What are the best alternatives to Employment Hero in Australia?

Employment Hero is built around micro and small businesses, with its own published numbers implying an average customer size of roughly seven employees. Mid-to-large Australian organisations usually outgrow it on depth, support and customisation. The strongest alternatives are Worknice, ELMO Software, HiBob, Rippling and Workday. Each suits a different size band, integration footprint and budget.

Key takeaways

• Employment Hero publicly reports supporting around 350,000 businesses and 2.5 million employees, which works out to an average customer size of about seven people, a clear small-business profile.
• The most common reasons mid-to-large HR teams switch away are pricing surprises at renewal, all-in-one bundle bloat, inconsistent support, and limits on customising workflows and reporting.
• For a pure HRIS (people data, lifecycle, compliance, performance, reporting), the leading Australia-relevant alternatives are Worknice, ELMO Software, HiBob, Rippling and Workday.
• Migration usually takes 6 to 12 weeks. Payroll stays where it is and the new HRIS integrates back into it via Xero, MYOB, KeyPay, Employment Hero Payroll, ADP or similar.
• Local Australian support, modern award handling, Fair Work compliance and STP Phase 2 alignment are the two most-undervalued switching criteria, and also the most expensive ones to get wrong.

Why do Australian companies look for alternatives to Employment Hero?

Most teams looking for an Employment Hero alternative are not chasing a feature. They are escaping a fit problem. The product was designed for very small Australian businesses and grew its footprint there. Once an organisation passes 200 employees, the same all-in-one bundle starts to feel shallow on workflows, slow on support and expensive on renewal.

Switching conversations usually surface four recurring themes. The first is pricing: per-employee fees that looked competitive at 50 staff become eye-watering at 500, especially after annual uplifts on bundled modules the team does not actively use. The second is support: as the customer base has scaled, named account management has thinned out, and ticket-based support frustrates HR leaders who need help configuring complex workflows or fixing payroll-adjacent data issues quickly.

The third is complexity from bundling. The Employment Hero stack covers HR, payroll, learning, benefits, recognition, marketplace and more. For a 30-person business that is genuinely useful. For a 1,000-person business that already runs Xero or ADP for payroll, Deputy for rostering, Cornerstone or Go1 for learning and Culture Amp for engagement, the bundle creates duplicated tools and integration friction. The fourth is customisation and depth: mid-market HR teams need configurable approval flows, granular permissioning, custom fields, and reporting that holds up under board scrutiny. These are areas where larger organisations often run into ceilings.

In our own work with Australian HR leaders running HRIS reviews, the three drivers that consistently rise to the top of the scorecard are integration with payroll and finance systems, reporting depth, and the quality of local vendor support. Employment Hero is not weak across the board on these. It is simply optimised for a different customer.

Who is Employment Hero actually built for?

Employment Hero is built for micro and small Australian and New Zealand businesses (typically under 50 employees) who want HR, payroll, benefits and learning bundled into a single subscription with minimal configuration. The clue is in their own scale: if you are a 500-person organisation, you sit in the long tail, not the design centre.

This is not a put-down. Employment Hero is one of the highest-growth HR-tech businesses in the region precisely because it built a product that fits the Australian SMB market exceptionally well. The all-in-one model removes friction for a 20-person business owner who does not want to choose between four vendors. According to Employment Hero’s own ARR announcement, the company crossed AU$300 million ARR while supporting around 350,000 businesses and 2.5 million employees, implying an average customer size of roughly seven employees.

For a head of People at a 250 to 5,000-person organisation, that average matters because product investment, support models and feature priorities follow the bulk of the customer base. When you are evaluating alternatives, the right question is not “is Employment Hero a bad product”. It is “is it built for an organisation like ours”. For most mid-to-large Australian businesses, the honest answer is no, and the alternatives below are.

What are the best alternatives to Employment Hero for Australian organisations?

