In this article
- What are the best AI prompts for HR?
- Which ChatGPT prompts help HR with recruitment?
- What are the best AI prompts for onboarding, training needs and L&D?
- How can HR use AI to draft policies and employee communications?
- How do you analyse an employee engagement survey with AI safely?
- What should HR teams not use AI for?
- How do you get an HR team using AI well?
- AI prompts for HR: questions people ask
The short answer
The best AI prompts for HR handle drafting and analysis: inclusive job adverts, structured interview questions, onboarding plans, policy first drafts, training needs analysis, anonymised survey themes and staff communications. Give the AI your context and rules, keep personal data out of unapproved tools under UK GDPR, and never let AI make decisions about individuals.
The best AI prompts for HR save your people team hours on adverts, onboarding plans, policies and staff comms, without handing a machine any decision about a real person.
HR is one of the functions where AI helps most and where it can go wrong fastest. Drafting a job advert or an onboarding plan is low risk and very quick with ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or Gemini. Pasting a grievance letter, a sickness record or a stack of CVs into a free chatbot is a data protection problem waiting to happen.
So this page does two things. It gives you ten prompts I would happily hand to any UK HR or people team, and it is clear about where the lines sit. If you lead the business rather than the HR function, the prompts for managers cover 1:1s, feedback and reviews from the line manager's side.
What are the best AI prompts for HR?
The best AI prompts for HR handle drafting and analysis work: inclusive job adverts, structured interview questions, onboarding plans, policy first drafts, training needs analysis, anonymised survey themes and employee communications. Each one gives the AI your context, a clear output and rules on tone, law and fairness.
The gap between a weak and a strong HR prompt is mostly context and constraints.
Write a job advert for a marketing manager. Make it sound exciting and attract the best candidates. Include the responsibilities, the requirements and the benefits, and make sure it stands out from other adverts. It should be about a page long and suitable for LinkedIn and our careers page.
You are an HR adviser at a 60-person UK firm. Using the role notes below, write a job advert for a marketing manager. Use inclusive, plain language, avoid gendered or age-coded words, and separate essential from nice-to-have skills (no more than five essentials). Include salary range, location and hybrid pattern. Under 350 words. Role notes: [paste].
The better version gives a role, a firm size, the source material, explicit inclusion rules and a length. More on the mechanics in how to write prompts for AI.
Which ChatGPT prompts help HR with recruitment?
AI helps most at the start of recruitment: writing adverts, building interview questions and planning a fair process. It should not be scoring or rejecting candidates on its own.
Check an advert for biased language
Act as an inclusive recruitment specialist in the UK. Review the job advert below: [paste]. Flag any wording that could put off candidates because of gender, age, disability, ethnicity or caring responsibilities, and explain why. Suggest a plainer alternative for each. Point out any requirement that looks unnecessary for the role, such as a degree or years of experience. Present as a table: phrase, issue, suggested rewrite.
Why this prompt works
It turns a vague wish for inclusion into specific, checkable rewrites.
Structured interview questions
You are helping a hiring manager at a UK business prepare a structured interview. The role is [job title] and the essential criteria are: [paste]. For each criterion, write two open, behavioural questions, one follow-up probe, and a short note on what a strong, average and weak answer would include. Avoid any question touching on age, health, family plans, religion or other protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.
Why this prompt works
Scoring guidance agreed in advance makes interviews fairer and easier to compare.
Make it better
Ask the AI to turn the pack into a scoring sheet with a 1 to 4 scale, so every interviewer marks against the same criteria.
What are the best AI prompts for onboarding, training needs and L&D?
Onboarding and learning plans are ideal AI work: structured, repetitive and easy to check. Give the AI the role, the team and what good looks like at three months, and it will produce a solid first draft in minutes.
A 90-day onboarding plan
You are an HR business partner. Create a 90-day onboarding plan for a new [job title] joining our [team] at a UK [type of business]. Split it into week one, weeks two to four, and months two and three. For each stage, list who they should meet, what they should learn, one small win to aim for and a check-in question for their manager. Keep it practical, in a table, under 400 words.
