12 Ways to Use Claude AI at Work (With Ready-to-Use Prompts You Can Start Using Today)
- Mark Baglow
- 1 hour ago
- 12 min read
If you’ve heard people talking about Claude and weren’t quite sure what it is or why it’s worth your time, this post is for you.
Claude is an AI assistant made by a company called Anthropic, and it’s become one of the most capable tools available for everyday work – particularly for anything involving writing, documents, and thinking through problems.
Now, you might already be using ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot and wondering whether Claude is really any different. It is – and I’ll come to what makes it distinctive later.
But the short version is that Claude tends to be especially good at working with long documents, producing writing that reads naturally, and reasoning carefully through a problem rather than just giving you the first plausible-sounding answer.
This post gives you twelve practical ways to use Claude at work, each with a ready-to-use prompt you can try straight away and adapt for your own situation.
Some of them are the everyday workhorses – drafting, summarising, planning.
A few show off things you might not realise Claude can do, like building you a finished PowerPoint or spreadsheet you can download.
If you want to learn this hands-on with your team, I run Claude training for organisations in-person or remotely across the UK and internationally.
And as always, I’ve included honest notes on what to expect, because knowing where a tool shines and where it doesn’t is what makes it genuinely useful.
1. Draft Something from a Blank Page
One of the most useful things Claude does is get you past the blank page.
Whether it’s a report, a proposal, a policy document, or an awkward email, Claude can give you a solid first draft to work from.
The more context you give it – who it’s for, what it needs to cover, what tone you want – the better the result.
💬 Try this prompt: Draft a one-page proposal to my manager making the case for introducing a monthly team lunch to improve morale and cross-team collaboration. Keep it practical and cost-conscious, acknowledge it’s a small investment, and focus on the benefits to productivity and retention. Professional but warm tone. |
⚠️ Honest note: Claude’s writing tends to read more naturally than a lot of AI tools, but the first draft will still be generic until you add your own specifics – real names, real numbers, your organisation’s context. Treat it as a strong starting point, not a finished article. |
Want 50 more Claude prompts like these?
I've put together a free Claude Prompt Pack for you.
50 ready-to-use prompts for writing, meetings, analysing, thinking, planning and more -organised by task so you can find the right one fast.
2. Summarise a Long, Dense Document
This is one of Claude’s genuine strengths.
It’s particularly good at holding a lot of information in mind at once, which means you can give it a long report, a detailed policy, or a lengthy contract and ask it to pull out what matters.
Where some tools lose the thread after a few pages, Claude tends to keep track of the whole thing.
💬 Try this prompt: I’m going to paste in a long report. Summarise it in 6 bullet points, focusing on the key findings and any recommended actions. Then, separately, flag anything that seems inconsistent or that I should double-check before I rely on it. |
⚠️ Honest note: This is where Claude really earns its place. Just remember it takes the document at face value – it won’t always catch subtext, political nuance, or an author’s hidden agenda. For anything high-stakes, read the original before making decisions. |
3. Ask Claude to Build You a Downloadable File
Here’s something a lot of people don’t realise: Claude can create actual files you can download and use – not just text on screen.
Ask it to build a presentation and it can produce a proper PowerPoint.
Ask for a spreadsheet and it can create an Excel file with working formulas.
Ask for a formatted document and you’ll get a Word file.
For the best results upload a template or a good example for Claude to use. You can also provide branding guidelines such as colours, logos and brand-specific language.
💬 Try this prompt: Create a PowerPoint presentation introducing the benefits of employee wellbeing to a management team. Include a title slide, 3 slides covering the business case (productivity, retention, absence), 2 slides with practical initiatives we could introduce, and a closing slide with next steps. Keep the design clean and professional. |
⭐ Why this one’s special: This is one of the features that makes people sit up. Instead of copying text out of a chat window and formatting it yourself, Claude hands you a finished file ready to open and edit. Brilliant for first drafts of decks, reports, and spreadsheets. |
⚠️ Honest note: The file gives you a great starting structure, but you’ll want to apply your own branding, refine the design, and replace any placeholder content with your real data. Think of it as doing the boring first 80% so you can focus on the parts that need your judgement. |
4. Upload a File and Ask Questions About It
Just as Claude can create files, it can also work with the ones you give it.
You can upload a document, a spreadsheet, a PDF, or an image, and then ask Claude to analyse it, summarise it, pull out specific information, or answer questions about its contents.
Just click the plus button in the corner of the box where you write your prompt, or simply drag and drop your file into the conversation.
This is far more powerful than copying and pasting chunks of text, because Claude can see the whole thing.