The five strongest Employment Hero alternatives for mid-to-large Australian organisations in 2026 are Worknice, ELMO Software, HiBob, Rippling and Workday. Worknice and ELMO are Australian-built. HiBob and Rippling are global mid-market platforms with an Australian presence. Workday is the enterprise option for the largest and most complex organisations. Pick based on size, integration footprint, and how much implementation lift you can absorb.

1. Worknice

Best for: Australian organisations of 50 to 2,000 employees that want a focused, modern HRIS with deep local compliance and clean integrations to whichever payroll they already run.

Typical customer size: 50 to 2,000 employees, Australian-headquartered.

Key strengths:

• Purpose-built for the Australian mid-market, with native handling of Fair Work obligations, modern awards mapping, policy acknowledgements and right-to-work checks.
• Configurable employee lifecycle workflows (onboarding, role changes, offboarding) that can be built and edited by HR, not by a vendor consultant on a quarterly release cycle.
• Two-way integrations with the payroll systems Australian organisations actually use, including Xero, MYOB, KeyPay, Employment Hero Payroll and MicrOpay.

Payroll approach: Integrates with your existing payroll. Worknice is an HRIS, not a payroll system, so the system of truth for pay rules and STP Phase 2 lodgement stays where you have it.

Watch-outs: Worknice does not bundle benefits, recognition or learning marketplaces. If you specifically want that all-in-one model, an alternative may suit you better.

Pricing: Per-employee monthly pricing scaled to organisation size. Contact Worknice for a quote.

2. ELMO Software

Best for: Australian and New Zealand organisations of 200 to 10,000 employees that want a broad HR-and-talent suite from a long-established local vendor.

Typical customer size: 200 to 10,000 employees, ANZ-focused.

Key strengths:

• One of the longest-running Australian HR-tech vendors with deep awareness of local compliance and a mature partner ecosystem.
• Broad modular suite covering HRIS, recruitment, learning, performance, remuneration, rostering and onboarding, which can suit teams that prefer to consolidate vendors.
• Established implementation and support footprint in Australia and New Zealand.

Payroll approach: ELMO offers a payroll module and integrates with major payroll providers; mid-to-large customers typically integrate rather than swap their existing payroll.

Watch-outs: Suite breadth means more configuration work up front and a heavier change-management lift than a focused HRIS. Customers sometimes report uneven depth across modules: talent and learning are strong, but some HRIS workflow areas are less flexible than newer challengers.

Pricing: Custom; modular pricing depending on which parts of the suite you adopt. Contact ELMO for a quote.

3. HiBob

Best for: Globally distributed mid-market organisations (often 100 to 2,000 employees) with a strong people-experience and culture focus, and an Australian entity that needs to roll up to a global HR data model.

Typical customer size: 100 to 2,000 employees, multi-country.

Key strengths:

• Modern, opinionated employee experience with strong engagement, recognition and “Club” social features baked in.
• Good handling of multi-entity, multi-country structures, which is useful for AU companies with offshore teams or AU subsidiaries of overseas parents.
• Strong reporting and people-analytics layer relative to other mid-market HRIS products.

Payroll approach: HRIS-only by design; bring your own payroll and integrate. Native AU payroll is not in scope.

Watch-outs: Localisation for Australian compliance (modern awards, EBA logic, state leave nuances) is lighter than Australian-built tools and often needs configuration or external support.

Pricing: Custom; contact HiBob for a quote.

4. Rippling

Best for: Tech-forward Australian organisations of 100 to 2,000 employees that want HR, IT and identity tightly unified, particularly when device, app and access provisioning is a meaningful part of joiner-mover-leaver workflows.

Typical customer size: 100 to 2,000 employees, with growing AU presence.

Key strengths:

• Genuinely unified employee record across HR, IT and finance, so one onboarding workflow can also issue a laptop, create accounts, and assign Slack/Google Workspace access.
• Powerful workflow and automation engine that mid-market teams can extend without code.
• Rapid release cadence and modern UX.

Payroll approach: Rippling offers payroll in some markets; for Australian customers the typical model is HRIS plus integration with a local payroll provider. Confirm current AU payroll status with Rippling at evaluation.

