hand, and you’re considering more efficient alternatives.
Manual policy editing often leads to inconsistencies, version control issues, and an increased risk of non-compliance.
If you want to streamline the process while reducing human error and ensuring compliance, you’re not alone.
This guide shows you how to leverage AI to edit policies more efficiently, minimize errors, and ensure consistency throughout your organization.
SweetProcess is our tool, built with features that allow you to write and edit your policies with AI to ensure uniformity and compliance. You can try SweetProcess for free for 14 days.
A policy is a standard or a generally applicable procedure adopted by the management of an organization.
A company’s policy serves as a framework that determines the organization’s direction, actions, and decisions. Policies reflect a company’s core values and objectives.
Being a high-level statement and guiding principle, a policy drives decision-making within an organization, offering a clear framework for actions and behaviors.
Policies provide direction, promote consistency, and increase productivity by establishing a reliable foundation for procedures, processes, and expectations.
An effective policy will communicate the “why” behind an action and give team members context that connects day-to-day activities to larger organizational goals.
This will allow employees to understand how their efforts contribute to the overall company objectives and successes.
Policies help create a sense of shared purpose and commitment within the team, enhancing motivation and focus.
Policies must be regularly reviewed and updated to remain relevant, ensuring they address current needs and evolving industry standards. Regular policy reviews keep the policy framework practical and demonstrate a proactive approach to organizational growth and improvement.
Beyond internal benefits, policies are critical in ensuring that companies comply with laws, regulations, and industry standards, minimize legal risks, and promote ethical practices.
Compliance-driven policies reassure clients and stakeholders, strengthening the organization’s reputation and trustworthiness.
A head of an investment firm, for example, will need to have documented principles on how an investment works (investment policy statement), how to manage risks (risk management policy), how fees are charged to clients (fee structure policy), and so on.
The type and goals of each company will determine the policies you need to keep things running.
Policy Examples
Here are some examples of standard policies in different organizations.
Industry Type
Policy
Meaning
Financial Institutions
Anti-money laundering
Highlights principles to prevent money laundering activities to ensure that funds from illegal sources are not used within the organization
Healthcare Institution
Infection control
Outlines practices to prevent the spread of infections, ensuring a safe environment for staff, clients, and others in healthcare and group settings
Educational Institutions
Student code of conduct
Sets expectations for student behavior, promoting a safe and respectful learning environment that supports the institution’s values and standards
Government Agencies
Procurement policy
Gives regulations to ensure that purchasing processes are fair, transparent, and maximize value to taxpayers
Public Records
Conflict of interest
Sets guidelines to avoid situations where personal interests might interfere with an individual’s professional responsibilities or organizational goals
Manufacturing Companies
Quality control
Establishes standards and procedures to ensure products or services meet quality expectations, improving customer satisfaction and trust
Media Companies
Journalism ethics
Provides principles for journalists, focusing on accuracy, fairness, impartiality, and accountability in reporting
Construction Companies
Environmental compliance
Ensures adherence to environmental laws and regulations to minimize the organization’s impact on natural resources and support sustainability
Pharmaceutical Companies
Drug safety
Focuses on the safe handling, use, and administration of drugs, aiming to minimize risks to patients or consumers
Security Companies
Confidentiality
Protects sensitive information by setting guidelines on handling and sharing data to prevent unauthorized disclosure and maintain privacy
These are just a few examples, and the specific policies required will vary depending on the organization’s size, industry, and unique needs.
Whether you’re just starting to document your policies or already have them elsewhere, you can bring them to SweetProcess with just a few clicks.
How to Edit a Policy Using AI: A Step-by-Step Guide
Policies are living documents expected to grow and adapt to a company’s growth.
Usually, a policy’s core elements and intent remain the same. The most central intent is to keep people, equipment, assets, and information safe.
Meanwhile, the details of how to make it happen will evolve with changes in the industry and organization.
Like any other company, your company is bound to occasionally undergo organizational changes. The type of change—which can range from mild structural to big transformational changes—will determine the extent of changes to your policies.
Based on these changes, you must determine whether your policy documents need a complete overhaul or slight modifications to stay updated.
Regular policy review and revision are important parts of every policy management plan, and your company should invest time, energy, and resources in them.
SweetProcess has an AI feature for writing a new policy from scratch or editing existing ones.
Outdated policies can expose your organization to different risks. It will fail to comply with new laws and regulations. They will not address new systems and technologies, resulting in inconsistent practices.
Imagine if the Boston-based Interactions LLC stuck to its old policies after going fully remote in 2020. They would have struggled with productivity.
