AI tools at work: where your data goes, and a one-page policy

Short answer. Your staff are already using AI tools, and the useful question is which ones. Free consumer chatbots may use what is pasted into them to improve their models and offer no data processing agreement, so client data should never go into them. Business tiers (Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat with enterprise data protection, ChatGPT Team or Enterprise, Gemini for Workspace) contractually exclude training and keep data inside your agreements. Pick the approved tools, sort your SharePoint permissions before switching on anything that reads your files, and publish a one-page policy with three data tiers.

I am pro these tools. I use them daily. This post is about using them without your client list turning up in someone else’s answer.

Where the data goes, by tool

The distinction that matters is consumer versus business.

Two points follow. First, “we use ChatGPT” means nothing until you know which tier and whose account. Second, the last row is the one to worry about: browser extensions that summarise pages or emails can read everything in the browser, including your webmail, and their privacy terms are often a paragraph long.

The SharePoint permissions trap

Microsoft 365 Copilot answers questions using your documents, emails and Teams chats. It respects permissions exactly. That is the problem: in most small businesses, permissions are broader than anyone realises, because a folder that is technically open to everyone has been practically hidden by nobody knowing it exists.

Copilot removes the obscurity. “What is everyone’s salary?” gets an answer if the HR spreadsheet sits in a library the whole company can open. So do “what did the directors discuss about redundancies” and “show me the client contracts”.

Before enabling Copilot for everyone:

1. Run a review of who can access what across SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft’s own tools report on sharing links and broad access.
2. Fix the obvious: HR, finance and board material into restricted libraries.
3. Turn off “anyone with the link” sharing by default.
4. Pilot Copilot with two or three people and ask them to try to find things they should not be able to. They will.

This is the same tidy-up that a SharePoint migration should include, and it is worth doing whether or not you buy Copilot.

What actually works in a small business

Being realistic about value:

• Drafting and rewriting. First drafts of proposals, policies, job adverts, difficult emails. The tools are good at this and it is where most of the time saving is.
• Meeting notes. Teams meeting recaps through Copilot are genuinely useful and remove the person who never wrote up the actions.
• Excel. Explaining a formula, building a first version, spotting the error in a sheet.
• Summarising long documents you were going to skim anyway.
• Searching your own stuff (“find the email where the client agreed the scope”) once permissions are sorted.

What does not work well: anything that needs to be right first time without checking, legal or financial advice you will act on, and anything where the tool is asked about facts it was not given.

A policy that fits on one page

Bans do not work; they move usage onto personal phones where you have no visibility. A short, clear policy does. Mine for clients has four parts:

Approved tools. Named, with the account type. For example: Microsoft Copilot Chat via your work sign-in, and Microsoft 365 Copilot for licensed users. Anything else needs a conversation first.

Three tiers of data.

• Public. Already on the website or in the public domain. Use any approved tool.
• Internal. Non-sensitive company material. Approved business tools only.
• Confidential. Client data, personal data, finance, HR, anything under NDA. Approved business tools only, and only where the tool is inside your Microsoft or Google agreement. Never a personal account, never a free tier.

Check before you act. Anything AI-generated that goes to a client, a regulator or a court is reviewed by a person who understands it.

Ask. A named person (your IT provider or a director) who says yes or no to new tools within a day, so people do not route around the policy.

Put it on the intranet, mention it in inductions, and revisit it twice a year. The tools change faster than most policies.

The UK GDPR bit, briefly

Client and personal data going into a third-party tool makes that provider a processor. You need a processor agreement, which business tiers provide and consumer tiers do not. For anything involving sensitive personal data at scale, a short data protection impact assessment is sensible and is what the ICO expects. None of this is onerous; it is a page of thinking and a choice of tier.

Cost and where to start

Copilot Chat is included with the Microsoft 365 business plans. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a paid add-on per user, currently priced in the low twenties of pounds per month on annual terms; check the current list. For most small firms the sensible path is: switch everyone to Copilot Chat with their work sign-in, publish the policy, tidy permissions, then pilot the paid Copilot with the two people who would use it most.

Setting that up sits inside Microsoft 365 and SharePoint work and the policy is a template I adapt per client. If you would like the one-page version for your business, ask and I will send it.