Employment Hero Review 2026

Last updated: May 2026

What Is Employment Hero?

Employment Hero is the all-in-one HR, payroll, and recruitment platform for SMBs in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Singapore, and Malaysia. Founded in 2014 in Sydney, Employment Hero serves over 300,000 businesses with bundled HRIS, payroll (via the integrated KeyPay engine), recruiting, performance management, and employee benefits.

The pitch is all-in-one for SMBs in markets the big US providers (Gusto, Rippling, BambooHR) underserve. AU and NZ employment law differs significantly from US labor law: superannuation, awards, leave entitlements, fair work compliance. Employment Hero handles all of it natively rather than as an afterthought.

The product covers the full employee lifecycle: job posting and recruitment, onboarding workflows, payroll, performance reviews, learning management, and offboarding. The all-in-one positioning means SMBs avoid managing 4-5 separate vendors.

How Employment Hero Works

The HRIS holds employee records, employment contracts, leave balances, performance data, and document storage. Onboarding workflows automate first-day forms, system access, and equipment provisioning. Self-service portal lets employees update personal info, request leave, and access pay slips.

Payroll (powered by KeyPay, now an Employment Hero product) handles all jurisdictional complexity: PAYG withholding, superannuation contributions, payroll tax, leave accruals, award compliance. Pay runs schedule weekly, fortnightly, or monthly with automatic STP (Single Touch Payroll) reporting to the ATO.

Recruiting features cover job posting to major boards, applicant tracking through hiring stages, interview scheduling, offer letter generation, and onboarding handoff. The pipeline visualizes candidates across roles.

Performance management includes goal setting, OKRs, 360-degree feedback, 1:1 meeting notes, and review cycles. Continuous feedback alongside formal reviews.

Employee benefits and discounts marketplace gives staff access to perks programs that smaller employers typically cannot match. This perks layer is unusual for HRIS and helps retention.

Employment Hero Pricing in 2026

Per-employee per-month tiered pricing.

Free: For very small businesses with limited features.

Standard: From AU$8/employee/month. Core HR and recruitment.

Premium: From AU$12/employee/month. Adds advanced HR features, learning management.

Platinum: From AU$15/employee/month. Full feature set including advanced reporting.

Payroll typically priced separately from HRIS. Total cost for AU SMB with 25 employees on Premium tier plus payroll might run $400-$600/month all-in.

Compared to alternatives in the AU market (MYOB, Xero Payroll, BambooHR), Employment Hero competes on the all-in-one bundle.

Where Employment Hero Wins

• APAC market specialization: AU, NZ, UK, SG employment law handled natively.
• All-in-one bundle: HRIS + payroll + recruiting + performance + benefits.
• Employee perks marketplace: differentiator from generic HRIS.
• KeyPay payroll engine: battle-tested AU payroll integrated with HRIS.
• Single Touch Payroll compliant: ATO reporting automated.

Where It Falls Short

• US presence is limited: not the right choice for US-based companies.
• UI consistency varies across modules: legacy from multiple acquisitions.
• Some advanced features behind higher tiers: total cost for full functionality can climb.
• Integration ecosystem smaller than Gusto: covers basics but less depth.

Employment Hero vs BambooHR vs HiBob vs Rippling

BambooHR targets US HR-first SMBs. Stronger HRIS, weaker AU payroll integration.

HiBob targets mid-market global with stronger performance features. More expensive.

Rippling bundles HR + IT + finance for tech companies. US-first.

Xero Payroll is the AU payroll specialist. Better for businesses that just need payroll without HRIS.

Who Should Use Employment Hero

AU and NZ SMBs: this is the home market. Native compliance, support, and product fit.

UK and Singapore businesses: secondary markets with strong product support.

SMBs replacing 3-4 HR tools: bundle reduces vendor sprawl.

Skip it if: you operate primarily in the US (use Gusto or Rippling), you have under 5 employees (free tier may suffice or Xero Payroll alone may work), or your team is fully international across many countries (use Deel for EOR plus separate HRIS).

