What’s new at Employment Hero: Here’s our 2026 product recap

HR has never had a longer to-do list. Compliance rules keep moving, hiring volumes are climbing, teams are spread across sites, shifts and time zones, and leaders want better people data on demand. For most small and mid-sized businesses, all of that lands on one or two people.

Australian employers felt it this year. Payday Super moved super payments to every payday from 1 July, new Fair Work amendments put casual conversion under the spotlight, and award and payroll compliance stayed as demanding as ever. The teams coping best have stopped treating HR as a long series of manual tasks. They let software and AI carry out the routine work so people can focus on the human side of the job.

That’s the thinking behind everything we built. In 2026, AI stopped talking about the work and started doing it. Our teams have shipped 630+ Employment Hero product updates so far this year including. HeroClear, complete with ATO integrations and tools to help make 1 July a non-event, Chat and Hero AI and many many more. 

Here’s a quick tour of the highlights, all designed to make employment easier.

Hero AI: from assistant to actor

Hero AI started the year answering HR questions. It now gets things done.

Take action, right in the chat

In January, managers could approve, reject or cancel leave straight from Hero AI, and anyone could ask about personal and team details like start dates, time zones and employment history. By April, Hero AI had a permanent home in the navigation bar, role-based prompts, recent chats and the ability to create leave requests. It also arrived on mobile with actions for leave, timesheets and unavailability, and it’s now in global search.

Ask about almost anything

We’ve taught Hero AI to answer questions about 1:1s, company announcements, tasks and checklists, goals, 9-Box ratings, 360 feedback, feedback and recognition, learning progress, Happiness Survey results, performance reviews, employee profiles and HR documents, and disciplinary records. It also understands your Company Values when helping with feedback and development guidance.

Insights, reports and rostering

AI Insights now sit above charts across all 12 standard report groups, surfacing the trends, alerts and actions that matter for your role. The Hero AI Report Builder turns a plain-English description into a pre-filled custom report, and you can edit it by prompt, then accept or undo the change. Conversational Rostering handles open shifts, swaps and compliance checks through chat.

A full-screen workspace you can trust

Hero AI grew from a side panel into a full-screen workspace with room for generated reports and full conversation history. A live action timeline shows every step it takes in plain language, and @mentions (now including whole teams) make sure it always knows who you mean. It’s in the ATS too, explaining candidate scores, summarising CVs and comparing candidates side by side.

HeroClear: super, sorted

HeroClear debuted in December 2025 and has matured quickly into the way Australian employers prepared for Payday Super going live on 1 July. Over 26,000 Aussie businesses are now using HeroClear to process their employee’s super payments totalling over $1.8 billion processed since launch. 

• Flexible funding. Connect a bank account, or fund via PayID, PayTo or direct debit, with clearer payment statuses and automatic retries if a payment hits an error.
• Payment approvals require sign-off from a designated approver before any automated payment goes out.
• Faster super fund registrations automatically register eligible employees with their default fund before their first contribution.
• Payday Super tools include Qualifying Earnings configuration, super account auto-discovery at onboarding, a Qualifying Earnings Report and automatic “higher-of” super calculations.

Employment Hero also became a registered ATO Digital Service Provider, meaning real-time TFN validation, direct lodgement of tax declarations and stapled super fund lookup, all inside onboarding.

“Loving the new HeroClear feature for paying super… It’s so easy to use and just a few clicks to send payments.” — Annette Sparks, Finance & Compliance Officer, One Central Health

Payroll Agent: catch problems before pay day

Our third AI agent under Hero AI, the Payroll Agent, is now live. It checks timesheets, leave requests and expense claims against your company policy in real time, flagging issues to employees and managers before they ever reach payroll. Employees see a clear “Pass” or “Warning” at the point of submission, managers get a second check at approval and the rules are built from your own policy documents. It’s a second pair of eyes, not a gatekeeper: approve and decline buttons always work, so nothing about your existing approval workflows changes.

Other Australian payroll and compliance updates:

• Pay Conditions Comparison automates annual salary reconciliation against Award rates using timesheet data, with audit-ready exports.
• Casual Conversion Pre-Check builds the 2026 Fair Work Act amendments into onboarding.
• Vehicle allowance kilometre tracking warns when an employee reaches the 5,000km tax-free cap, and pay rate change notifications flag automatic progressions.
• Restricted Edit Mode lets admins correct reporting fields on a finalised pay run, and payslip management is available for organisations not using Employment Hero payroll.
• The 1.1% card surcharge was removed for AU Perks Store and Hero Points purchases in line with new RBA rules.