Why this prompt works
Small wins and manager check-ins make the plan something people actually follow.
Training needs analysis
Act as a learning and development consultant. Below are our job descriptions for [team], the skills we will need over the next year and anonymised notes from recent reviews: [paste]. Identify the main skill gaps, group them into themes, and rank them by business impact. For each theme, suggest whether it is best met by training, coaching, on-the-job practice or hiring. Present as a table and state any assumptions.
Why this prompt works
It separates real training needs from problems training will not fix.
An annual L&D plan
Using the training needs analysis below: [paste], draft a one-page learning and development plan for the year for a UK business of [number] staff. Include three priorities, the format for each (workshop, e-learning, mentoring), who it is for, rough timing by quarter and how we will measure whether it worked. Do not suggest providers or prices. Plain English, suitable to share with the leadership team.
Why this prompt works
Asking how success will be measured stops the plan becoming a course catalogue.
AI skills belong in that plan too. My AI skills matrix template is a quick way to see where your team stands before you decide what to train.
How can HR use AI to draft policies and employee communications?
HR can use AI to produce a clear first draft of a policy or announcement, then check it against current UK employment law and your own contracts. The AI is a fast writer, not an employment lawyer, and it may be out of date on legal detail.
A first-draft policy
You are an experienced UK HR manager. Draft a [policy name, e.g. hybrid working] policy for a [size and type] business in England. Use these points we have agreed: [paste]. Structure it with purpose, scope, the policy itself, responsibilities and how to raise concerns. Write in plain English at a reading age most staff will find easy. At the end, list every point where we should check current UK law or take legal advice.
Why this prompt works
The closing list of legal checkpoints tells you exactly where human review is needed.
Employee announcements
Write an email to all staff announcing [change, e.g. a new holiday booking system] from [sender]. Facts: [paste]. Open with what is changing and when, then why, then what staff need to do, then where to get help. Warm, direct tone, no corporate language, under 200 words. Then write a shorter version for Teams or Slack, and list three questions staff are likely to ask with clear answers.
Why this prompt works
Getting the likely questions up front saves a week of replying to the same email.
How do you analyse an employee engagement survey with AI safely?
Analyse survey comments with AI only after they are anonymised and only in an approved tool. Remove names, job titles in small teams and anything else that could identify someone, then ask for themes, not individuals.
- Export the commentsTake the free-text answers only, without names, email addresses or employee IDs.
- Strip identifying detailsRemove names, very small team labels and specific incidents that would point to one person.
- Use an approved toolRun the analysis in your organisation's business account, not a personal one.
- Ask for themes and evidenceUse the prompt below, then read a sample of the raw comments yourself.
- Report with careShare themes with leaders, never anything that could identify a respondent.
You are an employee engagement analyst. Below are anonymised free-text comments from our staff survey: [paste]. Group them into no more than seven themes. For each theme, give a one-line summary, roughly how many comments relate to it, two short representative quotes and whether the tone is mostly positive, mixed or negative. Do not speculate about who wrote any comment. End with three questions leaders should ask before deciding on actions.
Why this prompt works
Banning speculation about authors protects anonymity, and the questions slow leaders down before they react.
What should HR teams not use AI for?
HR should not use AI to make or effectively make decisions about individuals: who to shortlist, who to dismiss, who gets a pay rise. Under UK GDPR people have rights around significant decisions made solely by automated means, and employment decisions also carry discrimination risk under the Equality Act 2010. The ICO publishes guidance on AI and data protection that is worth reading.
| HR task | Use AI? | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Job adverts, interview questions, onboarding plans | Yes | Check tone and accuracy before use |
| Policy drafts and staff comms | Yes, as a first draft | Check against current law and contracts |
| Training needs and L&D plans | Yes | Use anonymised review data |
| Survey analysis | With care | Anonymise first, approved tool only |
| Disciplinary, grievance or absence cases | Only for structure, never the facts | No personal details in the prompt; follow the Acas Code |
| Shortlisting, dismissal or pay decisions | No | A trained human decides and can explain why |
For case work, you can still use AI to plan without sharing facts.
