Honest Employment Hero review 2026: Pricing, features, pros & cons

Employment Hero is one of Australia's largest HR and workforce management platforms, used by thousands of businesses across the country. Originally built as an HR-first solution, Employment Hero has expanded to include rostering, time tracking, and payroll functionality.

This Employment Hero review takes a practical look at the platform's strengths, limitations, and real-world usability — helping you decide whether it's the right fit for your Australian business.

Employment Hero review: quick summary

Employment Hero is a comprehensive HR platform that has expanded into workforce management. Its strongest areas are HR compliance, document management, and employee onboarding — reflecting its origins as an HR-first solution. The platform covers almost every corner of HR operations.

Where Employment Hero falls short is in operational workforce management. The rostering tools lack advanced features, time tracking customisation is limited, and the payroll setup process proved frustrating with broken documentation and non-functional tutorial videos. Support availability is also limited to AEST hours.

Employment Hero is best suited to:

• Medium to large businesses with complex HR requirements
• Companies prioritising HR compliance over rostering
• Businesses with dedicated HR staff to manage the platform
• AEST-based operations (support hours)

Employment Hero may be less suitable for:

• Small businesses focused on rostering and scheduling
• Businesses needing advanced roster filtering and budgeting
• Western Australian businesses (AEST support only)
• Teams wanting quick, intuitive payroll setup

Employment Hero pros and cons

Employment Hero pricing and plans

Employment Hero offers three pricing tiers: Lite ($20/employee/month, minimum $200/month), Plus ($40, minimum $400/month), and Unlimited ($60, minimum $600/month). All tiers include HR, payroll, rostering, and time tracking. Higher tiers add features like performance management, expense claims, and telephone support.

The platform is positioned for medium to large businesses with complex HR needs. Small businesses focused primarily on rostering may find the pricing structure less competitive compared to dedicated workforce management platforms that include all features in one price.

Employment Hero pricing evidence (January 2026)

Screenshots from Employment Hero's official pricing page:

What works well

Employment Hero's pricing model allows businesses to select only the modules they need. For companies with existing payroll systems or those only needing HR features, this can provide flexibility. The comprehensive HR suite justifies the cost for businesses with complex compliance requirements.

Where it falls short

For businesses needing full workforce management (rostering + time tracking + payroll + HR), the modular pricing can add up quickly. Comparing total costs with all-in-one platforms is essential before committing. Some features available during trials may require paid upgrades.

Employment Hero rostering and scheduling

Employment Hero labels their rostering feature "Roster Management" found under the "Time" section. The roster displays by work site with positions listed below, viewable in weekly, 2-weekly, or 4-weekly formats.

The roster interface shows unavailable staff and leave, with options to add leave and unavailability directly from the roster view. Each shift cell provides a nice breakdown of total time, break duration, and cost, with totals per position.

What works well

Adding shifts is straightforward — hit the plus symbol to open a side panel with shift details. The "bulk shift" option lets you repeat shifts across multiple days. Employment Hero supports roster templates with helpful metadata showing cost, hours, staff count, and original save date. A search function helps businesses with multiple templates.

The overall appearance and core functionality is present with a reasonable user experience for basic rostering needs.

Where it falls short

The rostering module lacks advanced features found in dedicated rostering platforms. There's no option to customise views — if you prefer a staff list view rather than position-based view, Employment Hero won't accommodate this. Advanced filtering options for specific staff or positions are limited, and there's no live labour budgeting tool to forecast costs as you build the roster.

For businesses where rostering is a core operational need, these limitations may prove frustrating compared to purpose-built rostering software.

Pros & cons

Employment Hero time and attendance

Time and attendance features are enabled through the settings tab. Employment Hero offers clock in/out via the Employment Hero Work app with geo-fence support and optional selfie capture for verification.

What works well

The basic time tracking functionality covers essential needs. Staff can clock in and out via the mobile app with GPS verification. The geo-fence feature allows you to set boundaries, and the option to allow clock-ins outside the geo-fence (triggering a timesheet warning) provides flexibility. Selfie capture on clock in/out adds verification.