“Every update saves us more time. In 12 months, they’ve already adopted 15–20 of our suggestions. Our previous system adopted only one in the six years we used it.” – Ryan Cooney, People Operations Manager, Northern Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA)

Recruitment Agent: hiring on autopilot

Recruitment Agent had a huge year, and it’s working while you sleep.

• AI Hiring Criteria (April) lets hirers see and control how candidates are scored, including must-haves versus nice-to-haves.
• The AI Notetaker (June) transcribes and summarises Google Meet and Microsoft Teams interviews and delivers the notes to the candidate record.
• A free standalone Recruitment Agent (July) lets anyone sign up, create a job and send AI interview invitations with no sales call.
• Automated free AI video interviews (August) invite qualified candidates before a recruiter even opens their application.
• The new Recruitment Agent Hub (September) is a chat-based home base that builds job ads, sets criteria and surfaces salary and talent insights.

Around the agent, the ATS got Criteria Corp and Codility assessments, interview self-scheduling, reference check fraud detection, bulk CV upload (now up to 1,000 at once), Talent Pool CSV import and automated candidate communications with HeroFlow. Australian recruiters also got SEEK screening questions pre-fill.

“I can hand on heart say there has been a transformative lift in the quality of people we’re recruiting. Ultimately, it’s a tool — but it gives you the best insights to make a better decision faster.”— Craig Gillett, Group General Manager — People & Capability, Thermosash

Chat and the EH Work app

Our biggest launch for frontline and shift-based teams: Employment Hero Chat went live for clients in April, with 1:1 and group chats, file sharing, real-time notifications and full web and mobile sync, so important conversations can leave the WhatsApp groups.

Since then, Chat has gained public and private channels, voice notes, mobile search, dynamic audiences by group, location or work site, unread reminders, profiles that open without leaving the conversation and a Chat Engagement Report.

The EH Work app also got a streamlined Home dashboard (March), Forms with digital signatures and conditional logic, performance reviews on mobile, facial recognition clock-in for Hero Time Clock and timesheet attachments. Native mobile onboarding is now rolled out across all regions, including Australia.

“We’re using the performance review tool so that managers can meet with their staff and talk through what’s going well and what could improve. There’s a lot more clarity now, especially when we revisit goals during mid-year check-ins.” – Rebekah Acason, People and Culture Coordinator, Australians Together

Doc Studio: one editor for every HR document

Contracts, offer letters, policies and letters of variation used to mean choosing between two editors and re-keying the same details every time. Doc Studio is now the single, modern editor for every HR document in Employment Hero, and in August it went live for all customers.

• One unified editor replaces the legacy Basic (PDF) and Advanced editors, so there’s no guessing which tool to use.
• Searchable variable library helps you find the right merge field in seconds.
• Smart clauses add or remove sections automatically based on employee details.
• Multiple signatories support internal approval (up to three signatories) before a document goes out, and recipient-only signatures cover documents that only the employee needs to sign.
• Rich media lets you add logos, photos and images straight into templates.
• Standalone documents let HR admins and managers write and send a one-off document from an employee’s profile, with no template required, on eligible plans.
• Policy templates are now available to more plans, so you can build reusable policies in the same editor.

Workflows, HR and compliance

• Workflows: edit live workflows in three clicks, trigger automations on certification expiry, personal detail changes and leave cancellations, preview workflow emails and monitor runs with the new run log.
• Unified workforce: add Volunteers as a recognised worker type, see employees, contractors and volunteers in one People List, and convert between worker types without losing history.
• Performance: scheduled and recurring review cycles, optional and role-restricted questions, 1:1 collaborators and a redesigned 9-Box Talent Grid.
• Leave: a Unified Team Calendar, sensitive leave privacy so managers can see only what they need, and tiered leave evidence requirements.
• Admin visibility: the Issues Summary Hub pulls payroll, leave, timesheet and compliance issues into one view, and the What’s New Hub shows what’s shipped and what’s coming.
• Australian leave: live leave balances in the Employee File and balance projections on the leave card, no more submitting a fake request to check a balance.
• Recognition: Hero Points now work across borders, so AU organisations can reward their NZ and Canadian employees.
• Security: SAML SSO for Payroll (Okta, Microsoft Entra or Google Workspace), passkeys for Payroll users on EH Work, mandatory 2FA on password recovery, identity verification for email changes and expiring payroll self-setup links.

Thank you for choosing Employment Hero. Your partnership fuels the innovation that makes employment easier and more rewarding for everyone. For the full list, follow along in the What’s New Hub in your platform or our Release notes.