The handbook
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Handbooks · Volume 2
AI Policies for the Workforce
The handbook for company management: what belongs in writing, why, and how it stays in force.
- 15 sections in 4 parts, the last part is the appendix with 5 sections
- Online reading access via your personal link
- Full handbook as a PDF
- Self-assessment worksheet as a separate PDF
€39.00incl. VAT. One-off payment, no subscription.
Free to read: Purpose and structure, Contents, What a set of rules can achieve and what it cannot.
The contents
15 sections in 4 parts, the last part is the appendix with 5 sections. Free to read: Purpose and structure, Contents, What a set of rules can achieve and what it cannot.
Part I · Sections 1 – 3
Why have rules at all
- 03What a set of rules can achieve and what it cannot
- 04The situation without rules
- 05What the law and the authorities require — and what they do not
Part II · Sections 4 – 6
The decisions that come before the writing
- 06Who may, for what, with which data, and who approves
- 07Approval of new tools
- 08Access, accounts and default settings
Part III · Sections 7 – 10
The rules themselves
- 09What belongs in them, subject by subject
- 10Training, instruction and evidence
- 11Bringing into force and keeping current
- 12When someone breaches them
Part IV · Sections 11 – 15
Annex
- 13Self-assessment of the state of the rules
- 14Statements not made
- 15Open questions
- 16Glossary
- 17List of sources
Sample
The beginning of Section 1, unchanged from the handbook. The source lines are in the reading sample.
What a set of rules can achieve and what it cannot
A set of usage rules does not change what an AI tool can do. It changes who uses it for what, which information goes into it, and who bears the consequences.
It makes visible what is happening anyway. The German data protection supervisory authorities describe the starting position unusually directly: without clear rules there is a risk that employees will use AI applications “on their own initiative and without control”, and it must be assumed that this is “currently the reality in many companies and public bodies”. Rules that name the tools provided by the company and open up reporting channels bring that use out of the invisible.
It moves decisions to where they belong. Without rules, each member of staff decides case by case whether a customer’s address may go into an external system. With rules, the company decides that — once, in advance, and the same way for everyone. The Austrian Economic Chamber puts the same thought in terms of tool selection: it is for company management alone to decide whether an application is permissible.
It can itself be a protective measure to which legal consequences attach. Under Union law, information is a trade secret only if, among other things, “it has been subject to reasonable steps under the circumstances, by the person lawfully in control of the information, to keep it secret”. Protection therefore depends on an act of the holder, not on the value of the information alone.
Written rules that are made known and enforced, governing what may be entered into external services, are in substance such a step. No court decision was found that expressly brings a set of AI usage rules under that point, or that treats their absence as causing the loss of trade secret protection. The connection therefore remains a question each company must answer for itself, and not an established legal consequence (Section 13).
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