Policies in Factorial help companies centralize important internal documentation and ensure employees not only have access to it, but also read and acknowledge it when required.

With the latest improvements, Policies now support the full policy lifecycle: from publishing a document, to targeting the right audience, requesting acknowledgement, and tracking compliance over time.

What are Policies in Factorial?

Policies allow companies to create, upload, organize, and distribute internal documentation such as:

• Employee handbooks
• Code of conduct
• IT and security policies
• Health & safety guidelines
• Expense and travel policies
• Remote work agreements
• Data protection and compliance documents

Policies can be targeted to specific groups of employees and, when needed, employees can be asked to confirm they have read and understood the content.

This helps HR and Operations teams improve communication, compliance, and visibility across the company.

What can you do with Policies?

With Policies, you can:

• Upload and publish company policies
• Control who can access each policy
• Target policies by:
  • Legal Entity
  • Workplace
  • Team
• Request employee acknowledgement
• Track acknowledgement rates
• Monitor policy adoption and visibility
• Detect which employees still need to review important documentation

When should Policies be used?

Policies are especially useful when information must be:

• Clearly communicated
• Easily accessible
• Acknowledged by employees
• Auditable for compliance purposes

Common examples include:

This is especially useful for mandatory policies such as code of conduct, data protection, or health and safety guidelines.

How visibility works

When publishing a policy, you can define exactly which employees should have access to it.
Visibility can be configured using one or more of the following filters:

• Legal Entity
• Workplace
• Team

This ensures employees only see policies that are relevant to them.

How acknowledgement works

Acknowledgement allows companies to request employees to confirm they have read and understood a policy.

When acknowledgement is enabled:

1. Employees included in the visibility settings receive a task.
2. They can open and review the policy.
3. They confirm understanding through a simple acknowledgement action.
4. HR and Admins can track acknowledgement progress directly from the policy overview.

This is particularly important for mandatory or compliance-related documentation.

How to create and publish a policy

1. Open Policies from the sidebar:
   Documents → Policies
2. Create or upload a policy
   You can:
   • Upload an existing document
   • Create a new policy directly in Factorial
   • Supported formats depend on your company configuration.
3. Configure visibility
   • During publishing, select the employees who should have access by choosing:
     • Legal Entity
     • Workplace
     • Team
     • You can combine multiple filters to create more precise visibility rules.
4. Enable acknowledgement (optional)
   Activate Request acknowledgement if employees must confirm they have read and understood the policy.
5. Publish the policy
   Once published:
   • Employees included in the visibility settings will gain access
   • Employees requiring acknowledgement will receive a pending task
   • HR and Admins can track progress from the policy overview

Tracking acknowledgements

From the Policies overview, Admins and HR teams can monitor:

• Total affected employees
• Number of acknowledgements completed
• Pending acknowledgements
• Overall acknowledgement percentage

This helps teams identify:

• Policies with low adoption
• Employees who still need reminders
• Documentation gaps across departments or locations

Policies Dashboard and Insights

Policies also include a dedicated dashboard that helps HR and Admin teams understand how employees interact with company policies and identify knowledge gaps across the organization.

Depending on permissions, Admins and HR teams can access analytics and insights related to:

• Questions employees are asking about policies
• Most searched topics
• Areas generating confusion or repeated questions
• Trends in employee concerns or curiosity
• Policies with low understanding or engagement

This dashboard helps companies move from static documentation to a more dynamic and data-driven knowledge management system.

For example, teams can detect:

• Employees repeatedly asking about vacation rules
• Confusion around expense reimbursement processes
• Increased questions related to remote work or overtime
• Missing documentation for recurring operational questions

These insights can be used to:

• Improve existing policies
• Create new policies proactively
• Clarify unclear sections
• Identify communication gaps across teams or locations
• Detect trends and behavioral patterns inside the company

The dashboard is especially valuable for HR, Operations, Legal, and Internal Communications teams looking to continuously improve internal documentation and employee understanding.

Access to the Policies Dashboard depends on user permissions and your company’s Policies plan configuration.

Best practices

• Target policies carefully
  Avoid sharing every policy with every employee. Limiting visibility improves relevance and reduces information overload.
   
• Use simple and clear language
  Policies written in clear, understandable language usually achieve higher acknowledgement rates and better employee understanding.
   
• Re-request acknowledgement after major updates
  If a policy changes significantly, request acknowledgement again to ensure employees are aware of the new information.
   
• Review acknowledgement data regularly
  Monitoring acknowledgement rates can help identify:
  • Teams missing important information
  • Communication gaps
  • Policies that may need clarification or simplification

Troubleshooting

If employees cannot see a policy
Check that:

• The policy is published.
• Visibility settings include the correct:
  • Legal Entity
  • Workplace
  • Team

If no audience is configured, employees will not have access.

Acknowledgement rates are low
Verify that:

• The correct employees were targeted.
• Acknowledgement was enabled during publishing.
• The policy content is easy to understand.

You may also consider re-sharing or reminding employees manually.

I cannot see acknowledgement data
You may not have the required permissions to access policy analytics or acknowledgement information.

Contact your company Admin to review your permissions.

FAQ

1. Who can create and publish policies?
   Admins and users with the appropriate permissions can create, edit, and publish policies.
    
2. What does acknowledgement mean for employees?
   Employees confirm they have read and understood the policy through a simple acknowledgement action.
    
3. Are notifications sent automatically?
   Currently, employees receive a task requesting acknowledgement.
   Additional notification and reminder capabilities are planned for future releases.
    
4. Can I track who acknowledged a policy?
   Yes. HR teams and Admins can track acknowledgement progress and view overall completion rates directly from the Policies overview.
    
5. Can employees access old policies?
   Employees can access any policy that is:
   • Published
   • Visible to them according to the configured visibility settings
      
6. What happens when a policy is updated?
   Admins can republish the updated version and optionally request acknowledgement again to ensure employees review the latest changes.
    
7. Can I see how many employees have acknowledged a policy?
   Yes. HR and Admins can view the percentage of affected employees who have read and confirmed the policy.