Where it falls short

Customisation is limited compared to dedicated time and attendance platforms. There's no option to set a specific pin drop location — a limitation for businesses at large sites with designated clock-in points. A kiosk-style app doesn't appear to be available, and you can't set different rules for different sites.

This becomes problematic for businesses with field-based team members or multiple venues that need different attendance rules per location. The feature covers basics but lacks advanced settings for complex operations.

Pros & cons

Employment Hero payroll

Employment Hero has its own built-in payroll system, offering a one-platform solution that covers HR, rostering, time tracking, and payroll. As an HR-first platform, having integrated payroll makes sense for their positioning.

Setup challenges

Unfortunately, the payroll setup experience was the most disappointing part of our review. The "Payroll Start Guide" in the main menu includes tutorial videos for getting started — however, clicking on these videos marks them as complete without actually playing the content.

The help centre provides directions for accessing the pre-built award library, but these options weren't available in the account. Searching for "payroll" was unsuccessful despite having a dedicated payroll section in the platform. Two linked articles were found — one with an unrelated video from 2023, and another with a video that simply doesn't work.

This setup experience was notably challenging. We were unable to find working resources to complete payroll configuration. Attempts to reach support were unsuccessful as phone support required a "Support Pin" with unclear setup instructions, and online booking showed no available slots until January 2026.

What this means for users

We couldn't fully evaluate Employment Hero's payroll functionality because we couldn't complete setup. Businesses considering Employment Hero for payroll should request a live demonstration and ensure adequate support is available during implementation.

Pros & cons

Employment Hero communication tools

Communication tools are essential for modern workforce management. Employment Hero doesn't have a dedicated messaging feature for company-wide updates or direct staff messages in the traditional sense.

What's available

Research indicates Employment Hero offers bulk email messaging for recruitment updates, bulk document issuing, onboarding invites, and customised pay run messages. Features include Bulk Email Candidates, Bulk Issue Documents, and Company Feed posts — availability depends on your plan and access level.

Limitations

The recruitment features aren't available during the trial period, so we couldn't fully evaluate the communication offering. Without access to a demonstration (only available in AEST), the communication capabilities remain partially unreviewed.

The absence of dedicated in-app messaging or chat functionality is a gap compared to platforms built around daily operational communication. Businesses requiring instant team communication may need to supplement with external tools.

Employment Hero mobile app

Employment Hero's mobile app (Employment Hero Work) is designed around managing your whole business rather than day-to-day operations. The single landing page doesn't have dedicated tabs for roster, chat, or other operational features.

App structure

The app is organised into three main sections:

Work: Contains leave, roster (add, edit, remove shifts), forms, unavailability, 1:1s, timesheets, expenses, certificates, policies, induction content, HR documents, uploaded documents, goals, peer feedback, staff directory, safety, and support. This is a lot crammed into one menu.

Money: Track bills, points, super, and support. Includes options to join communities and offers like phone plans — features that feel disconnected from workforce management.

Perks: A marketplace for discounts on flights, goods, and services — essentially a loyalty program for Employment Hero users.

User experience

The app feels more like an overall business management and lifestyle tool rather than a focused workforce operations app. The UI isn't intuitive for daily operational tasks, with many features crammed across three menus. Users expecting a straightforward rostering and time tracking app may find the "Perks" and "Money" sections distracting.

Pros & cons

Employment Hero HR tools

HR tools are Employment Hero's core strength. As a platform built HR-first before expanding into rostering and time tracking, they have the most comprehensive HR offering in this review. They cover almost every corner of HR operations.

What's included

Employment Hero's HR suite covers:

• Recruitment and onboarding
• Certificate and document management
• Forms and induction content
• HR guides and template library
• Incident reporting
• Asset register
• Bulk document issuing
• Performance management
• Goals and peer feedback

User experience

Features are organised in left-side menus, with some clearly labelled and others opening sub-menus. The sheer volume of features can feel overwhelming. Individual staff profiles have a well-designed UI with a full-page profile style and neatly organised subsections.

