Reguladar vs Employment Hero: Which Is Right for Your Business?

Employment Hero is one of the most popular HR and people management platforms in Australia, and for good reason — it handles a lot of the administrative burden of managing employees. But employers who assume Employment Hero handles their full compliance picture are missing something important.

This article explains what Employment Hero does well, what it doesn't cover, and where Reguladar fills the gap. For broader context, see our compliance management software comparison.

What Employment Hero Does

Employment Hero is an HR platform. Its core capabilities include:

• Onboarding workflows — digital paperwork for new starters, document collection
• Employment contracts — templates and electronic signatures
• Payroll — integrated payroll processing with some award interpretation
• Leave management — accruals, balances, leave requests
• Performance management — reviews, goals, feedback
• Learning management — training tracking and delivery
• HR policy storage — a repository for your employment policies

Employment Hero is genuinely useful for the administrative side of managing employees. If your business has grown to the point where HR administration is taking up significant time, Employment Hero can automate much of it.

What Employment Hero Doesn't Do

Employment Hero is an HR platform. It doesn't:

Monitor regulatory changes that affect your compliance

Award rates change every 1 July. The Fair Work Act is amended. New WHS regulations are introduced. Privacy Act reforms take effect. Employment Hero does not monitor these changes and proactively alert you to update your practices.

If the Restaurant Industry Award increases wages on 1 July and you don't update your payroll, Employment Hero doesn't tell you that you're now underpaying your staff. It processes payroll based on what you've set it up to do.

Cover WHS compliance

Employment Hero has some HR-adjacent WHS features (training records, document storage), but it doesn't:

• Identify WHS hazards specific to your industry
• Track WHS regulatory obligations and their due dates
• Alert you to new WHS regulations (like psychosocial hazard requirements)
• Help you prepare for WHS audits

Cover licensing and registration compliance

Liquor licence renewal, building licence renewal, AFSL annual requirements, AHPRA registration — Employment Hero doesn't track any of these.

Cover tax obligations

BAS deadlines, super guarantee compliance, TPAR lodgement — not in Employment Hero's scope.

Provide a cross-domain compliance view

Most critically: Employment Hero doesn't give you a view of your complete compliance picture. It manages HR processes, but compliance involves much more than HR.

The Risk of HR Platform Overconfidence

A pattern we see with businesses that use HR platforms is a kind of compliance overconfidence — the sense that because you have a system, you're covered. Employment Hero manages your employment contracts, leave, and payroll, so surely you're compliant with employment law?

Not necessarily. Having employment contracts is not the same as having compliant employment contracts. Having a payroll system is not the same as paying the correct award rates. Having leave management doesn't guarantee your leave loading is correct.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has taken enforcement action against businesses using modern HR software that wasn't configured correctly for the applicable award. The tool is only as good as its configuration — and the configuration requires knowing what the award actually requires.

Where Reguladar Fits

Reguladar is not an HR platform. It's a compliance monitoring and management platform. The key distinction:

• Employment Hero tells you how to manage your people administratively
• Reguladar tells you what compliance obligations apply to your business and when they're due

Specifically:

• When the Annual Wage Review increases award rates on 1 July, Reguladar alerts you to update your payroll (you then go into Employment Hero to make the change)
• When the payday super transition approaches, Reguladar tells you what you need to prepare (and you then work with your payroll provider to implement it)
• When a psychosocial hazard WHS regulation takes effect, Reguladar flags the new obligation and explains what you need to do
• When your liquor licence renewal is 60 days away, Reguladar reminds you

Reguladar doesn't do the work that Employment Hero does. It does the work that Employment Hero doesn't do — tracking the regulatory landscape and making sure you know what's required of your business.

A Practical Scenario

A Melbourne café with 12 staff uses Employment Hero for HR administration. On 1 July 2026:

• The Annual Wage Review increases Restaurant Industry Award rates by 3.5%
• Payday super commences, requiring super to be paid with every pay run
• A new WHS regulation on managing fatigue in shift workers takes effect

Without Reguladar: The owner might not know about any of these changes until a bookkeeper catches the wage issue, an employee complains about missing super, or a WHS inspector issues an improvement notice.

With Reguladar: The owner receives alerts about all three changes weeks in advance, with guidance on what to do. They go into Employment Hero and update the payroll rates. They work with their payroll provider to activate payday super. They review their WHS procedures for fatigue management.

The work gets done in the right place. Reguladar just makes sure you know it needs to be done.

Do You Need Both?

For businesses that have Employment Hero and are getting value from it: yes, the tools are complementary. Employment Hero manages your people administration. Reguladar monitors your regulatory obligations.

For businesses considering Employment Hero but not yet on it: consider whether your primary problem is HR administration or compliance visibility. If you're a 5-person business and the main risk is not knowing about compliance obligations, Reguladar addresses that problem directly. Employment Hero is more valuable as the HR administration burden grows.

How Reguladar Helps

Reguladar gives Australian small business owners a personalised compliance dashboard showing all their obligations across employment, tax, WHS, privacy, and licensing — in one place, with proactive alerts.

Start your free compliance check at Reguladar →

This comparison is based on publicly available information. Product features change — verify current capabilities directly with providers.

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• Reguladar vs Lawpath: Which Compliance Tool Is Right for Your Business?
• Compliance Management Software for Australian Small Businesses: A Comparison
• The Small Business Compliance Checklist: Every Obligation in One Place