32 Claude Skills for Running HR as a Fair Process

What these skills are

A whole HR function, as installable Claude skills. The pack follows the HR week. First you run the desk: who owns what, the calendar, the compliance register, the audit and the dashboard. Then the work that hurts most — a complaint comes in, you choose the route, you investigate and you write up the facts. Performance and discipline, leave and absence, pay and levels, and policies follow, then the way people stay and leave, and the way they join.

The red line: Claude writes the process, never the verdict. It never screens, ranks, scores or reads people, a named person decides and signs every decision about someone, and every legal point goes to a qualified adviser for the country it concerns.

Each skill produces one artifact you can use the same day, and points to the skill to run next. Each works from what you paste — an intake note, the policy you already have, your levels and market data — with no connector to install, and each asks where the person works before it drafts, because the law differs by country, state and province. Reports about groups are aggregate only, small groups suppressed, and nothing profiles or tracks an individual.

Mechanically, each skill is one folder with a SKILL.md file. The 32 are grouped into eight parts of the HR week, and each one gives full value on its own: run one, run a part, or work through the lot in the order the trouble arrives.

Download all 32 skills. One zip: ready-to-install skill zips, readable SKILL.md files, and the evidence notes behind every method. Free, no signup. The same 32 skills are open on GitHub: polar-bear-org/claude-skills.

The 32 skills you get

The set follows the HR week, in eight parts: running the desk, complaints and investigations, performance and discipline, leave and absence, pay and levels, policies and the handbook, how people stay and leave, and how they join.

1 · Run the HR desk

1. HR RACI Matrix

Use when: Every manager's people problem lands on your desk

Output: A who-owns-what matrix across HR, managers, employees, payroll, legal and leaders, "manager first" rules, an escalation line, and a must-do list leadership signs

2. HR Calendar

Use when: Q4 stacks enrollment, reporting and reviews on one person again

Output: A 12-month calendar with an owner and lead time per item, statutory and reporting dates marked for an adviser, and a clash check against your busy season

3. HR Compliance Checklist

Use when: Nobody can say which rules apply to you this year

Output: An obligations register by location and headcount, a source link and date checked per line, a next action and owner, and an "adviser confirmed on" column that stays empty until a person fills it

4. HR Audit

Use when: You inherited months of no HR and files in random folders

Output: An audit across files, policies and practices, a gap list ordered by risk and effort, a fix plan with owners, and the deficiency summary leaders sign off

5. HR Dashboard

Use when: Leaders think HR adds nothing and you cannot show the work

Output: A one-page aggregate dashboard — headcount, hires, leavers, turnover, absence, open cases — with a definition per metric, small groups suppressed, and a "what this cannot tell you" line

2 · Complaints and investigations

6. Employee Relations Intake

Use when: Someone raises a concern and you must choose what happens next

Output: A first-conversation script, an intake note, the route options, and who decides the route

7. Grievance Procedure

Use when: Complaints go nowhere because nobody knows the steps

Output: A written procedure from informal first to appeal, with timescales, roles, and the rule for when the grievance is about the person who would hear it

8. Workplace Investigation Plan

Use when: Your first serious investigation lands

Output: Terms of reference, an investigator conflict check, interview order and questions, an evidence log, and a confidentiality script

9. Investigation Report Template

Use when: Interviews are done and the write-up must not decide the outcome

Output: A report that keeps allegation, evidence, findings of fact and open questions apart, leaves the decision to a named decision maker, and indexes the evidence

10. Employee Relations Case Log

Use when: You cannot find what was said, when, once a claim arrives

Output: A case log with stage, owner, next date and documents, the rules for what to record and what not to, and a monthly aggregate count

3 · Performance and discipline

11. Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)

Use when: Everyone says nobody comes back from a PIP

Output: The specific gap with dated examples, the standard, the support offered, review points and the possible outcomes, after a pre-check of who decided a PIP is warranted

12. Disciplinary Procedure

Use when: A disciplinary meeting went wrong on paperwork

Output: A standing procedure from establishing facts to appeal, the warning levels and how long each stays live, suspension as a last resort, and who may accompany the employee

13. Written Warning

Use when: A manager wrote someone up and they never got to answer

Output: The hearing invitation, the warning or outcome letter, the appeal invitation and the appeal outcome — each only from recorded facts and a decision a named person has made