What did Interactions do instead?
They created an in-house playbook for virtual work. The playbook covers everything from relieving pressure in a virtual environment to communication to meeting team expectations.
This is what a policy review does for a company. Instead of the traditional employee policy manual, creating a playbook for virtual work made the remote company maintain and even improve its productivity.
Some notable reasons that can require you to review your company policies include:
Changes in Laws or Regulations
Legal and regulatory updates within the industry often require organizations to review their policies to maintain compliance with new standards. This will help in avoiding legal risks and penalties.
Shifts in Organizational Goals or Strategy
As an organization’s objectives evolve, policies may need adjustments to align with new strategic directions or priorities. At this point, policy reviews will help ensure they continue to support the new mission effectively.
Technological Advancements
New technology can affect processes, security, data handling, and other areas, prompting a review to incorporate updated procedures and mitigate potential risks.
Identified Policy Gaps
When gaps are discovered—often through audits, risk assessments, or feedback— such a policy might fail to produce the intended results. This may signal the need for a review to mitigate inconsistencies and improve its clarity, effectiveness, and relevance to daily operations.
Feedback From Employees or Stakeholders
Feedback, complaints, or suggestions from team members, customers, or other stakeholders may indicate that a policy needs to be updated, clarified, or challenging to implement. Thus, this will call for a review process.
Organizational Growth or Structural Changes
Expansion, restructuring, or changes in operational scale often require policy adjustments to address new workflows, personnel needs, and resources.
Risk Management and Safety Concerns
Changes in risk factors—such as new safety hazards, cybersecurity threats, or health risks—may require a policy update to address emerging vulnerabilities.
Regular Review Cycle
Your organization might set up periodic policy review cycles to maintain relevance and continuous improvement, ensuring that policies remain current and effective over time.
Regardless of the reason, regular policy reviews help organizations remain compliant and focused. They also help them adapt their policies proactively to changing internal and external environments.
With SweetProcess, you can document your company’s policy in one place for easy adoption.
How to Edit Existing Policies Using AI: A Step-by-Step Guide
Editing a policy makes it easy for employees to stay up-to-date with an organization’s new laws and trends.
If you have an existing policy, let’s say “Infection Control Policy,” in a healthcare institution, you can have AI edit it for you at the onset of changes such as a pandemic.
Some of the edits you can make to the policy include:
1) Rewriting the Headings and Sub-Headings
Policies are more than just internal documents that govern a company’s operations. They can have significant ripple effects on various stakeholders within and outside the organization.
With Gemini, the AI can edit the headings and subheadings to fit a current pandemic outbreak.
For example, a policy created on the Gemini AI platform on “Infection Control Policy for a Healthcare Facility in the United States” is shown below:
You can have Gemini edit the headings and subheadings of the policy statements using the prompt below:
“You’re the chief medical director of a government health facility in the United States of America. You have witnessed pandemics like the Ebola virus, Zika virus, and COVID-19. With the knowledge and experience you’ve gained, I want you to modify the heading and subheadings of the policy above for ‘Infection Control Policy for a Healthcare Pandemic in the United States for a Pandemic.’ This modification aims to make each heading and subheading easier for all employees and stakeholders to comprehend and stay safe during a new pandemic that just broke. Please maintain the same structure and note that the specific modification is for the main heading and the subheadings.”
Here’s the result of the modifications made by Gemini:
One of the changes you can see in this version is changing the main heading from “Infection Control Policy for a Healthcare Facility in the United States” to “Pandemic Infection Control Policy for a Healthcare Facility in the United States.”
Including the word “pandemic” will create awareness and make all stakeholders understand that this is more than the usual safety practice in the facility.
Similarly, the policy statement 1 heading changed from “Hand Hygiene” to “Hand Hygiene: A Lifesaver.” The policy statement 2 heading was also changed from simply “Standard Precautions” to “Standard Precautions: Protecting Everyone.”
Although not a complete overhaul, these changes are expatiating on what everyone can gain by abiding by each policy statement.
2) Expand on the Headings and Sub-Headings of a Policy
Like in our policy example, everyone visiting the healthcare facility during the pandemic is expected to stay aware of and abide by the policy.
Policy documents should be written clearly in a way that ensures all stakeholders understand and follow the guidelines as expected of them.
Gemini Al can help you expand each policy statement for better clarity.
The policy statement 6 above is about proper waste management to avoid the spread of the pandemic. We can have Gemini explain what biohazardous waste is, how it can cause the spread of a pandemic, how to segregate it, and the proper disposal methods.