💬 Try this prompt: [After uploading a spreadsheet] Look at this sales data and tell me the three most important trends over the last 12 months. Are there any regions or products that are underperforming, and is there anything in here that surprises you or that I should look into further? |
⚠️ Honest note: Well-structured files give much better results than messy ones. If your spreadsheet is full of merged cells, blank rows, and inconsistent headings, tidy it up first. And be mindful of your organisation’s data policies – don’t upload anything confidential or sensitive unless you’re sure it’s appropriate and permitted. |
Related TrainingArtificial Intelligence Courses I also deliver training in other areas including Microsoft Office Courses, Management and Leadership, Personal Effectiveness and more. |
5. Ask Claude to Challenge Your Thinking
Most people use AI to agree with them – to write the thing they’ve already decided they want.
But one of the most valuable things you can do is ask Claude to question you.
In my experience, Claude is much better at challenging my assumptions, critiquing my ideas, and pushing back on my thinking.
I find that other AI tools can be much too quick to simply agree with everything you say.
Tell Claude your plan, your argument, or your decision, and ask it to find the flaws.
Claude is genuinely willing to disagree with you (politely), which makes it a surprisingly good sounding board.
Bonus Tip: to make Claude to do this all the time, add a line into your custom instructions (Settings - General) asking it to disagree and challenge you when appropriate.
💬 Try this prompt: I’m planning to restructure my team by splitting it into two smaller groups, each with its own team leader. Here’s my reasoning: [explain your plan]. Play devil’s advocate. What are the risks I might be underestimating? What could go wrong? What would someone who disagreed with this decision say? |
⭐ Why this one’s special: This is one of the most underused ways to work with AI. Using it to stress-test your thinking – rather than just confirm it – is where it becomes a genuine thinking partner rather than a fancy typewriter. |
⚠️ Honest note: Claude will give you thoughtful challenges, but it doesn’t know your organisation, your people, or your context. Use its points to sharpen your own thinking, not as a final verdict. The value is in the questions it raises, not necessarily the conclusions it reaches. |
6. Rewrite and Refine Your Own Writing
Got something that’s technically fine but doesn’t quite land?
Claude is excellent at editing.
Give it a draft and specific instructions – make it shorter, make it clearer, make it warmer, cut the jargon – and it’ll do more than just reword. It’ll actually restructure where needed.
💬 Try this prompt: Here’s a draft email I’ve written. It feels too long and a bit stiff. Cut it by about a third, make it warmer and more direct, and make sure the main request is clear and near the top. Keep my key points but tighten it up: [paste your text] |
⚠️ Honest note: Claude follows editing instructions precisely, which is a real strength. The more specific you are about what you want changed, the better. “Make it better” is vague; “cut it by a third and lead with the request” gives it something concrete to work with. |
7. Prepare for a Difficult Conversation or Meeting
If you’ve got a tricky meeting coming up – a negotiation, a performance conversation, a pitch to senior leaders – Claude can help you prepare.
Describe the situation and ask it to help you anticipate what might come up, prepare your key points, and think through how to handle objections.
💬 Try this prompt: I’ve got a meeting with a client who’s unhappy about a delay to their project. They’re an important account and I want to keep the relationship strong while being honest about what happened. Help me prepare: what should my opening be, what concerns are they likely to raise, and how can I acknowledge the problem without being defensive or over-promising? |
⚠️ Honest note: Claude is good at helping you structure your thinking and rehearse, but it can only work with what you tell it. It doesn’t know the personalities involved or the history. Use it to prepare, then trust your own read of the room on the day. |
8. Use Projects to Save Yourself Repeating Context
If you find yourself explaining the same background information to Claude over and over – your role, your organisation, your tone of voice, the details of an ongoing piece of work – there’s a better way.
Claude has a feature called Projects, which lets you set up a workspace with custom instructions and reference documents that Claude remembers across every conversation within it.
For example, you could create a Project for your team’s communications, load in your tone-of-voice guide and a few example documents,
Every conversation you then have with Claude inside that Project will already understand your style – without you having to explain it each time.
💬 Try this prompt: [Set up a Project, add your context, then simply ask:] Draft a short update for my team about the new hybrid working policy, in our usual tone. |
⭐ Why this one’s special: Projects is one of the features that separates people who dabble with AI from people who genuinely build it into their workflow. Once your context is saved, every conversation starts miles ahead. |
⚠️ Honest note: It takes a few minutes to set a Project up properly, and it’s worth doing thoughtfully – the quality of what you put in determines the quality of what you get out. But once it’s done, it saves you time on every single task after that. |
9. Explain Something Complicated in Plain English
Whether it’s a business concept, a piece of jargon, a new regulation, or a technical term you’re embarrassed to admit you don’t fully understand, Claude is a patient and clear explainer.
You can ask it to pitch the explanation at exactly your level and to use examples relevant to your world.
You could also ask Claude to explain complicated Excel formulas and help you build new ones for a specific task.
💬 Try this prompt: Explain what ‘working capital’ means in simple terms. I run a small team and I’m not from a finance background, but I keep hearing the term in management meetings. Give me a plain-English explanation and a practical example, and tell me why it matters to someone in my position. |
⚠️ Honest note: Claude is genuinely good at clear explanations, but for anything specialist or high-stakes – legal, financial, regulatory – treat its answer as a helpful starting point and verify anything important with a qualified source before acting on it. |
10. Turn Messy Notes into Something Useful
You’ve come out of a meeting or a brainstorm with a page of scrappy notes that make sense right now but won’t in two days’ time.