Watch-outs: Australian-specific compliance content (modern awards mapping, AU-specific policy templates) is less mature than locally built tools, so factor in implementation effort to localise.

Pricing: Custom, modular by product. Contact Rippling for a quote.

5. Workday

Best for: Large and complex Australian organisations (typically 1,500+ employees) where the HRIS is part of an integrated finance and people platform decision and a multi-year enterprise programme.

Typical customer size: 1,500 to 50,000+ employees, often global.

Key strengths:

• Deep enterprise functionality across HR, talent, planning, finance and analytics on a single data model.
• Strong governance, security and audit capabilities suited to listed companies, regulated industries and large public sector bodies.
• Mature partner network of implementation specialists in Australia.

Payroll approach: Workday offers payroll in some regions and integrates with ADP, SAP, Ramco and others for Australian payroll. Most AU customers integrate rather than replace existing payroll on day one.

Watch-outs: Implementation timelines are measured in quarters, not weeks, and total cost of ownership is materially higher than mid-market alternatives. It is overkill for organisations under 1,000 employees in almost all cases.

Pricing: Enterprise; contact Workday for a quote.

How do you plan a migration away from Employment Hero?

A typical Employment Hero to mid-market HRIS migration takes six to twelve weeks for an organisation of 200 to 1,500 employees. The biggest risks are not technical. They are forgetting to scope payroll integration, losing historical lifecycle data, and underestimating change management with people leaders. Plan in four phases: scope, extract, configure, cut over.

In the scope phase, list every system Employment Hero currently touches (payroll, finance, learning, recognition, ATS, identity) and decide which of those will move, integrate or be retired. This is also where you confirm the new HRIS is a pure HRIS and that payroll is staying put. Capture the exact employee fields, custom data and historical events you must preserve, including past role changes, leave balances and policy acknowledgements.

In the extract phase, pull employee master data, document attachments, custom fields and historical lifecycle events out of Employment Hero. Most organisations export to CSV, then map fields to the new HRIS schema. Ask both vendors for a documented field-mapping template and budget time for data cleansing. The migration is the best opportunity in five years to fix the data quality issues that have been quietly accumulating.

In the configure phase, set up the new HRIS: workflow approvals, permissions, org chart, policy library, performance cycles, integrations to payroll and identity. Run a parallel period where the new HRIS is the system of record for new lifecycle events while Employment Hero remains read-only. The cut-over phase formally retires Employment Hero, redirects integrations, and communicates to employees. Build a 30-day hypercare window where HR and IT triage any data or access issues before declaring done.

According to Fair Work Ombudsman guidance, employers must keep employee records for at least seven years. Build that requirement into the migration: either export and archive Employment Hero data before turning it off, or keep a read-only Employment Hero tenant until your record-keeping obligations are met.

What about payroll when you switch HRIS?

Payroll stays where it is. An HRIS migration is not a payroll migration. It is a people-data and lifecycle migration that reconnects to your existing payroll system through an integration. Mid-to-large Australian organisations almost never switch payroll and HRIS at the same time, because the combined risk and change management cost is too high.

If you are currently using Employment Hero Payroll, that decision is independent. You can keep Employment Hero Payroll and integrate it back into your new HRIS, or you can plan a separate payroll evaluation later. Treat the two decisions sequentially. The HRIS becomes the source of truth for employee data: names, positions, reporting lines, lifecycle events, and leave entitlements at the policy level. Payroll remains the source of truth for pay rules, pay history, super, STP Phase 2 lodgement with the ATO and bank file generation.

The integration pattern that works in practice is two-way: the HRIS pushes new starters, role changes and terminations into payroll; payroll pushes pay-period data back into the HRIS for reporting. According to the ATO’s Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 guidance, STP reporting obligations attach to the payroll system, not the HRIS, so confirm that whichever payroll you keep is fully STP Phase 2 compliant before you switch HRIS, not after.

How important is local Australian support and compliance?

For a mid-to-large Australian organisation, local support and compliance are the two switching criteria most often under-weighted on a scorecard and most often regretted later. A global HRIS that does not understand modern awards, EBAs, Fair Work record-keeping rules or state-by-state long-service-leave logic will quietly create risk that only becomes visible during an audit or an FWC matter.