How Employment Hero works

Employment Hero is sold as an "Employment Operating System": HR, payroll, recruitment, time and attendance, learning and employee benefits under one vendor rather than as separate tools. In practice you buy it as a stack, not a single product. There is an HR plan priced per employee per month (HR Essentials, HR Engage, HR Elite or Employment Unlimited), a payroll plan, and a recruitment plan that starts at a free tier and moves up to Pro 50, 100, 200 and 300 at $199, $359, $639 and $959 per month, tiered by the number of AI video interviews rather than by seats.

Several things buyers assume are core sit outside those plans as add-ons, each priced per employee per month with a monthly minimum: Rostering and Time and Attendance at $4 (minimum $40), Chat at $2 (minimum $20), HR Advisory at $14 (minimum $280), the Learning Bundle at $8 (minimum $80), an EAP at $8 to $10, and fully Managed Payroll at $20 (minimum $400).

Setup is the usual payroll configuration work: pay groups and locations, employee types (full-time, part-time and casual), award and penalty-rate rules, and superannuation. Once that is in place, rostering and timesheet data flows into pay runs automatically rather than being re-entered. The platform runs its own payroll engine, so country-specific compliance such as Single Touch Payroll Phase 2, award interpretation and super is handled inside the product, not just gross-to-net maths. Payroll posts to the general ledger of connected accounting software, and STP reporting goes to the ATO directly from the platform. The lifecycle side covers job ads, AI-screened video interviews, onboarding with e-signed contracts, employee records and policies, leave and timesheets, then pay. Employees do their own leave requests, timesheets and payslips in the Employment Hero Work mobile app. A separate service, HeroForce, acts as an employer of record so you can hire in 180+ countries without setting up a local entity.

Where Employment Hero wins

• Genuinely broad scope. HR records, payroll, ATS, rostering, LMS, benefits and EAP all come from one vendor, so onboarding-to-pay data does not have to be re-keyed between systems.
• Australian payroll compliance is built in, not bolted on. ATO-recognised STP Phase 2 reporting, automatic PAYG and super rate updates, modern award and penalty-rate interpretation, and HeroClear to validate, pay and track super contributions ahead of the Payday Super regime starting 1 July 2026.
• A real free recruitment tier. The core ATS pipeline, candidate scoring and 50 complimentary AI video interviews at $0 per month, which is unusual among HR suites.
• Rostering feeds pay directly. Timesheet and roster data drives pay calculation, correctly handling different rates, penalties and allowances across full-time, part-time and casual staff.
• International hiring without an entity. HeroForce covers employment in 180+ countries as an employer of record.

Where it falls short

• Own-platform payroll covers a short list of countries: Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia. Anywhere else means HeroForce EOR at custom pricing, a different and more expensive commercial model.
• Add-on pricing stacks fast, and every add-on carries a monthly minimum. A 10-person company pays the minimum rather than the per-head rate on rostering, chat, HR advisory, learning and the EAP, all on top of the per-employee HR plan.
• Total cost is not knowable from the site beyond the entry tiers. HR Elite, Employment Unlimited and HeroForce are custom quote only.
• Recruitment Pro tiers are metered on AI video interviews, not seats or open roles, so hiring volume rather than headcount drives that line item.
• The product depth is Australia-first. Award interpretation, super and STP are the marquee compliance features, and buyers outside those markets get a thinner compliance story.

Who should use Employment Hero

It fits small and mid-sized businesses in Australia, New Zealand and the UK that want one vendor for HR plus payroll instead of stitching together an HRIS, a payroll bureau and an ATS. The strongest case is a workforce of award-covered hourly or shift staff, where award interpretation and rostering-to-pay is the actual pain and where a single system removes a whole category of re-keying and errors. It is also reasonable for a company making its first few international hires through the EOR rather than opening entities.

Skip it if your payroll sits in the US or Europe, since the compliance depth that justifies the price is not there. Skip it if you already run a payroll system you are happy with, because the value is in the combination rather than any single module. And think hard if you are a very small team: the per-add-on monthly minimums mean you pay the floor rather than the per-head rate, which makes the effective cost per employee unattractive.

Frequently Asked Questions