Glossary
Policy acknowledgement
Also called: attestation, policy sign-off
Policy acknowledgement is a recorded attestation that a named individual has read a specific version of a specific policy, at a given time. It is the evidence auditors ask for after they have established that the policy itself was approved.
Policy acknowledgement explained
Why a read receipt is not enough
A read receipt says a message was opened, possibly by a preview pane. An acknowledgement records that a named person, in their own authenticated session, attested to having read a particular version. The distinction matters the moment someone disputes that they were told.
"The policy was circulated by email" is the answer that fails an audit, and it fails because circulation is not receipt and receipt is not reading.
Version-specific by necessity
An attestation against version 3 says nothing about version 4. When a policy changes materially, the requirement has to be reissued — which means the acknowledgement record must be bound to a version rather than to the policy as an abstraction.
Whether a change is material enough to warrant re-acknowledgement is a judgement. A new obligation or a changed threshold generally is; a typographical correction generally is not.
Reporting that is actionable
A completion percentage tells a manager nothing they can act on. A list of names who have not yet acknowledged does, and it is also what an auditor asks for when they sample. Scope the population with an "applies to" field so the outstanding list is meaningful rather than organisation-wide.
Reissuing on supersession
When a new version is published, the requirement can be reissued automatically to the same scope. That is the mechanism that keeps attestation current rather than historical.
FAQ
Policy acknowledgement: common questions
Should everyone acknowledge every policy?
No — scope it. Requiring the whole organisation to attest to a policy that applies to forty people produces noise and trains people to click through without reading.
How long should acknowledgement records be kept?
Generally alongside the employment record of the person who gave them, because their evidential value is tied to the individual rather than to the document.
Related terms
- Approval workflowAn approval workflow is a configured path a document must clear before it can be relied on, defining the steps, the approvers and the order.
- Document generationDocument generation produces a finished document by merging structured data into an approved template.
- e-FormAn e-form captures structured data through defined fields with validation, rather than collecting it as text inside a document.
- Electronic signatureAn electronic signature is data attached to or logically associated with a document that indicates the signer's approval of it.
- EscalationEscalation is the automatic reassignment or notification that occurs when a workflow step is not actioned within a defined period.
Última revisión: 28 de agosto de 2026. Browse the full glossary.