Let’s use the prompt below:
“The policy statement 6 above is about proper waste management. ‘Waste Management: Proper Disposal to Prevent Spread.’ *All waste will be managed according to facility policies and regulatory requirements. *Biohazardous waste will be segregated and disposed of appropriately. Please clarify policy statement 6, explaining biohazardous waste, how it can contribute to pandemic spread, how to identify and segregate it, and the proper disposal technique.”
Here’s the outcome of the expanded section
3) Simplify and Explain the Statements of a Policy
An example of an unclear policy statement in our policy example which might not be easily understandable by everyone is the “WHO’s Five Moments of Hand Hygiene.”
We can have Gemini explain this to us in clearer terms.
Let’s use this prompt:
“Please explain the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ‘Five Moments of Hand Hygiene’ guidelines in clearer terms.”
Gemini has successfully helped us understand the most demanding moments of hand hygiene during a pandemic in a health facility from the prompt above.
4) Correct Grammatical Errors
Grammatical errors make it difficult to understand policy statements; thus, it is easy to violate the guidelines when you want to follow them.
Your policy documents should be as grammatically correct and simplified as possible.
To correct the grammatical errors in the policy document above, let’s use this prompt:
“Kindly correct the grammatical errors in the ‘Pandemic Infection Control Policy for a Healthcare Facility in the United States’ and show the areas you made corrections.”
Gemini has highlighted and corrected the only error in the policy.
5) Review the Policy for Clarity
You can also have AI review your policy document for clarity. If you want to go the extra mile, it will give you suggestions for improving the document flow.
Using this prompt, “Here’s the policy you drafted for me above, […] please highlight and correct the grammatical errors for better clarity,”Gemini AI can pick the areas where you can work on to make your document provide more clarity.
6) Maintain Consistency With Your Brand and Tone of Voice
You can also use AI to write in a way that complements your brand. You do this by giving Gemini a prompt that details how you want it to improve the article.
Editing an existing company’s policies is essential to ensure they’re up-to-date, provide the proper guidance to employees, and comply with the industry’s regulations and laws.
With every change in your company’s policies, it’s good practice to update them immediately to align expectations with the regulators, partners, and employees.
However, the end goal of a policy review is not only to have the document stay updated but also to notify the employees and stakeholders to adjust to the new norm.
Team members in different capacities will adjust to the new policies differently.
Operations managers may need to create new procedures, support team members may need to have new support templates, HR managers may need to review their recruitment process, sales managers may need to have new conversion goals, and so on.
Downsides of Using Gemini and Other AI Tools to Edit Your Company’s Policies
While AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT will help you edit your policy following your prompts, they also have some downsides.
Consider manually copying your policies from the AI platforms to other places.
Or having to incorporate the edits manually.
Or sending the new policies manually to your team members.
All of these can be very tasking and unproductive.
Time and resources will be wasted in the process.
This is what tools like SweetProcess have come to improve.
Sometimes, you need to modify your prompts several times to get the desired result.
If you are lucky to get a good policy written for you, you must copy and paste the additional changes during editing.
In the end, Gemini isn’t a policy documentation tool.
Creating and editing your policies in Gemini before taking them to your policy management tool will be tiring. This may also expose the policy to human error.
This is why SweetProcess, our procedure and policy documentation tool, gives you access to SweetAI right inside your SweetProcess account.
SweetAI is an artificial intelligence buddy that allows founders and managers to create and edit their company policies and procedures.
Apart from writing or editing your policies with a simple prompt, SweetAI is a better alternative to other standalone AI tools like Gemini or ChatGPT.
You can easily avoid human errors while editing your policies since you don’t have to copy and paste your piece from one place to another.
The editing process in SweetProcess happens automatically after inputting the prompt while also helping you keep a record of version histories.
This way, you don’t have to scroll up and down, checking reviews and edits like you would while using Gemini.
Here’s how to edit an existing policy with SweetProcess:
Or create your first policy with AI using our built-in AI tool.
Step 3: Input the policy title you want to create (to serve as a prompt) or choose one of those suggested for you, depending on your type of business.
Step 4: If you want to write a “Return and Refund Policy,” select this option, add it to the correct team(s), and click on “Write with SweetAI.”
SweetAI writes out the policy document in about 30 seconds.
Some of the policy statements in this document are:
Definitions
Eligibility for returns
Non-returnable items
Step 5: Now, your policy document is saved to your SweetProcess account. You may edit any part to add finishing touches and make it perfect for use.
SweetAI comes in handy when editing the company policies inside your SweetProcess account.
To edit with SweetAI, ensure you’re logged into your SweetProcess account and click on the policy you want to edit.
