AI skills for HR beyond hiring: the five to set up first

The five, and what to put in each

1. Onboarding plan: your standard day-one checklist (accounts, equipment, paperwork), the people every new hire meets, and how you set a first deliverable.
2. Policy FAQ: your handbook and policies as the only sources, and who answers what isn't settled.
3. 1:1 prep: the report's agenda first, last time's commitments, one win to recognize, one piece of feedback.
4. SBI feedback: the situation, the behavior described without judgment, and its impact, as the Center for Creative Leadership's model sets out, plus a clear request.
5. Performance review draft: your rating scale and expectations, the evidence fields, and the bias checks (recency, halo, vague praise, personality words).

A worked example: one year

Illustration: a made-up business. The HR manager of a 70-person engineering firm on Claude Team sets the skills up over a year and shares each with the managers' group:

1. January: the onboarding plan, before five spring hires. Each manager gets a plan with the first deliverable already named.
2. March: the policy FAQ, the week the hybrid-work policy changes. Forty questions in the HR channel become seven answers with links.
3. May: 1:1 prep and SBI feedback, after the manager training.
4. October: the performance review draft, a month before reviews. Its bias check flags a draft built only on the last three weeks of evidence.

By December, every manager has used at least two of the five. The HR manager updates each skill once a year, in the month before it's needed.

What stays with HR

1. People's data on a business plan the company controls, and only what the task needs.
2. Managers write the final review and own the rating.
3. Policy answers come from the policy, not from memory; open points go to an owner.
4. One owner per skill, who updates it when the process changes.
5. Pay, discipline and termination always get a person's check before anything is sent.

Next step: share them past your own team

Some of these skills reach people outside HR's plan, such as interviewers in a sister company. Share the interview scorecard with every interviewer covers what each way of sharing reaches.

Questions

What AI skills are useful for HR?

Beyond hiring, five cover most of the repeated writing: a 30/60/90 onboarding plan for each new hire, a policy FAQ built from the questions people ask, 1:1 prep for managers, feedback written in Situation-Behavior-Impact form, and a performance review draft with a bias check. Hiring has its own five, from the role intake to the reference check.

Which HR skill should I build first?

The one you'll use most often. For most small companies that's the onboarding plan, because every new hire needs one and they're written from scratch each time. Build the policy FAQ before the next policy change, and the performance review draft before review season, so managers have it when they need it.

Can AI write performance reviews?

It can draft one from the evidence a manager gives it: examples for each expectation, their impact, growth areas and the reason for the rating. A good skill then checks for recency (only the last month), halo effects, vague praise and personality words. The manager writes the final review and owns the rating.