Practical things to test in evaluation:

• Does the vendor have an Australian-based support team in business hours, with named contacts for mid-market customers?
• Does the system natively model modern awards, including allowance and penalty logic where it intersects with HR data such as classifications and pay grades?
• Are policy templates, employee handbooks and onboarding flows pre-populated with Australian content (Fair Work Information Statement, casual conversion, parental leave under the National Employment Standards)?
• Does the vendor’s roadmap publicly track AU regulatory changes, for example recent right-to-disconnect provisions, casual employment definition changes and pay secrecy reforms?

According to successive Fair Work Ombudsman annual reports, the regulator continues to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid wages and entitlements each year, with a meaningful share of cases tracing back to award interpretation and record-keeping failures. These are exactly the areas where a well-localised HRIS pays for itself.

Frequently asked questions

Is Employment Hero good for large companies?

Employment Hero is optimised for very small Australian and New Zealand businesses; its own published figures imply an average customer of around seven employees. Larger organisations of 200+ staff frequently outgrow it on workflow customisation, reporting depth, support model and renewal pricing. For mid-to-large organisations, the alternatives listed here are usually a better structural fit.

What’s the best Australian-made alternative to Employment Hero?

Worknice and ELMO Software are the two most established Australian-built HRIS alternatives. Worknice suits modern mid-market organisations of 50 to 2,000 employees that want a focused HRIS integrating with their existing payroll. ELMO Software suits larger organisations of 200 to 10,000 employees that want a broader talent-and-learning suite from a long-standing local vendor with a mature implementation network.

How much does it cost to switch from Employment Hero to another HRIS?

Switching cost has three components: new HRIS subscription (typically per-employee per-month, scaled by organisation size), one-off implementation and data migration (often AU$10,000 to AU$80,000 depending on complexity), and internal change management time. Most mid-market alternatives cost less per employee than Employment Hero at scale, so the total cost of ownership over three years is frequently lower despite the migration spend.

Can I keep Employment Hero Payroll if I switch HRIS?

Yes. Employment Hero Payroll is a separate product and can stay as your payroll system of record while you replace the HRIS layer. Most modern HRIS platforms (including Worknice) integrate with Employment Hero Payroll, syncing new starters, role changes and terminations across automatically. Treat the HRIS and payroll decisions independently to reduce risk.

How long does HRIS migration from Employment Hero take?

For an Australian organisation of 200 to 1,500 employees, expect six to twelve weeks from kick-off to cut-over, plus a 30-day hypercare period. Larger or more complex organisations with multiple entities, custom integrations or significant historical data take longer. The single biggest accelerator is having clean, well-documented employee data going in. Most overruns trace back to data quality, not the HRIS itself.

About the author

Graham Sowden is co-founder of Worknice, an Australian HRIS used by mid-market organisations across Australia and New Zealand. He has worked with hundreds of Australian HR leaders on HRIS evaluation and migration decisions and writes about HR technology, compliance and employee experience for an HR-leader audience.

Sources

1. Employment Hero. “Employment Hero surpasses $300M ARR.” Employment Hero blog. https://employmenthero.com/blog/employment-hero-surpasses-300m-arr/
2. Fair Work Ombudsman. “Record-keeping and pay slips.” Fair Work Ombudsman. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/record-keeping-and-pay-slips
3. Australian Taxation Office. “Expanding Single Touch Payroll (Phase 2).” ATO. https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/hiring-and-paying-your-workers/single-touch-payroll/expanding-single-touch-payroll-phase-2
4. Fair Work Ombudsman. “Annual report 2023-24.” Fair Work Ombudsman. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/our-role-and-purpose/our-priorities/our-results/annual-report
5. Worknice. “What are the best HRIS platforms for mid-to-large sized Australian organisations?” Worknice blog. https://www.worknice.com/blog/what-are-the-best-hris-platforms-for-mid-to-large-sized-australian-organisations/