14. Termination Letter

Use when: The decision is made and the meeting must not be improvised

Output: A meeting plan with one stated reason, who is in the room and what not to say, the letter itself, and the final pay and benefits questions for payroll and an adviser

4 · Leave and absence

15. Leave of Absence Plan

Use when: Letters, pay and return dates turn into a mess

Output: A case plan for one person's leave with the eligibility points to confirm, notices, contact, cover and return, the letters, and the questions for the leave administrator

16. Reasonable Accommodation Process

Use when: Someone senior wants to say no without the conversation

Output: An interactive process record with the options explored and the reason for the choice, a response letter, and adviser questions before any refusal

17. Absence Management

Use when: You must talk about a pattern without accusing anyone

Output: Reporting and recording rules, a return-to-work meeting guide, review points that open a conversation instead of an automatic warning, and an adjustments check

18. Leave Policy

Use when: Nobody explained accrual and a leaver got billed for PTO

Output: Holiday and PTO (accrual, carry-over, payout on leaving) plus sick, parental, bereavement and carer leave, statutory floors flagged for an adviser, and a named owner for every enhancement

5 · Pay and levels

19. Job Architecture

Use when: You are building levels from nothing

Output: Job families, levels with written differences, title rules, how roles move up, and a leveling guide that describes roles and never rates people

20. Salary Bands

Use when: A rehire gets offered above the top of the band

Output: Bands per level — minimum, midpoint, maximum, range spread — from market data you supply, the rules for offers, moves, interim cover and rehires, and a band letter

21. Pay Equity Audit

Use when: A leaked offer shows two people on very different pay

Output: An aggregate comparison of pay for equal work by level and group, gap figures where required, small groups suppressed, each gap turned into a question a named person must explain, and an action plan

22. Compensation Philosophy

Use when: Pay is decided deal by deal and HR is left out

Output: One page on market position, what pay rewards, how progression works, what is shared openly and with whom, the review rhythm, and a trade-offs table for leaders to decide

6 · Policies and handbook

23. HR Policy

Use when: A policy exists that nobody can administer

Output: One policy at a time in plain language, with scope, owner, version and review date, a section on how managers apply it, and adviser questions for every clause with a legal effect

24. Employee Handbook

Use when: The rewrite has been "next month" for a year

Output: A handbook assembled from your approved policies, contents in the order a new starter needs them, a disclaimer flagged for an adviser, an acknowledgement page, a change log, and a gap list

25. Code of Conduct

Use when: Nothing written says what happens when a line is crossed

Output: Your values as observable behaviours, conflicts of interest and relationships with a disclosure route, privacy at work, a speak-up route, a non-retaliation statement, and what happens after a breach

26. HR Policy FAQ

Use when: A fifth of your week goes to questions the handbook answers

Output: Answers drafted for HR to review from your approved handbook text only, with the clause quoted, "our policy does not cover this" when it does not, medical, legal and personal questions routed to a person, and no record of who asked

7 · Stay and leave

27. Stay Interview Questions

Use when: Exit interviews tell you why people left too late

Output: A short question set, an opening and closing script for the manager, a stay plan per person that the manager owns, and a team-level theme read

28. Exit Interview Questions

Use when: Leavers decline because "nothing ever changes"

Output: Who runs the interview (not the line manager), the question set, a consent and recording note, a quarterly theme read for groups only, and the loop back to leaders

29. Offboarding Checklist

Use when: A leaver's access stays live or final pay becomes a dispute

Output: Notice to last day and after, final pay and PTO questions for payroll and an adviser, access removal by system with an owner, equipment, records retention, and the leaver's own copy

8 · Join

30. Offer Letter

Use when: An offer has to go tonight and the template is old

Output: An offer drafted from terms a named person approved, a clause list for adviser review, and a check against what the contract says

31. Onboarding Checklist

Use when: Onboarding stops at paperwork

Output: Before day one to day 90 in four blocks — compliance, clarification, culture, connection — with an owner and date per item, and the new starter's own copy

32. Probation Review

Use when: Probation end dates pass unnoticed

Output: Expectations agreed at the start, review meeting dates, a short review form for the manager, extension rules, and outcome letters drafted only after the manager decides

Where HR starts, and what the pack rests on

There is no compulsory sequence. You bring one real thing — the note from a first meeting, the policy nobody can administer, the pay data you bought — and open the skill that matches what hurts this week. The order in the catalogue is the order the trouble usually arrives in: the desk first, because until who owns what is written down every problem is yours, then complaints and investigations, because that is the work nobody has a script for and the work that is hardest to put right afterwards.