I am an HR manager preparing for a [type of meeting, e.g. first formal absence review] at a UK business. Do not ask me for any personal details. Give me a general structure for the meeting, the points a fair process usually covers, neutral wording for opening and closing, and a checklist of documents to prepare. Flag anything where I should check our own policy or the Acas Code of Practice.
Why this prompt works
It gets the planning help without a single personal detail leaving your systems.
Act as a UK data protection adviser. Here is our draft guidance for HR staff on using AI tools: [paste]. Check it covers: which tools are approved, what data must never be entered, anonymisation, human review of outputs, automated decision-making, retention, and who to ask for help. List any gaps in a table, with a suggested sentence to fill each one. Note where we should confirm details with our data protection lead.
Why this prompt works
It gives your people team a quick gap check before the guidance goes out.
For the wider picture, read how to write an AI policy and how to stop staff pasting confidential data into ChatGPT.
How do you get an HR team using AI well?
You get an HR team using AI well by agreeing the rules first, then practising on real, low-risk HR work together. A prompt list helps, but HR people need confidence about what is allowed, and that comes from a shared policy and hands-on practice.
In my sessions with people teams, the moment it clicks is usually when they rewrite one of their own job adverts and see the inclusive-language review in action. I would start with the AI Policy Workshop so everyone knows where the lines are, then Basic AI Training using your own adverts, plans and policies. If you are not sure where your team is starting from, the free AI Capability Assessment is a sensible first step. For prompts across every function, see the full business prompts page.
AI prompts for HR: questions people ask
What are the best AI prompts for HR?
The most useful cover inclusive job adverts, structured interview packs, 90-day onboarding plans, policy first drafts, training needs analysis, anonymised survey analysis and staff announcements. Each prompt should give the AI a role, your material, a clear format and rules on tone, fairness and law.
Can HR use ChatGPT under UK GDPR?
Yes, with care. Use an approved business account, keep personal data out of prompts wherever possible, anonymise anything you do paste, and make sure a human reviews every output. Your organisation remains responsible for the data. See how to protect business data when using AI.
Should we use AI to shortlist candidates?
I would not let AI shortlist or reject candidates on its own. It can reflect bias in its training or your past hiring, and UK GDPR gives people rights around significant decisions made solely by automated means. Use AI to write adverts and interview questions, and keep selection decisions with trained people.
Can AI write HR policies?
It can write a good first draft quickly, but it is not an employment lawyer and may be out of date on UK law. Give it your agreed points, ask it to list where legal checks are needed, and have the draft reviewed against current law and your contracts before it goes out.
Which AI tool is best for HR teams?
Microsoft Copilot suits HR teams already working in Microsoft 365, because it can draw on your own documents within your permissions. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all draft well in business accounts. The right choice is usually the one your organisation has approved and set up properly.
How do I train my HR team to use AI?
Agree the rules first, then practise on real, low-risk work such as adverts, onboarding plans and comms. An AI Policy Workshop followed by hands-on training on your own material builds confidence much faster than a prompt list.
Keep reading
Give your people team the confidence to use AI properly
I run practical sessions where HR teams use these prompts on their own adverts, plans and policies, with clear UK GDPR rules agreed up front. In person or online.
- Basic AI Training Your whole team, prompting properly in a day.
- Prompts, Context and Skills Deep Dive A half day on Claude and ChatGPT.
- AI Capability Assessment See where your team stands first.
Harry Lang
Harry Lang founded The Oxford AI School in Witney, Oxfordshire. He trains UK businesses and teams to use AI well, writes the Marketing Unfiltered newsletter, and is the author of Learn To Fly With AI.