Compliance, GRC & HR Blog

Quick Answer: Happy HR is a genuinely Australian, founder-led platform built for small business, which is its strength and its limit. Businesses that grow, or that need deeper compliance, governance or analytics than a deliberately simple tool provides, often look for something with more room to scale. The alternatives worth comparing are Sentrient, Employment Hero, […]

Quick Answer: Rippling is a powerful US platform that unifies HR, IT and finance, but it is built and priced for the US market, its breadth is far more than many businesses need, and its Australian payroll and compliance depth need checking against local obligations. For Australian businesses that want a right-sized platform with native […]

Quick Answer: BrightHR pairs HR software with employment-relations advice, which is useful, but its heritage is UK employment law adapted for Australia, it sits within the Peninsula Group alongside Employsure, and the advice-bundled model suits some businesses more than others. For businesses that want Australian-built compliance and HR without the UK lineage, the alternatives worth […]

Quick Answer: HiBob (Bob) is a polished, modern HR platform strong on culture and people analytics, but it is a global company headquartered in London, it was built for multi-country teams rather than Australian compliance, and its native payroll arrived through acquisition rather than local design. For Australian businesses that want local compliance, awards and […]

Quick Answer: ELMO Software is a strong mid-market HR and payroll suite, but it is sized and priced for larger organisations, its pricing is quote-only with custom setup fees, and since February 2023 it has been owned by US private equity firm K1 Investment Management, which took it private in an A$486 million deal and […]

Quick Overview: A spreadsheet is fine for tracking leave in a very small team with simple entitlements, but a dedicated leave management system wins once you have more than a handful of staff, several leave types, approval steps, or accrual balances to keep accurate. Make the switch when the spreadsheet starts causing errors, version confusion, […]

Quick Answer: An employee self-service (ESS) portal is a secure online space where staff manage their own HR tasks: viewing pay slips, updating personal details, requesting leave, reading and acknowledging policies, and completing training. The features that matter most are the ones people use every day without thinking, leave, pay slips, personal details, policy acknowledgement […]

Quick Answer: Digitising new employee forms means replacing the paper new-starter pack with online forms and a single digital record. In Australia that pack includes the tax file number declaration, a superannuation standard choice form, bank and personal details, and the mandatory Fair Work Information Statement, plus the Casual Employment Information Statement for casuals. Done […]

Quick Overview: Most Australian businesses under a few hundred people do not need a dedicated 360 degree feedback system. They need 360 degree feedback as a feature inside the performance system they already have, used for development only, and never tied to pay. In this article The Short Answer What 360 Degree Feedback Actually Is […]

Quick Answer: An HR compliance audit is a structured check that your people practices meet Australian legal obligations. Working area by area, you confirm that pay and superannuation are correct, records are kept for the required seven years, employees received the mandatory statements, policies are acknowledged, safety is managed, and training is current. For each […]