Several of them chain. hr-complaint-intake ends in a route, and the route opens either hr-grievance-procedure or hr-workplace-investigation; what the investigation finds is written up by hr-investigation-report, which hands a named decision maker the facts and nothing else, and hr-case-log is what keeps the whole thing findable a year later. Pay runs in order too: hr-job-architecture gives you the levels, hr-salary-bands builds bands per level from your own market data, and hr-pay-equity-audit can only compare equal work once those levels exist. The same holds for the written rules — hr-policy writes one policy at a time, hr-employee-handbook assembles the approved ones, and hr-policy-faq answers staff from that handbook text and nothing else.

The pack is research-informed, not validated. A scan of what HR practitioners and employees say they struggle with set the order of the skills and the words in each "use when": 823 public items collected in September 2026, kept as 191 pain statements and grouped into 14 struggles. The methods themselves come from public guidance and institution pages — the Acas Code and its step-by-step guides, GOV.UK employer guidance, the EU pay transparency directive, US Department of Labor fact sheets, the EEOC, the Job Accommodation Network, the ICO on employment records, the EHRC's five-step equal pay audit, CIPD on pay structures, ISO 30414, BLS separation definitions, SHRM and the SHRM Foundation, and Digital.gov on plain language. The one shared file in the pack, resources/evidence-and-sources.md, lists them source by source with the finding used and the limit on it. No skill here has been tested in a trial, and every legal point ends by telling you to check with a qualified adviser for the country it concerns.

Setup guide

1. Download the pack. One zip: an install folder with 32 ready-to-upload skill zips, a skills folder with the same 32 skills as readable SKILL.md files, and the evidence notes — resources/evidence-and-sources.md — which name the source behind every method and where it stops.
2. Install your skills. In Claude Code, add the marketplace and install ai-for-hr-pack, and all 32 load at once. In Claude, turn on code execution in Settings, Capabilities, then go to Customize, Skills and upload one zip per skill from the install folder. Prefer working from files? Add the SKILL.md files to your Project knowledge instead; it works, just less cleanly.
3. Bring one real thing from the desk. No connector, no integration, no admin: every skill works from what you paste — the note from a first meeting, the policy nobody can administer, your levels and the market data you bought. Start with whatever hurts this week and write "run hr-complaint-intake". Say where the person works, because every legal point depends on it, and keep names and personal data out: anonymise the case first.

Where to start

The quality bar

Every skill in the pack holds the same standard, the one we hold when we run HR ourselves:

• Place first: every skill with law in it asks where the person works before drafting, marks statutory points "confirm with a qualified adviser" and lists the questions to ask
• Every output ends with the decision a named person makes, and by when
• Facts apart from findings, findings apart from decisions: investigations, reports and letters keep what happened, what was found and what was decided in separate places
• Letters follow decisions: no warning, outcome, termination or offer letter is drafted until a named person has recorded the decision and the reason
• Aggregate only: reports about groups suppress small groups, nothing profiles or tracks an individual, and the policy FAQ keeps no record of who asked
• No invented facts: numbers, dates, clauses and quotes come from you or a cited source, and everything else stays a [placeholder]
• Claude writes the process, never the verdict: it never screens, ranks, scores or reads people

Who made this

Polar Bear is a people ops consultancy for human-size teams (20 to 200 people). Built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. This pack is the free, self-serve version of how we work.

The pack carries one HR function. When you want your whole team working this way, AI carrying the overhead so people do the part only people can do, across HR, hiring and everyday operations, that's what we build with clients.

Meet Pauline. Running HR on your own? Bring the case on your desk, the policy nobody can administer, or the pay question you cannot answer alone. Book a 30-minute call · Pauline on LinkedIn

Install in Claude Code

Two lines, and every skill in the pack loads at once.

/plugin marketplace add polar-bear-org/claude-skills
/plugin install ai-for-hr-pack@polar-bear-skills

Using Claude on the web instead? Download the zip and upload each skill from its install folder under Customize → Skills.