Employment Hero in October: Compliant Extended Leave, Smarter 1:1 Prep and High-Speed Bulk Payroll

Last Updated Nov 6, 2026

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October was all about removing administrative drag and reinforcing compliance across your Canadian workforce. From compliant statutory extended leaves and AI-powered meeting prep to a major expansion of our bulk payroll tools for Canadian teams, we’ve introduced features designed to keep your people operations accurate, fast, and stress-free.

Here is what rolled out in October and why it matters for your team.

HR & Platform Updates: Automated Compliance and Smoother Workflows

Leave of Absence

Canadian HR admins no longer need to rely on termination workarounds to record extended leaves—risking broken employment continuity and unlawful vacation payouts. Leave of Absence is now a dedicated, first-class time off type built directly into the platform to keep your business fully compliant with provincial Employment Standards Acts (ESA).

First-class time off type: Comes pre-configured with 11 statutory leave reasons, visible in the Time Off calendar and team leave summaries, with customizable color, unit type, and balance tracking.
Automated statutory handling: Maintains continuous service records and vacation accrual, while automatically zeroing base pay for the duration of the leave upon approval.
Service requirement warnings: Features an overridable alert if an employee has not yet met their province’s minimum service threshold.
Clear status visibility: Displays an automatic “On Leave” badge on the employee profile that clears as soon as they return.
Proactive compliance reminders: Generates automated tasks and reminders for issuing Records of Employment (ROEs), managing benefit continuation and premium recouping, and tracking return dates starting 7 days prior.

Why it matters: Previously, tracking extended leaves required clunky manual workarounds that risked compliance penalties and broken seniority records. Treating LOA as a built-in time off type protects employee continuity, prevents payroll overpayments, and keeps HR and payroll teams aligned on critical deadlines.

Redesigned Employee Invitation Emails

First impressions matter. We’ve redesigned our new-hire invitation emails to make the day-one welcome clearer, faster, and more engaging.

Company-first branding: Streamlined messaging puts your organization front and center to build immediate trust with incoming team members.
Single primary action button: Replaces confusing multi-link footers with a single, clear path to get started.
Smart device routing: Automatically detects whether a new hire is on desktop or mobile, routing them smoothly from Work App installation to password creation and profile setup in seconds.

Why it matters: Cluttered invite emails create friction and lead to onboarding delays. A clean, single-click setup flow cuts down on login confusion and gets employees onto the platform with zero hand-holding.

Hero AI Reads Management Notes

Preparing for regular 1:1s, appraisals, and quarterly reviews no longer requires digging through individual employee timelines. Hero AI can now read, search, and synthesize management notes directly within the conversation.

Manager-level summaries: Ask Hero AI for quick overviews or the exact wording of recent notes recorded for your direct and indirect reports before stepping into a meeting.
Org-wide visibility for HR: Admins can query company-wide note activity, tracking engagement patterns and note frequencies across teams, locations, and managers.
Permission-governed security: Responses strictly honor your organization’s role-based access controls, ensuring sensitive records remain accessible only to authorized eyes.

Why it matters: Consistent documentation is essential for fair, productive performance reviews, but retrieving past feedback can be tedious. Bringing note summaries into a conversational interface gives managers instant context and helps HR measure performance cadence across the entire company.

Payroll Updates: Faster Batch Processing and Automated Remittances

Benefits in Bulk Payroll Entries (Canada)

Managing ad hoc benefits across your team just got simpler. Canadian payroll organizations can now access a dedicated Benefits tab directly within Bulk Payroll Entries, sitting right alongside Earning Lines and Deductions.

Add one-off benefits in bulk: Create up to 20 one-time benefit rows at once across multiple employees from a single screen. (Recurring benefits continue to be managed under Benefits Management)
Inline spreadsheet editing: Update cells inline with searchable dropdowns, duplicate rows, and single or bulk-delete entries with ease.
Safe local staging: All additions and edits remain staged locally until you click Apply to Pay Run—or hit Discard to clear changes without affecting the live run.
Custom permission support: Accessible to Admins/Owners and users with Run Payroll or Bulk Payroll Entries CSS permissions, with dedicated simplified views and automatic read-only locking on finalized pay runs.

Why it matters: Manually opening individual employee profiles to add one-off taxable or non-taxable perks eats valuable pay-cycle time. Bringing ad hoc benefits into the bulk entry grid lets payroll teams stage, edit, and apply adjustments across the entire workforce in seconds.

Learn more here

Union Dues Remittance Report

Canadian payroll teams can now generate an audit-ready Union Dues Remittance Report in seconds, replacing the manual spreadsheets admins previously built by hand each pay period.

Dedicated union local assignment: Add an optional Union Local field (up to 50 characters) directly to any Union Dues deduction category.
Pay run visibility: The assigned union local displays as a read-only tag alongside deductions on pay run earnings lines and in a dedicated column on the Deductions tab in Bulk Payroll Entries.
One-click formatted export: Navigate to Payroll > Reports > Union Dues Remittance Report to export UnionDuesRemittanceReport.xlsx. Data is grouped by union local with one row per employee, covering hours worked, gross earnings, durable earnings, period dues deducted, and YTD totals.
Granular filtering: Filter reports by date range, pay run, pay schedule, employee, location, or deduction category, making it easy to generate separate files for individual union locals, with an option to include pending pay runs.
Locked calculation records: Durable earnings are saved directly at pay run calculation for full audit integrity. (Historical pay runs calculated prior to release show an estimated durable figure marked with an asterisk).

Why it matters: Remitting dues across multiple collective agreements often requires stitching together payroll numbers in external spreadsheets. Built-in reporting ensures your numbers match exact pay run records, prevents calculation discrepancies, and saves hours of manual compilation every month.

Bulk Pay Run Entries via Template Upload

For payroll teams running complex batches or collating hours outside the system, you can now stage and import entire pay runs using our new offline Template Upload feature.

Standardized multi-tab templates: Download an Excel or CSV template pre-formatted for bulk employee earnings, deductions, and benefits.
Unified single-step upload: Import all compensation, variable deductions, and staged benefits across your entire workforce in one file.
In-grid draft validation: Data imports into a draft staging grid where you can visually inspect entries, resolve flagged data conflicts, and edit values before final approval.

Why it matters: High-volume pay runs need flexibility and safety. Preparing data in standard spreadsheets and reviewing drafts before pushing them to live runs gives you the speed of bulk uploads without sacrificing precision or data control.