As of 13 August 2026, AI can write a bonus policy for your UK employees.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a blank document and gather the current bonus scheme rules, employment contract wording, staff handbook sections, payroll process and any existing bonus letters.
   2. Write down the business decisions the policy must express, including eligibility, measures, weightings, calculation method, performance period, payment date, leaver treatment, family leave treatment, discretion and appeals.
   3. Paste those decisions into the prompt under the matching headings, replacing each bracketed slot and leaving [TO CONFIRM] where the business has not decided.
   4. Paste the completed prompt into a chatbot and ask it to produce the policy, unresolved-decision table, risk list, professional-check list and employee summary requested.
   5. Compare every amount, condition, date, formula and entitlement in the draft with the approved scheme documents and payroll process, then correct any mismatch in the source information and regenerate the affected sections.
   6. Ask an employment solicitor or qualified HR professional to check the final policy for contractual wording, equality and discrimination risks, deductions, leave and leaver treatment, data protection and changes to the scheme before you publish it.
   7. Send the approved policy through your normal employee consultation and approval process, then store the final version with its owner, review date and record of what employees were told.

   Prompt

   Draft a UK employee bonus policy using the information below. Write in plain British English with clear headings and short paragraphs. Do not invent facts, thresholds, dates, performance measures, legal rights or payment rules. Where information is missing, write [TO CONFIRM] and list the decision needed.
   
   Company and workforce: [COMPANY AND TYPES OF EMPLOYEES]
   Purpose of the bonus: [PURPOSE]
   Who is eligible: [ELIGIBILITY RULES]
   Who is excluded and why: [EXCLUSIONS]
   Performance measures and weighting: [MEASURES]
   Individual, team and company conditions: [CONDITIONS]
   How the bonus is calculated: [FORMULA OR EXAMPLES]
   Maximum or target bonus: [AMOUNTS OR PERCENTAGES]
   When the performance period runs: [PERFORMANCE PERIOD]
   When and how payment is made: [PAYMENT PROCESS]
   Treatment of starters, leavers, movers, sickness, family leave and part-time work: [RULES]
   Discretion, adjustment and clawback: [RULES]
   Approval and appeals process: [PROCESS]
   Who owns the policy and when it is reviewed: [OWNER AND REVIEW ARRANGEMENT]
   
   Produce:
   1. A complete draft policy.
   2. A table of every unresolved decision marked [TO CONFIRM].
   3. A separate risk list covering potential contractual wording, unequal treatment, indirect discrimination, changes to bonus rules, deductions, data protection and payroll issues.
   4. A list of points that an employment solicitor or qualified HR professional should check before publication.
   5. A short employee-facing summary that does not contradict the full policy.
   
   Do not present the policy as legal advice. Identify which statements need checking against current UK employment law and GOV.UK guidance, and do not claim that the scheme is lawful merely because the wording is clear.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.