How this defence marine contractor cut payroll from 3 days to 30 minutes with Employment Hero

About the business

NORSTA is a program management company responsible for maintaining Navy vessels in the Northern Australia region. As a brand-new entity with just six months to become fully operational under a Commonwealth contract, they needed compliant HR and payroll processes to be stood up fast.

The challenge

With only weeks before go-live, NORSTA was juggling a basic payroll tool, SharePoint folders, paper forms and manual data entry. As Lynda Davies, NORSTA’s HR Lead, explains:

“We didn’t have a system… everything was manual, and we were entering super and bank details ourselves.”

As a Defence contractor, they also needed Australian-hosted, secure systems with full audit trails for every employee change.

The solution

NORSTA implemented Employment Hero when transitioning to full operations, building their people management around the platform. Staff, including embedded consultants, use self-service for personal, banking and super details. Recruitment and onboarding run end-to-end through Employment Hero, creating a consistent, compliant hiring process. 

“Employment Hero is the source of truth for all our employee information: I don’t have a filing cabinet in my office,” Lynda states.

The ROI

• Payroll processing time reduced from several days to under 30 minutes per cycle.
• 1 HR headcount reduced by eliminating the need for an administration assistant through employee self-service.
• 5–10% of managerial time freed up from previously manual leave and scheduling tasks.

Why it matters

For NORSTA, Employment Hero turned HR from a compliance risk and admin burden into a streamlined, auditable system. As Lynda puts it,

“HR shouldn’t be admin. Employment Hero lets us get rid of the clunky stuff so we can do the fun stuff.”