Template library

The template library is impressive. Easy-to-use filters and search make finding templates straightforward, with options to view and clone specific templates. This saves significant time for businesses setting up HR processes.

Pros & cons

Employment Hero analytics and reporting

Employment Hero has a dedicated Reports tab — a welcome feature that's not always present in competing platforms. The reports section contains pre-built reports organised in dropdown menus with brief descriptions.

What works well

Reports are easy to find and navigate. Taking the roster report as an example, you can filter by staff, cost centre, date range, and work site. A "More" option allows position selection. Resetting and exporting reports is straightforward.

The dropdown menu organisation with descriptions (in tile view) helps users find the right report. Employment Hero's extensive feature set means there are reports covering many HR and operational areas.

Where it falls short

Export options are limited to CSV format only. Businesses preferring formatted PDF reports will be disappointed. The description tooltip in list view only states you can't delete the report rather than describing what the report contains — a small UX issue.

Pros & cons

Employment Hero use cases

Employment Hero user ratings

Employment Hero's ratings tell different stories depending on who's reviewing. The platform scores well on Google Reviews (4.1/5) but poorly on Xero App Store (3.4/5). Understanding this gap is critical for businesses evaluating the platform.

To ensure a fair evaluation, we prioritise non-incentivised, publicly verifiable review sources. Platforms like Capterra and G2 use incentivised review programmes and are noted but weighted accordingly.

Employment Hero ratings on key platforms

Common themes in user feedback

User ratings for Employment Hero show a stark divide. Google Reviews (4.1/5) skew positive — but many are from employees praising the app's usability for viewing payslips and managing leave. These reviews reflect the employee experience, not the employer/admin experience.

Xero App Store reviews (3.4/5) tell a different story. Recent reviews from business owners highlight serious concerns:

• Support is non-existent — Multiple reviewers report being unable to reach anyone, with calls only answered for new sales leads
• Billing issues — One business reported being overbilled ~$500/month since 2023 with no compensation offered
• Integration problems — Xero integration described as having "major bugs" preventing setup
• Setup never completed — One reviewer still not properly set up after 12+ months

This disconnect — positive employee reviews vs. negative admin reviews — reflects our own findings about Employment Hero's support and documentation challenges.

Pros & cons

Employment Hero security and privacy

Employment Hero maintains strong security credentials as an Australian company handling sensitive HR and payroll data. They achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance in October 2025, verified by Global Compliance Certification (GCC).

Security features

The SOC 2 audit evaluates controls across five Trust Service Principles: security (safeguarding systems from unauthorized access), availability (ensuring uptime), processing integrity (accurate data processing), confidentiality (protecting sensitive information), and privacy (regulatory compliance).

Pros & cons

Employment Hero customer support

Customer support was the most disappointing aspect of our Employment Hero review.

Support experience

Two days into the trial, we received no automated onboarding emails or welcome communication. Attempting to call the advertised number (1300 084 847) prompted for a "Support Pin" with unclear instructions to set it up in "hr" — not helpful guidance.

Booking support through the onboarding option showed no available slots until January 2026. Support is only offered during AEST hours — a significant limitation for Western Australian businesses.

Documentation quality

Help articles aren't formatted well. We found outdated instructions, broken in-app videos, and videos that simply don't play or open externally. Some features link to a help button that opens the entire help centre rather than the relevant article — requiring users to search again for their specific question.

Pros & cons

Final verdict

Employment Hero is a platform of contrasts. Its HR tools are genuinely impressive — comprehensive, well-organised, and suitable for businesses with complex compliance needs. The template library alone justifies consideration for HR-focused organisations.

However, the operational workforce management features tell a different story. Rostering lacks advanced features, time tracking customisation is limited, payroll setup proved impossible with broken documentation, and support availability is a genuine concern.

Choose Employment Hero if: HR compliance is your primary concern, you have dedicated HR staff, and you're based in AEST timezone with resources for potentially challenging implementation.

Look elsewhere if: Rostering and scheduling are your core needs, you want quick payroll setup, you need WA-friendly support hours, or you're a smaller team without dedicated HR resources.

4.8+ stars

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