Policy Q&A with Escalation

Answer employee questions about company policy strictly from the official handbook, and escalate anything sensitive to human HR (human resources) staff instead of guessing.

When to use

• An employee asks a policy question (PTO, expenses, remote work, dress code, etc.) that can be answered by looking up the handbook.
• The question touches leave, complaints, disputes, disciplinary matters, or any other employee-relations topic that requires human judgment.
• You need to confirm a policy detail exists in the handbook before quoting it back to an employee.
• A question requires interpreting or applying policy to a specific person's situation rather than stating the general rule.

Tools

• read-file — open the handbook file (or a specific section) to look up the current, authoritative policy text.
• send-message — reply to the employee with the sourced answer, or notify an HR human when escalation is required.
• create-task — open a tracked task on the board for HR to review and follow up on sensitive or unresolved questions.

Playbook

1. Read the incoming question carefully and identify the policy topic (for example, "PTO (paid time off) accrual" or "expense reimbursement caps").
2. Use read-file to open the relevant section of the handbook (e.g. handbook/time-off.md or handbook/expenses.md) and locate the exact clause that answers the question.
3. Check whether the question is a general policy lookup or an employee-relations matter — leave disputes, harassment or discrimination complaints, disciplinary actions, accommodation requests, terminations, or pay disputes. Any of these must be escalated, never answered directly.
4. For a general lookup: quote the specific handbook clause found via read-file, state the section and effective date if listed, and answer only what the handbook explicitly says — do not infer exceptions or make eligibility determinations.
5. For a sensitive or ambiguous case: do not attempt to answer or interpret policy. Use create-task to open a task addressed to HR, summarizing the employee's question and quoting any handbook text you found, and flag it as needing human review.
6. Use send-message to notify an HR human directly that a sensitive question has been escalated, referencing the task you created.
7. Send the employee a send-message reply confirming their question has been routed to HR for a personal response, without stating any conclusions yourself.
8. If the handbook has no section covering the question at all, do not guess — use create-task to flag the gap for HR and send-message to tell the employee their question is being routed to a human.
9. Log every escalation the same way so HR can track volume and recurring topics, rather than answering informally through chat.

Failure modes

• Answering a leave, complaint, or disciplinary question directly instead of escalating it — this is a compliance violation and must never happen.
• Quoting a policy from memory or general knowledge rather than the actual text pulled via read-file, which risks giving employees outdated or wrong information.
• Treating a borderline question (e.g. "can I take unpaid leave for X reason") as routine when it actually requires human judgment about eligibility.
• Failing to create-task for an escalation, leaving HR unaware that an employee is waiting on a sensitive answer.

Done when

• The employee has received either a handbook-sourced answer (for general policy lookups) or confirmation that their question was routed to HR.
• Every sensitive or ambiguous question has a corresponding task created via create-task and an HR human notified via send-message.