Building an HR guide with ChatGPT

Q. I get requests for information from employees about our firm’s policies on PTO, traveling to clients, CPA Exam assistance, dress code, and so on. It is all in our employee handbook, but staff ask me instead of looking it up. Is there something that can help me?

A. Most accounting firms document their human resources-related policies in an employee handbook. Traditionally, firms give employees a PDF of the policy and expect them to read it through. The thinking is that employees will keep the guidance handy and turn to it when they have a question on employee policies. The reality is that, even when the handbook is available in electronic format, employees often find it easier to ask questions than to look up answers.

To address this issue, I want to use artificial intelligence technology to build a custom GPT that can access the firm’s handbook and provide answers to employee questions.

Let’s walk through this process using ChatGPT. To do this, I need to have a paid ChatGPT Team account through OpenAI. This will allow me to create a custom GPT called My GPTs that can be shared with my team. As an added benefit, all of my data and interactions with ChatGPT will be excluded from training the AI as a default. Open AI will use any information that is entered into Chat GPT to improve their AI, but I do not want anyone in my team to accidentally enter sensitive information into ChatGPT. Creating our own GPT is a nice way to make everyone opt out of sending info to OpenAI.

To build the custom GPT, I log into my ChatGPT account, click on my name on the bottom left and switch from my personal account to my Team account. I click my name again and select My GPTs.

This brings me to the My GPTs screen, which shows all the custom GPTs and any GPTs that others in the firm have shared with me. I click Create a GPT to get to the Create screen, then switch over to the Configure tab, where I can set up the custom GPT and a preview screen to test it.

The GPT includes seven inputs on the left and a Preview area on the right to test the Custom GPT, as shown in the screenshot below.

The seven inputs are:

• Image Icon
• Name
• Description
• Instructions
• Conversation Starters
• Knowledge
• Capabilities

The Image Icon is the dotted circle with a plus. I skip that until the end and start with Name. I designate “Employee Manual Helper” as the name that will appear on all my staff ’s ChatGPTs. It is important to remember that whatever Name is used will also go into helping the GPT understand its role. This goes for all the inputs except the Image Icon.

The Description will appear when someone on my team selects Employee Manual Helper. Again, everything I enter will be used to help the prompt with its task. For the Description, I enter “A helpful assistant to answer questions about our employee manual.”

The Instructions section is where I spend the most time. The following is the prompt I crafted after some adjustments and testing: 

The attached PDF is the Employee Handbook for an accounting firm. Using only the attached PDF, attempt to answer questions from the user. Provide snippets from the document with the relevant information. Always check the Knowledge before answering the question.

ONLY USE THE ATTACHED PDF TO ANSWER THE QUESTION AND ALWAYS CHECK THE KNOWLEDGE. If the information is not there, then say that you don’t have a clear answer to the question and tell the user to get in touch with the HR department.

Let’s look at each phrase of the prompt and why it is important.

“The attached PDF is the Employee Handbook for an accounting firm. Using only the attached PDF, attempt to answer questions from the user.” In the Knowledge section, we will provide a PDF of the Employee Handbook.

I want to tell the GPT that it is available and that it is the Knowledge that should be referenced. I tell the GPT what its task is — in this case, it’s to answer questions from the user.

“Provide snippets from the document with the relevant information. Always check the Knowledge before answering the question.” I want the GPT to provide a little bit of context to the answer that can be referenced to the document. Additionally, I tell GPT to check the Knowledge before responding to the user.

“ONLY USE THE ATTACHED PDF TO ANSWER THE QUESTION AND ALWAYS CHECK THE KNOWLEDGE.” This might seem redundant since I have already mentioned checking the Knowledge. The importance is that we don’t want ChatGPT to try to reference sources of information outside the PDF. In my testing of the prompt, it was not checking the document and just answered the question (which it did incorrectly). When I added the phrase about always checking the Knowledge, it understood and complied in subsequent testing.

“If the information is not there, then say that you don’t have a clear answer to the question and tell the user to get in touch with the HR department.” This is important. ChatGPT likes to try to find an answer and to appear confident in its answers. This phrase will make sure that ChatGPT knows to send questions it is not sure about to human resources.

For the Conversation Starters input, think of it as sample questions staff can use. Here are my sample questions: 

What are my benefits?
What is my sick time?
What holidays are we closed?
What kind of assistance is given for the CPA Exam?

For Knowledge, I click the Upload files button and select the PDF of my Employee Manual. In the Capabilities section, I uncheck all the boxes. Finally, I go back to the Image Icon, click the plus sign and choose Use DALL-E. My left side of my screen now looks like the one shown in the screenshot below:

The next step is to test the new GPT. On the right is the Preview where we can test (see the second screenshot in this walkthrough). I start by clicking on a Conversation Starter, “What kind of assistance is given for the CPA Exam?” (see the screenshot below).

The GPT responds by telling me that it is “Searching my knowledge,” which lets me know that it is checking the document.

Then the GPT provides the answer to the starter question:

That is the correct answer from the handbook. Next is to test the bot with a tougher question. I ask, “What is the dress code?” This question produces a much longer answer as the GPT pulls information from the handbook PDF.

I then ask it a question for which I know it doesn’t know the answer. “What Halloween costumes are allowed on Halloween?”

Now that it is responding how I like, I want to share this with my team. I click Save in the top right corner and select Anyone at [firm name].

The GPT now appears on my main screen of ChatGPT in the top left.

Some notes of caution. When building these GPTs, I rely on ChatGPT to interpret my handbook, and I must remember that this is still a computer that will be responding to my staff. The GPT might do a good job answering simple questions, but it’s not a substitute for a human resources professional. Just like AI is not replacing accountants’ jobs, this GPT should not be a replacement for HR.

About the author

Wesley Hartman is the founder of Automata Practice Development.

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