Over the last 10 years, Employment Hero has seen momentous growth. Today, more than 1 million users across 200,000 companies globally rely on Employment Hero for anything and everything to do with HR, payroll, learning, recognition and benefits.
Having launched in 2014, Employment Hero’s exponential growth has been strengthened by its people—known as ‘heroes’—paired with the careful selection of supportive and integrative tools like Slack.
“Slack has been completely critical to our growth,” says Rosie Mitchener, Customer Marketing Manager at Employment Hero. “Being a remote-first company with teams and customers across the globe, Slack has enabled stronger communication and clearer workflows.”
Leveraging the power of a well-connected team
To say the last four years at Employment Hero have been busy would be an understatement. During this time, it has welcomed more than 650 heroes and transitioned its global workforce to a remote-first structure.
To ensure a great employee experience throughout, Employment Hero needed to be underpinned by a productivity platform that could enable seamless collaboration and drive its strong culture, wherever its employees are.
“As a remote-first company, we’re not able to see our colleagues every day, but we’ve been able to build great working relationships with Slack. So when we do meet up in person we feel like we really know one another,” says Mitchener.
By integrating Zapier and G2 directly into Slack, my team receives pings in real-time and can respond to requests and reviews straight away. It’s a win-win—the customer feels heard and I’m also saving time not having to manually check different apps
Bidding emails farewell
Slack is also an important tool for levelling out any organisational hierarchies, says Julia Merrick, Head of Brand and Content Marketing at Employment Hero.
“With more traditional or legacy software, senior leadership often appears inaccessible. By contrast, Slack allows for two-way communication,” she says.
“A senior leader will share an update and the team can respond in real-time or easily follow along with the conversation. Communication isn’t simply flowing down from the top via email.”
A well-connected team drives not only engagement but also productivity. Employment Hero leverages Slack Huddles—lightweight audio calls that allow for informal and reactive collaboration—meaning its employees have quick communication options. The team also loves Slack Clips—the ability to record and send audio or video clips for a convenient way to share information without needing to meet.
“We love a Slack Huddle. Instead of scheduling a 30-minute meeting, we can have a five-minute catch-up. That’s been an efficiency boost across the business,” says Merrick.
Slack also helps Employment Hero maintain its asynchronous culture.
“Part of building an asynchronous culture is removing old meetings that aren’t relevant anymore. If I have an update, I’ll either jump on a Huddle or film a Slack Clip so people can watch in their own time,” says Mitchener.
“For example, if we were launching a new pro
cess for our sales team, I don’t need to book out training time in their calendars—I can record a video that becomes a training module they can return to again and again,” she adds.
“I would estimate 95% of my communication is in Slack. I rarely use my emails anymore.”
Driving productivity with Slack Integrations
Slack’s functionalities, particularly Slack Integrations—the ability to integrate industry-leading software and custom apps right into Slack—have reduced costly context switching and distracted flows.
With teams working across multiple platforms and tools, Mitchener has found that being able to access the company’s day-to-day tech stack in one central location has been a major productivity boost—especially in her role in customer marketing.
“I’m not having to constantly check my emails or manually refresh a page to see if reviews have come in,” she says.
“By integrating Zapier and G2 directly into Slack, I receive pings in real-time and can respond to requests and reviews straight away. It’s a win-win—the customer feels heard and I’m also saving time not having to manually check different apps.”
Employees are also empowered to curate their choice of relevant (or entertaining) Slack Channels—flexible spaces for all the people, tools and files you need to get work done. Alongside managing their preferred notifications and workflow boundaries, Employment Hero staff can stay on top of their work, all in one place.
It’s these functionalities that make Slack the launch pad for Employment Hero’s workflows, says Merrick.
Take creative briefings. Employment Hero’s marketing team manages all its campaigns and projects on Asana. When someone has a new content or design request, they can simply head to Employment Hero’s #marketing-channel where all different kinds of request forms are pinned. Once an employee submits the form, Merrick receives a Slack notification that a new request has come through.
“I know immediately when things are coming through and I can take action quickly. From a productivity perspective, streamlining this process has saved me around two hours per week,” she says.
We love a Slack Huddle. Instead of scheduling a 30-minute meeting, we can have a five-minute catch-up. That’s been an efficiency boost across the business.
Set up for continued growth
With Slack’s intelligent solutions in place, Employment Hero’s teams are spending less time on administrative tasks or toggling between screens. This provides the organisation as a whole more capacity to drive forward.
“Our productivity has only benefited from having Slack within our team,” says Merrick.
