Employment Hero AI Unlocks New Employment Model For Kiwi SMEs, TargetingNZ’s Complex & Costly Compliance Burden

Auckland, New Zealand - 22 April 2026 - A new employment model enabling businesses to hire, employ, and manage staff is designed to overcome New Zealand’s complex and costly compliance landscape, especially for small and medium businesses.

Employment Hero's AI-powered platform HeroForce launched today in New Zealand as part of a global rollout across Australia, Canada and the UK, targeting what the company estimates to be $12 billion(1) in duplicate employment administration costs to businesses.

New Zealand businesses face one of the most cumbersome compliance landscapes in the world, with issues surrounding the Holidays Act alone triggering hundreds of millions of dollars in remediation over the past decade. The kicker: generally, businesses manage compliance individually and largely manually, which adds significant cost.

But now, Employment Hero has combined their end-to-end employment infrastructure with their suite of AI employment agents (Hero AI) to centralise and manage employment complexity at global scale for the first time.

HeroForce is an AI-enabled evolution of co-employment models, which offers a new choice for New Zealand businesses where Employment Hero becomes the legal employer, managing recruitment, payroll, compliance and HR administration, while businesses retain full operational control of their workforce and culture.

While successful internationally, a local model has been previously unworkable at scale in New Zealand due to the structural complexity of the national system, making it too costly to manage. Now AI can automate everyday compliance and admin, making this traditional model even more cost-effective.

CEO and Co-Founder, Ben Thompson, says HeroForce will overcome the significant structural barriers holding Kiwi employers and employees back.

“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.”

The scale of New Zealand's compliance burden on small businesses is significant and growing. The Holidays Act 2003 remains one of the most complex pieces of employment legislation in the developed world. The regulatory burden is continuing to grow, with wage theft now a criminal offence and minimum wage and KiwiSaver contributions increasing, adding further administrative obligations for employers.

Employment Hero’s Hero AI can interpret compliance documents, develop rosters, automate payroll calculations and monitor compliance obligations across thousands of employment relationships simultaneously.

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

Employment Hero General Manager NZ, Neil Webster, says New Zealand businesses are facing a perfect storm of economic conditions: grappling with a national productivity crisis, slow economic growth, and increasing cost pressures across almost all areas.

Webster says artificial intelligence is now making it possible to relieve this growing pressure for employers and providing a better experience for employees.

“Running a business in New Zealand increasingly means becoming an expert in payroll, HR, the Holidays Act and KiwiSaver,” Mr Webster said.

“HeroForce is about letting employers get back to running their business and doing what they love, instead of poring over employment legislation, which will ultimately benefit Kiwi workers as well as businesses. A solution like HeroForce offers SMEs a chance to transform the way they employ their teams and how they run their business.”

Thompson noted the significant opportunity for the New Zealand economy.

“By removing the friction that prevents employment, employment becomes cheaper and simpler and as decades of historical evidence tell us, businesses will employ more people to build more, serve more, expand into new areas. Every hour reclaimed from repetitive administration is an hour redirected to work that actually grows economies,” Thompson said.

Analysis of Professional Employer Organisations (PEO) in the US shows user organisations have twice the growth rate of comparable companies, have 12 per cent lower employee turnover and are 50 per cent less likely to go out of business(2). Organisations report an average 27.2 per cent return on investment, with a 3–5 per cent service fee unlocking enterprise-level, fully-managed employment.

Workers engaged through the HeroForce platform are employees under formal employment contracts and retain full protections, including award wages, KiwiSaver contributions, leave and workers’ compensation.

“It’s been designed to operate fully within New Zealand’s regulatory framework and is a direct response to the country’s employment compliance crisis that continues to impact SMEs especially.”

HeroForce is now available for New Zealand businesses. Employment Hero is making HeroForce available in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Canada, bringing the same AI-powered efficiency to these high-complexity markets on its mission to make employment easier and more valuable for everyone on earth.

For more information, visit employmenthero.com/nz/products/heroforce.

About Employment Hero

Employment Hero is the global authority on employment, offering a world-leading Employment Operating System (eOS) that simplifies and optimises every stage of the employment process. Its award-winning platform combines HR, payroll, recruitment, and employee engagement tools with the groundbreaking employment superapp, EH Work, which integrates career management and financial wellbeing. Serving over 350,000 businesses and managing more than 2.5 million employees worldwide, Employment Hero reduces administrative burdens by up to 80%, enabling organisations to focus on their goals and create more productive, engaged teams. By revolutionising the employment marketplace, Employment Hero is making employment easier, more valuable, and rewarding for everyone.

About HeroForce

HeroForce is Employment Hero's employment fully-managed employment service. Under the HeroForce model, Employment Hero becomes the legal employer of workers engaged to perform work for a client business, assuming responsibility for payroll, award interpretation, superannuation contributions, workers' compensation, and employment compliance. Client businesses retain full operational control, directing who is hired, how the work is performed, and how long the engagement lasts.

Workers employed through HeroForce hold formal employment contracts and retain all entitlements and protections, including award wages, superannuation, leave, workers' compensation, and the right to union representation. HeroForce operates fully within New Zealand’s existing regulatory framework, including relevant labour hire licensing requirements. HeroForce is now available in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and coming to Canada.

References

(1)Employment Hero (2026) Internal platform data and modelling on employment administration and compliance costs, based on 350,000 businesses and $140 billion in payroll processed. Sydney: Employment Hero

(2)McBassi & Company (2014) Leveraging HR and Knowledge Management in a Challenging Economy, cited in National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), PEO Industry Research](https://www.napeo.org)

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