Measuring the ROI of Employment Hero

Running a business means your employment function is working around the clock. From hiring staff, to paying your team, managing compliance and onboarding, it all adds up.

But most Australian businesses don’t know what any of it really costs or what they stand to save.

This report does the maths, drawing on the results from 155 Australian businesses using Employment Hero.

Find out what you could save. Fill in the form to download the report.

What this ROI report covers

This is Employment Hero’s 2026 Return on Investment (ROI) report. It draws on data from 155 Australian customers who moved their employment function onto Employment Hero’s Employment Operating System and tracked the results across up to 18 months of use.

Their experience is set against a survey of 1,000 Australian SMB leaders, giving context for where the broader market sits versus businesses that have already made the shift.

The 2022 version of this report measured businesses moving from paper to digital. This one starts further up the curve. Most of these businesses already had digital tools in place. What changed was integration, automation and the impact of AI, looking closely at the difference that makes to speed, accuracy and how prepared a business is for compliance any time a change comes into effect.

Three things were measured in this report were:

• How much time Employment Hero saves businesses on HR and payroll admin
• Whether that time saving reaches owners and senior leaders, not just admin staff
• Whether businesses become audit-ready on an ongoing basis, rather than scrambling when compliance is needed

What you’ll take away from this report is a clear framework for calculating the ROI of your own employment function, benchmarks to compare your current setup against and the data to make a confident case for change internally.

What our customers are seeing

* Based on data from 155 Australian businesses tracked across up to 18 months on the Employment Operating System.

Download the report to see the full breakdown.

Why knowing the ROI of employment software is important for businesses

HR and payroll admin has a cost that most Australian businesses haven’t measured. Every hour a payroll manager spends chasing timesheets, cross-referencing award rates or fixing a pay run error is an hour that isn’t going into the business.

The 2026 compliance environment makes this harder. Payday Super, modern award complexity and continuous Fair Work updates mean the margin for error has shrunk. 

Quantifying that cost is the first step. The second is understanding which parts of your employment function are carrying the most unnecessary weight and whether the tools you’re using are adding to it or taking it away.

Why ROI matters for payroll software

Payroll is the highest-risk admin function in most Australian businesses, being both an operational inconvenience and a liability. Award misinterpretation, manual data entry errors and end-of-month reconciliation pile-ups all sit inside the payroll function and most businesses are absorbing the cost without knowing what it adds up to.

The businesses in this report cut payroll time by up to 42% on average. 

More importantly, they moved from a process that was error-prone and multi-day to one that runs with AI-assisted accuracy and built-in anomaly detection. Faster payroll is only a win if it’s also more accurate and the report covers both.

Learn more about Employment Hero Payroll.

What our customers are saying about their ROI with Employment Hero

• Experience Gold Coast cut payroll from a three-day operation to two and a half hours for 370 employees, saving $36,000 a year and 36 hours a week on HR admin. 
• NORSTA reduced payroll processing time by 99% (from three days to 30 minutes) and removed paper files entirely. 
• Thermosash runs a two-person HR team supporting 550+ employees, saving up to $180,000 and cutting hiring time in half with Employment Hero. 
• NAAJA consolidated five systems into one and saved $120,000 and 1.5 FTE in admin annually.
• Brophy Family & Youth Services reinvested 1,380 admin hours a year back into their people and their purpose. 
• Holdsworth Community achieved $400,000 in annual cost savings and what their CEO described as total compliance confidence.

Ready to see what it adds up to for your business?

Download the 2026 ROI report now.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is current as of 6 October 2026. The views expressed in this article are general information and opinions only, and are provided in good faith without taking into account your personal circumstances, financial situation or needs. Before acting on any information, you should consider whether it is appropriate for you and we recommend that you seek independent financial, legal and taxation advice. Certain information given is based on data supplied by third parties. While such data is believed to be accurate, it has not been independently verified and no warranties are given that it is complete, accurate, up to date or fit for the purpose for which it is required. Employment Hero does not accept responsibility for any inaccuracy in such data and is not liable for any loss or damages arising either directly or indirectly as a result of reliance on, use of or inability to use any information provided in this article.