Australia
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United Kingdom
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People management built for the pace of retail
From casual floor staff to store managers, Employment Hero helps retail businesses take the admin out of rostering, payroll and compliance so your team can focus on the customer.
What’s really slowing your retail business down?
PAIN POINT #1
Managing a high-volume, high-turnover casual workforce
Retail runs on casuals. But constant hiring, onboarding and offboarding creates a paperwork burden that never lets up. When staff turnover is high, every manual process gets multiplied.
✦ EMPLOYMENT HERO
Automated digital onboarding gets new retail staff contract-signed, tax-ready and policy-acknowledged before their first shift. No paper, no chasing, no delays.
PAIN POINT #2
Rostering complexity across shifts and locations
Getting the right number of people on the floor at the right time, across multiple stores, split shifts and peak trading periods, is one of retail’s most time-consuming operational challenges.
✦ EMPLOYMENT HERO
Build and manage rosters across all your locations in one place. Employees receive shift notifications instantly via the app and managers get real-time visibility into coverage and labour costs.
PAIN POINT #3
Award interpretation and underpayment risk
Retail employees are covered by one of Australia’s most complex Modern Awards. Penalty rates, overtime, junior rates and allowances vary by hour, day and classification. Getting it wrong, even unintentionally, creates significant Fair Work exposure.
✦ EMPLOYMENT HERO
Our award interpretation engine automates the General Retail Industry Award 2020, applying the right rates for every employee type, every shift, every time.
Still doing this manually? See how we help
Paperless onboarding for high-volume hiring
When you’re hiring multiple staff at once for a new store opening or peak season, speed matters. Employment Hero lets you send digital contracts, collect tax file numbers and super details and complete inductions in bulk, before anyone walks through the door.
Automated General Retail Industry Award interpretation
From part-time floor staff to full-time supervisors, Employment Hero applies the correct pay rates, penalty rates and entitlements automatically. Junior rates, overtime thresholds and weekend penalties are calculated without manual input, reducing underpayment risk across your entire team.
Leave and availability management
Retail staff often have complex availability requirements around study, second jobs and family commitments. Employment Hero lets employees submit availability and leave requests directly through the app, so managers can build rosters around real availability rather than guessing.
AI Recruitment for fast, quality hiring
High turnover means hiring never really stops in retail. Employment Hero’s AI Recruitment Agent scores, screens and shortlists candidates automatically, compressing what used to take days of CV reviews into minutes so you can get the right people on the floor before trading demand peaks.
How one national footwear retailer streamlined HR across 27 locations
Jo Mercer
Retail | 240 employees | Victoria, Australia
THE CHALLENGE
Before Employment Hero, Jo Mercer’s HR processes were largely manual and admin-heavy, managed by a single-person HR team. With 27 store locations across the country and periods of seasonal hiring, double-handling of data made it difficult to provide a seamless experience for candidates and managers. The absence of a centralised platform meant significant time constraints and no way to efficiently collaborate on hiring across locations. Employment Hero brought everything into one place, giving the team a single source of truth for HR, onboarding and recruitment across all 27 stores.
“The benefit of one system has been huge for us — it’s great having everything in the one area. We’ve saved so much time on admin, as well as time during onboarding.”
— Elise Guiliano, HR Manager, Jo Mercer
OUTCOMES
Onboarding reduced to approximately 10 minutes per new hire
Hiring managers across all 27 stores can now refer and share candidates between locations
Centralised HR data replaced a manual, double-handling process across a small team
Staying compliant in retail
Retail is one of Australia’s most Award-complex industries. From junior pay scales to penalty rates and casual conversion obligations, Employment Hero handles the compliance burden so your store managers can focus on customers, not calculations.
Award coverage
General Retail Industry Award 2020
The Retail Award covers most retail employees, including sales assistants, supervisors and stock room staff. It includes detailed provisions for penalty rates, overtime, junior rates and allowances that vary. Employment Hero automates interpretation and application across all of these, so pay runs are accurate without manual checking.
Classifications
Junior rates and classification management
The General Retail Industry Award includes age-based junior pay rates that increase at each birthday. Employment Hero tracks each employee’s age and updates their pay rate automatically, so junior rates are always correct without reminders or manual adjustments.
Fair Work
Casual conversion obligations
Retail businesses with long-term regular casuals must offer conversion to permanent employment at the right intervals under the NES. Employment Hero tracks casual engagement and surfaces conversion eligibility automatically so nothing slips through.
Payday Reform
Payday super: 1 July 2026
Super will need to be paid on every payday, not quarterly. Employment Hero’s payroll engine is being updated to calculate and remit super contributions on each pay run, no manual reconciliation required, even across multi-centre operations.
Employment Hero works alongside the tools your studio already runs on
Xero
Payroll figures sync to Xero automatically after every pay run, no double entry, no manual reconciliation at month end.
MYOB
If your business already uses MYOB, Employment Hero connects directly, keeping accounts and payroll aligned.
QuickBooks Online
For businesses running QuickBooks, payroll data flows across automatically so your books stay current without manual exports.
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Frequently asked questions
Yes. Employment Hero automates award interpretation under the General Retail Industry Award 2020, applying the correct pay rates, penalty rates and entitlements for each employee based on their classification, hours and shift timing. Junior rates update automatically at each birthday, so you're never manually adjusting pay scales.
You can manage rosters across all your locations from a single platform. Managers have visibility into who's working across every store, can make changes in real time and staff receive instant notifications through the Employment Hero app. Labour cost visibility is built in, so you can track spend against budget as you schedule.
Absolutely. Employment Hero is built for exactly this. You can send digital contracts, collect tax file numbers and super details and issue policies in bulk, so even when you're onboarding ten people at once ahead of a peak trading period, it's managed in minutes rather than days.
Employment Hero tracks each casual employee's engagement period and automatically surfaces when they become eligible for a conversion offer under the NES. You'll be notified before obligations arise, rather than after they've been missed.
Employment Hero is SOC 2 certified and stores all data on Australian servers. Access permissions can be configured by store, by role and by function, so area managers, store managers and payroll staff each see only what's relevant to them.
Run your stores. We'll handle the employment side
Employment Hero gives retail businesses the compliance confidence, payroll accuracy and people tools to grow without the admin holding them back.
