Research, practical frameworks and guidance for businesses, filed under Guides.
A complete AI use policy for a UK small business, free to copy and issue this week: nine clauses in full wording, the four choices only you can make, and what UK law actually requires behind each one.
The law makes small businesses disclose AI in only a few places. Customers expect more. The Surprise Test shows when to tell them up front and when a website statement is enough, with copyable wording for your site, proposals, chatbot and note-taker.
New hires use AI from their first morning, often with habits formed under another employer's rules. Here is a one-month plan, the Three Firsts, that gives a starter your rules on day one, your way of working in week one and an AI job of their own by day thirty.
AI can chase invoices, sort receipts and explain your numbers, but it should never set a figure in your books, move money or change who gets paid on its own. Here is where to draw the line, and what to do this week.
The Digital Omnibus pushed the EU AI Act's high-risk rules to December 2027 and softened the AI literacy duty. Here is what the Act still asks of a small business, and a simple way to sort every AI use you have onto one of four shelves.
Prompting is a job skill, but underneath it is the old skill of giving a clear brief. Here is the New Hire Test, what the research says, and a practical way to teach prompting to a small business team in a month.
Most staff in small and medium-sized businesses already use AI tools nobody approved. Banning them drives the habit underground. Here is the one-week Daylight Rule for bringing shadow AI into the open: ask first, sort every use into keep, move or stop, and supply an approved home before you forbid anything.
AI belongs in small business customer service, but not where most owners start. Here is what customers want, who is liable when a chatbot gets it wrong, and the Promise Rule for deciding what AI may say to a customer.
Yes, and it should fit on one page. Your staff are probably already using AI on personal accounts. Here is what a small-business AI policy must answer, what UK GDPR, US guidance and the EU AI Act's AI literacy duty mean for you, and what to do this week.
Most AI training changes what a team knows, not what it does. Here is what works for small business teams instead: four things every training plan needs, the evidence behind them, and a 30-day plan a 20-person business can run without a data team.
Most small businesses have tried AI, and few have changed how the work gets done. Dan Fitzpatrick's answer: start with one job, not one tool. How to pick that job, the three rules to write first, and a 30-day plan for a small team.
