OpenAI Data Shows HR Professionals Use ChatGPT Mostly for Non-HR Work
The News
HR Dive reports on an OpenAI analysis published July 28 that examined more than 800,000 messages submitted to ChatGPT by U.S.-based users. Across all occupational groups, 44% of occupation-specific messages involved tasks outside the user's typical job. For HR professionals, that share rose to 69% — the third-highest of any group studied, behind only design and customer experience roles. HR practitioners most often used ChatGPT for marketing tasks (23% of messages), followed by engineering (18%) and finance (16%). OpenAI said the findings demonstrate how AI can change the division of work within an organisation by allowing users to perform tasks themselves rather than handing them off to specialist functions.
Why It Matters
This data cuts against the common assumption that HR's AI usage is concentrated in recruiting and people analytics. In practice, HR teams — particularly in smaller organisations where functional boundaries are already porous — are using ChatGPT as a general-purpose tool to absorb work that would otherwise go to marketing, engineering, or finance. That's a productivity story, but it's also a governance one. If your HR team is generating marketing copy or financial models in ChatGPT, who is reviewing that output for quality and compliance? The same function that struggles with understaffing is now silently absorbing work from other departments, with no quality control framework in place for the overflow.
Taking Action
All action is situated in your corporate context. These are starting points, not prescriptions — choose what fits.
Connect
Who to talk with in your enterprise
Your head of HR operations: Survey your HR team on their actual ChatGPT usage. The OpenAI data suggests 69% of their AI-assisted work falls outside HR — you need to know what it is and whether it's being reviewed by the relevant function before it ships.
Your data protection officer: If HR is inputting operational data into ChatGPT to generate finance or marketing outputs, check whether that data flows through your enterprise AI licence or personal accounts. The distinction matters for GDPR and UK GDPR compliance.
Inspect
What to take a closer look at
Review your organisation's AI usage policy. Does it address cross-functional task performance, or does it only contemplate AI use within a person's job description? If your policy assumes people use AI for their own work, it's already out of date. Also check whether your HR team has access to an enterprise-tier ChatGPT licence with data retention disabled — if they're on free accounts, sensitive data is almost certainly being processed in ways your DPO hasn't approved.
Reflect
What to think about more deeply
If HR is quietly doing marketing, engineering, and finance work via ChatGPT, are they becoming more valuable — or are they just absorbing the work other departments can't get to, without the title, pay, or quality oversight that goes with it?