Paste them into Claude and ask it to turn them into something structured – a clear summary, a set of action points, a written-up proposal – while the context is still fresh in your mind.
💬 Try this prompt: Here are my rough notes from a project kickoff meeting. Turn them into a structured summary with these sections: key decisions, action items (with owners where I’ve noted them), open questions, and next steps. Flag anything that looks unclear or unresolved rather than guessing: [paste your notes] |
⚠️ Honest note: This works well even with quite messy input. The one thing to watch is that Claude might fill in gaps with reasonable-sounding assumptions – which is why asking it to flag anything unclear (as in the prompt above) is a smart habit. Always check that the ‘decisions’ it lists were actually decided. |
11. Brainstorm and Generate Ideas
When you’re stuck for ideas – whether it’s planning an event, naming a project, thinking through a problem, or coming up with options – Claude is a quick and tireless brainstorming partner.
It won’t replace your judgement, but it will give you a wider range of options to react to than you’d generate alone.
Once you've got an idea that you like, use Claude to explore it further.
💬 Try this prompt: I need to run a 90-minute training session on time management for a group of 12 office staff. Give me 6 different ideas for interactive activities or exercises I could include – things that get people participating rather than just listening. For each one, give me a quick description and how long it would take. |
⚠️ Honest note: Expect a mix of genuinely useful ideas and a few obvious or generic ones. The value is in having options to spark your own thinking. Take the two or three that resonate and develop them yourself – that’s where your expertise adds the magic. |
12. Treat It as a Conversation, Not a One-Off
This isn’t a single task so much as a way of working that gets far better results.
Claude remembers everything within your current conversation, which means you don’t have to get the perfect prompt first time.
You can refine, redirect, and build on what it gives you – exactly as you would with a capable colleague.
If the first answer isn’t quite right, tell it what to change:
“That’s good, but make it more concise and less formal.”
“Can you give me three more options, but bolder this time?”
“Now rewrite that for a different audience – senior leaders rather than the whole team.”
💬 Try this prompt: Draft a one-page proposal to my manager making the case for introducing a monthly team lunch to improve morale and cross-team collaboration. Keep it practical and cost-conscious, acknowledge it’s a small investment, and focus on the benefits to productivity and retention. Professional but warm tone. |
⚠️ Honest note: The people who get the most from Claude aren’t the ones who write one perfect prompt – they’re the ones who treat it as a back-and-forth. It’s almost always quicker to start rough and refine than to agonise over getting the first prompt exactly right. |
Want 50 more Claude prompts like these?
I've put together a free Claude Prompt Pack for you.
50 ready-to-use prompts for writing, meetings, analysing, thinking, planning and more -organised by task so you can find the right one fast.
So How Is Claude Different from ChatGPT or Copilot?
It’s a fair question, and if you’re already using another AI tool you might wonder whether it’s worth trying Claude at all.
Here’s the honest answer: the major AI assistants are all capable, and there’s real overlap between them. But Claude has a few characteristics that tend to stand out.
It’s often praised for producing writing that reads more naturally and needs less editing.
It’s particularly strong with long documents, holding a lot of context at once without losing track.
It tends to reason carefully through a problem rather than rushing to the first plausible answer.
It’s notably willing to push back or express uncertainty rather than just telling you what you want to hear – which, for serious work, is a feature, not a flaw.
Copilot has the advantage of being built directly into the Microsoft 365 apps you already use, and ChatGPT has a very wide range of features and integrations.
The truth is that many people end up using more than one, picking the right tool for the task.
If your work involves a lot of writing, document analysis, or thinking through complex problems, Claude is well worth a try.
Where To Go From Here
Whichever of these twelve uses you try first, the single biggest factor in the quality of what you get back is the quality of what you put in.
Vague prompt, vague answer. Specific, well-considered prompt, genuinely useful answer.
Using Claude well is a skill that anyone can learn with the right knowledge and approach.
Two Ways I Can Help
Get Your Free Claude Prompts Pack
Download the free Claude Prompt Pack: 50 ready-to-use prompts for writing, email, meetings, reports, data analysis, file creation, thinking, planning, and more.
Plus I've added some extra tips about things most people don't realise Claude do.
Get your team using Claude effectively
If you’d like to learn how to get the most out of Claude – with hands-on practice and real workplace examples – take a look at my Claude training course.
I run practical sessions for individuals and teams that focus on genuinely useful, everyday applications rather than hype.
You might also find my guides on using Microsoft Copilot and writing better ChatGPT prompts useful.
I run regular public course dates open to anyone for £300 per person.
In-house training is from £1,000 per day online or £1,200 in-person for your team, with no VAT currently charged.
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