How do I know when a policy has changed?
Each policy record shows who edited it last and when, so the evidence of a change is on the policy itself. A company that wants people told announces it, commonly through a scheduled Slack message that links to the policy's own address.
Separating the record from the announcement is deliberate, and the reason is that not every edit is news.
Fixing a typo, renaming a section and rewriting the notice rule are all edits. Alerting everybody to all three trains people to ignore the alert, which costs more than it gains.
So the product keeps the fact and leaves the judgement to a person. The last editor and the timestamp answer when something moved and who moved it.
Announcements have their own machinery. Scheduled notifications post into Slack on a recurring or one-off basis, with a next-run time and a status, which is the route a real policy change usually takes.
There is one wrinkle worth knowing about. Policies are chunked and indexed for the assistant that answers questions from them, and each policy shows how many chunks it holds.
That indexing is what keeps the assistant current after an edit. An answer drawn from stale text would be worse than no answer, and the chunk count is the visible sign the reindex happened.
An edit that predates somebody joining is invisible to them as a change. They read the current text as though it had always said that, which is why a material change is worth announcing rather than leaving for people to notice.
Announce the ones that alter what somebody must do, and let the rest sit in the record. A scheduled reminder pointing at the policy address works better than a summary that immediately starts to age.
Related questions
Who can edit a policy?
HR, from the policy management screen. Each policy shows its category, status, last editor and timestamp.
How are policy changes announced?
Through scheduled Slack notifications, recurring or one-time, sent to the channels a company chooses.
Does the assistant update after an edit?
Policies are chunked and indexed for retrieval, and the chunk count is shown on each policy. The assistant answers from that index.