Learning and Development Panel Discussion

Inside our July 2026 events: Hero Hour Sydney and Hero Labs Melbourne

Last Updated Aug 12, 2026

Speaker presenting 'Hero Labs: AI and the Future of Employment' to attendees seated at round tables during the Melbourne event.

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At Employment Hero, everything we do comes back to our mission – to make employment easier and more valuable for everyone. That means building better HR, recruitment and payroll software, but also creating spaces where the people running the HR and payroll functions behind the scenes can learn from each other, get answers to hard questions and feel less like they’re figuring it out alone.

Our events exist for exactly that reason. On 22 July we ran Hero Hour in Sydney and launched our first ever Hero Labs in Melbourne. Here’s what came out of both.

Hero Hour Sydney

If you’ve been to a Hero Hour before, you already know it’s not your typical conference-style event. There’s no keynote and no agenda running to the minute. Instead, it’s a chance to connect in a room with local HR professionals, business owners and people leaders who are all dealing with variations of the same challenges as you, while getting a chance to talk about it face-to-face.

The conversations covered a lot of ground including hiring challenges, how teams are navigating returning to the office and what AI is looking like inside an HR function. Our team was there to be part of those conversations, while offering practical solutions.

Collage showing a welcome sign and a group of five attendees posing together at the Employment Hero 'Hero Hour' event in Sydney.

Hero Hour in Sydney

Hero Labs Melbourne

Hero Labs is Employment Hero’s innovation series for business leaders, HR professionals and operators who want a closer look at the technology shaping the future of employment, and Melbourne was where we ran the first one.

The session focused on how AI is moving employment beyond manual admin and towards intelligent automation. The sessions were built around what that looks like for hiring decisions and day-to-day people operations. We opened with a broader look at the AI shift happening across the employment lifecycle, then broke into smaller breakout groups where people could dig into the use cases most relevant to their businesses.

The questions people brought were based around people wanting to work through the challenging parts of employment in 2026, like how you evaluate an AI-generated shortlist, what it looks like when AI is involved in a hiring decision and how you bring along a team that’s understandably nervous about what it all means for their roles.

Hero Labs in Melbourne

Thank you to everyone who joined us in July

The people in the room are what make these events worth running and July reminded us of that. Thank you to everyone who came out in Sydney and Melbourne. We’ll see you at the next one.

Want to come to the next in-person event?

Hero Hour runs regularly across Australia and Hero Labs is growing. If you work in HR, payroll or people leadership and want to be part of the next one, we have two coming up.