You’ve got the handbook. You’ve got the usual suspects: sickness, holiday, disciplinary, grievance.
So your policies are sorted. Right?
Nope.
The workplace has changed rather dramatically while many employee handbooks have… not. Hybrid working, AI, social media and changing expectations around employee wellbeing have created risks and situations that older policies simply weren’t designed for.
The problem isn’t always an out of date policy. Sometimes it’s the policy you didn’t realise you needed in the first place.
Here are some of the gaps worth checking.
1. AI Use at Work
Whether you have officially embraced AI or not, there’s a very good chance your employees already have.
They may be using it to draft emails, summarise documents, create content or analyse information, potentially including information you really don’t want disappearing into a third party AI tool.
An AI policy should make clear what tools can be used, what information must never be entered, where human oversight is required and who remains responsible for the output.
“We don’t use AI” is not really an AI policy.
2. Hybrid and Home Working
For plenty of organisations, hybrid working evolved rather than being designed.
What started as ‘work from home when it makes sense’ can quickly become confusion over who is eligible, when people need to be available, what expenses are covered and who is responsible for equipment, data security and homeworking safety.
If your hybrid working arrangements rely largely on everyone knowing what everyone means, writing it down might be overdue.
3. Social Media
A social media policy written for Facebook circa 2014 probably isn’t much help with today’s workplace.
Employees are posting on TikTok, Threads and LinkedIn, creating content with AI and discussing employers on anonymous platforms.
Your policy needs to distinguish personal use from representing the organisation and deal clearly with confidentiality, reputation and inappropriate content, without pretending you can simply control everything employees say online.
4. Menopause
Waiting until an employee raises a problem is not much of a strategy.
A clear approach to menopause can help managers understand reasonable adjustments, available support and how to handle conversations consistently and sensitively.
It gives employees clarity too, rather than making them work out for themselves whether support exists and who they are supposed to ask.
5. Probation Periods
Probation is about to become rather more important than a date in the diary.
Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal protection will be reduced from two years to just six months from January 2027.
That makes the first few months of employment critical.
Employers need to be setting expectations early, reviewing performance properly and (crucially) dealing with concerns when they arise. Waiting until month five to mention that someone’s performance hasn’t been up to scratch is going to be a much riskier strategy.
A good probation policy should give managers a clear framework for review meetings, performance concerns, support and improvement, extensions and outcomes, with the paperwork to show what actually happened.
Because once unfair dismissal protection kicks in at six months, being able to demonstrate that performance concerns were identified and managed fairly will matter.
If your probation process is essentially “we’ll see how they get on and have a chat at some point”, now would be an excellent time to rethink it.
6. Lone Working
If employees work alone (whether that’s outreach work, travelling between clients, working late or working remotely in certain circumstances) “text me when you’re home” isn’t much of a safety procedure.
Clear risk assessments, check-in arrangements, emergency procedures and responsibilities protect both the employee and the organisation.
Do You Have a Policy Gap?
The policies that cause problems aren’t always the obviously missing ones.
They’re the gaps nobody noticed because nothing had gone wrong yet.
So rather than asking “Are our policies up to date?”, there may be a better question:
“What happens in our organisation today that our policies were never written to deal with?”
That is usually where the interesting gaps are.
And if you’re not sure, it might be time for a Policy MOT.
