Employment Hero

Employment Hero is the all in one contender. It grew up in Australia, acquired the KeyPay payroll engine, and has pushed hard into the UK market with a single platform covering HR, payroll and employee benefits. The appeal is consolidation: one system for the whole employee lifecycle rather than three subscriptions that have to talk to each other.

What it does well

The breadth is the draw. Onboarding, contracts, HR records, leave, performance, payroll and a benefits marketplace all in one place means a growing company can run its people operation without stitching tools together. For a business at the stage where a spreadsheet and a shared drive have stopped coping, that consolidation is genuinely useful.

The free payroll tier is unusual and worth knowing about. For a small employer, being able to run compliant payroll at no software cost, then pay only when you want the managed or advanced options, is a real saving. HR Essentials starts at four pounds per employee per month with a monthly minimum.

The employee app is well built, and the benefits and financial wellbeing features give staff something visible, which helps adoption.

Where it falls short

All in one means good at many things rather than best at any one. A dedicated UK payroll specialist will handle awkward payroll cases better, and a dedicated HR system will go deeper on people analytics. You are trading peak capability for consolidation.

The per employee pricing with minimums adds up as you grow, and the various modules and tiers make the true monthly cost harder to work out than the headline per employee figure suggests. Price the exact configuration you need.

The Australian heritage means some workflows and terminology were built for another market first, though the UK localisation has improved.

The UK detail that matters

The UK payroll is RTI compliant with automatic enrolment, and the HR side handles UK statutory leave and right to work record keeping. Confirm the specifics of UK employment law features during a demo, since the platform serves several countries. Payroll is priced separately from HR, with a free tier, a core tier and a managed option.

Who should buy it

Growing UK companies that want HR, payroll and benefits from one supplier and value consolidation over peak depth in any single area. Businesses with complex payroll or serious HR analytics needs should compare against a dedicated payroll product and a dedicated HR system respectively.