Employment Hero review (Australia): all-in-one HR, payroll and compliance for Australian SMEs

Employment Hero is an Australian-built, all-in-one HR, payroll and employment platform. In one system it brings together HR and people operations, payroll, hiring, and employee benefits, so an employer can manage the whole employment lifecycle in one place rather than across several disconnected tools.

The payroll side is ATO-certified for Single Touch Payroll (STP Phase 2), which is the reporting standard Australian employers are required to meet. On the HR side it includes AI recruitment and applicant tracking to help manage hiring, plus employee benefits and earned wage access, and an employee app that gives staff a single place to view payslips, request leave and access their information.

The through-line is that it is designed for Australian employers specifically. Being built locally, it is aligned to Fair Work and ATO requirements rather than adapted from an overseas product.

Employment Hero is best for Australian small and medium businesses. If you employ people in Australia and want HR, payroll and compliance handled together, the platform is built for exactly that situation and headcount range.

It suits businesses that are outgrowing spreadsheets and manual payroll, or that are juggling separate tools for hiring, HR records and pay. Consolidating those into one compliant platform reduces the risk of things falling through the gaps, particularly around payroll reporting and Fair Work obligations.

It is less relevant to businesses without Australian employees, since the core value is the local compliance and payroll fit. The company reports that more than 350,000 businesses use its platform, which speaks to broad adoption among employers in its target markets.

Compliance is the reason many Australian employers look at Employment Hero. Payroll is ATO-certified for Single Touch Payroll (STP Phase 2), and the platform is built to align with Fair Work requirements, which takes some of the manual burden and risk out of paying and managing staff correctly.

The employee app is the day-to-day touchpoint for staff. It gives employees a single place to view payslips, request leave, and access their details, which reduces back-and-forth for managers and HR. Employee benefits and earned wage access sit alongside this, adding value for staff on top of the core admin.

On the hiring side, AI recruitment and applicant tracking help manage candidates through the process, so recruitment lives in the same system as the HR records those hires eventually become part of.

Employment Hero does not publish standard pricing publicly. Plans vary by business size, and enterprise pricing is available on request. That means there is no single figure we can quote here, and any page stating one as a fixed price would be guessing.

The practical approach is to request a quote scoped to your headcount and the modules you need, since what you pay depends on how many employees you have and which parts of the platform you use. Because the offering spans HR, payroll, hiring and benefits, it is worth being clear about which of those you actually need when you enquire.

Click through to Employment Hero to see the current plans and request pricing for your business.