Employment Hero launches HeroForce to ease compliance burden

Employment Hero has launched HeroForce in Australia, a platform that makes the company the legal employer for client workforces.

The service is designed to manage payroll, compliance and HR administration on behalf of businesses, while those businesses retain operational control over staff. HeroForce uses Employment Hero's existing employment software and HeroAI tools to automate tasks related to awards, pay calculations, rostering and compliance monitoring.

The launch comes as Australian employers face mounting pressure from a complex workplace system and rising compliance costs. Employment Hero's modelling found businesses are spending AUD $12.6 billion more than necessary on duplicated employment administration, with manual processes adding costs equivalent to as much as a quarter of an employee's salary.

The business also pointed to broader strain in the labour market, saying Australian companies spend about AUD $160 billion a year on compliance, yet hundreds of thousands of workers are still underpaid and more than half of audited businesses remain non-compliant with regulatory standards.

Compliance burden

Australia's employment framework includes more than 120 modern awards, each with separate classifications, pay rules and obligations. Employment Hero argued that this structure has made locally managed employer-of-record and professional employer organisation arrangements difficult to scale because administration remains too expensive and labour-intensive.

Under the HeroForce model, workers are employed under formal contracts and remain covered by protections under the Fair Work Act, including award wages, superannuation, leave entitlements and workers' compensation. Employment Hero said the service was built to operate within Australian regulation.

Ben Thompson, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Employment Hero, said the product is aimed at employers struggling with system complexity rather than trying to avoid their obligations.

"Most businesses aren't failing at compliance because they're careless or dishonest. They're struggling because individual employers are trying to solve an extremely specialised regulatory problem while also running the business. The system has become too complex to manage manually," Thompson said.

He added that the burden is particularly heavy for small and medium-sized businesses, which he said spend AUD $40,000 to $80,000 each year to remain compliant with employment law while also managing payroll, modern awards, Fair Work rules and superannuation obligations.

"The average SMB spends $40,000-$80,000 a year just to stay compliant with employment law. Running a business in Australia increasingly means becoming an expert in payroll, modern awards, Fair Work compliance and superannuation," Thompson said.

Employment Hero also linked the launch to changes in hiring patterns. Drawing on its jobs data, it said casual employment is rising 9.3 per cent year on year, more than double the pace of full-time roles, as employers seek flexibility during a period of weaker confidence and increasing regulation. It also cited figures showing that 7.5 per cent of the workforce are independent contractors.

Economic case

Employment Hero presented HeroForce as a structural response to these pressures, arguing that artificial intelligence can reduce manual work across large numbers of employment relationships at once. It said HeroAI can interpret awards, build rosters, automate payroll calculations and track compliance obligations across thousands of workers.

"That fundamentally changes the economics of employment administration," Thompson said.

Employment Hero also cited analysis of professional employer organisations in the US, which it said showed users had twice the growth rate of comparable companies, 12 per cent lower staff turnover and were 50 per cent less likely to go out of business. It added that organisations reported an average 27.2 per cent return on investment, with service fees of 3 to 5 per cent for fully managed employment.

Thompson said the model should also reduce risks for workers. Employment Hero said 250,000 Australian workers were underpaid in the last financial year despite high spending on compliance, and that 56 per cent of businesses investigated by the Fair Work Ombudsman were found to be non-compliant. Its modelling estimated underpayment exposure at AUD $18,668 a year for a typical 50-person business.

"The last financial year saw 250,000 Australian workers underpaid, despite the huge investment in compliance. Of the businesses the Fair Work Ombudsman investigated, 56 per cent were found to be non-compliant. For years, I've seen businesses try to navigate the system and fall short because of its complexity rather than deliberate wrongdoing. These issues are frequently the result of fragmented compliance systems rather than bad intent," Thompson said.

HeroForce is now available in Australia. Employment Hero said it also offers the model in New Zealand, the UK and Canada.