Step 6: Click on “Edit” on the top right part of the screen.
You can now prompt SweetAI to edit any part of the policy, such as:
Proofreading the Policy
If your policy documentation is not error-free, it will be difficult for your readers to process, understand, and comply with the policy.
SweetAI can help you ensure that your policy is error-free when you prompt it to proofread it.
Rewriting the Title
If AI initially wrote the policy, it may have a different title than you want. You can prompt SweetAI to give it another title based on your instructions.
SweetAI has changed the policy title from “Return and Refund” to “Customer-Centric Return and Refund Policy.”
Tailor the Policy to Fit Your Business
If the policy does not precisely demonstrate your business type, you can prompt SweetAI to incorporate it in the policy document. An example is seen in the screenshot below:
Clarify the Policy Statements
You can also improve the clarity of the policy statements by prompting SweetAI. This will help your employees and stakeholders better understand all parts of the policy and comply with them.
Explain the Subheadings
SweetAI can help you expatiate each of the subheadings in your policy. This will also provide additional clarity for your policy.
Step 7: When you are satisfied with the edits, the next step is to save the changes and make the policy go live.
To save the changes, click the “Save Changes” button, and the edits will be updated to the existing policy.
To replace the old policy with the newly edited version, click on the “Approve” button and use any of the approval features.
Approve and Notify: You are in the right position to finalize the policy. Once you use this option, the updated policy will go live, and all concerned team members will be notified.
Approve and Request Sign-Off: You’re in the right position to finalize the policy. Using this option, all team members will be notified and requested to attest to their notification of the update with the sign-off feature.
Request Approval: You need another team member (probably in higher authority) to review and approve the policy to go live.
Features That Make SweetAI Stand Out as a Policy Editing Tool
1) Version History
All the edits made to your policy are captured under different versions that are similar to what is obtainable in Google Docs. You can review previously edited versions and choose to approve any one you prefer based on the edits.
2) Highlight Edits
You can track the edits made by SweetAI once the “Highlight Changes” box is ticked.
3) Undo Edits
The changes already made by SweetAI can be reversed by giving it the appropriate prompt, as seen below.
4) Automatic Updates
SweetAI automatically implements the edits it makes following your prompts. Each edited piece is saved as a version of your policy under the “Version History” feature.
The good thing about this process is that the live version of your policy document is unaltered, while the corrected versions are available to you as drafts.
Once you’re satisfied with your edited policy’s final version, you can replace the old live version with the new edited version of the policy document.
5) Approve and Notify
Sometimes, your existing employees might already have the policy details on the tip of their fingers. It becomes an issue if you have also failed to notify them of upcoming changes to company policies.
SweetProcess solves this problem by providing real-time notifications to all team members who have access to the old policy.
6) Set up a Periodic Review of Your Policies Automatically
Policy reviews are disabled by default. If you want to set up a review schedule for your policy, you will have to click “Reviews” on the left sidebar and then click “Enable.”
On the policy review interface, you can assign the policy’s reviewer, review date, and review interval.
7) Monitor the Policy Activity
SweetProcess makes it easy to track your team members’ policy activities. By clicking on the “Policy Activity” icon on the left sidebar, you can see who visited, reviewed, approved, updated, and so on.
8) Collaborate Seamlessly With Team Members
Once your policy is completely up to date, you can attach it to related procedures and policies. This will make it easy for your team members to work with up-to-date rules and regulations within the company.
You can also have your team members comment on the policy to aid easy collaboration.
9) Export Policies as PDF, Word, and HTML
By clicking on the “Export” tab under the “Actions” button, you can download your company policy as a PDF, Word, or HTML file.
Heather MacLean once shared how SweetProcess helped her team enhance their business process documentation at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. As a management analyst III, processing over 40,000 records yearly was hectic for Heather with tools like Microsoft Word, SharePoint, and Excel.
As soon as they switched to SweetProcess, they could document their complex processes, separate policies from procedures, and make everything a walk in the park.
According to Heather, “We’ve shown a few other staff members, and they’ve all been able to dive in and make processes right away.”
This shows how easy it is to start with SweetProcess, even without getting any training.
Heather’s observation was validated by Florinela Serban, a business process manager at Onogo, who tried out different process management tools before settling for SweetProcess.
In her words: “The main difference with SweetProcess that appealed to me is the ease of use.”
Using SweetProcess at Onogo—an e-commerce company—eased their process documentation, improved employee onboarding, ensured quality assurance, and helped them build a standardized knowledge base.
Want to join other SweetProcess users and manage your company processes like a pro?
