Employment Hero came to Canada seeking its next big opportunity. Already established in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia, the Australian HR software firm found its way into Canada by acquiring the country’s only real “incumbent” competitor, Toronto-based Humi, at the beginning of 2025.
Ben Thompson,
“Now our focus is just on Canada, Canadians, and Canadian small and medium-sized business owners,”
Employment Hero
While Employment Hero achieved milestone after milestone on a global scale in 2025, its newest market still needs some work: it needs more customers, more revenue, and it’s not yet profitable. But Canada is something CEO Ben Thompson is willing to invest in.
“We will continue investing in our brand, in our services, in this local market, and accumulating customers to the point where we get to that break-even point,” Thompson told BetaKit in an interview. “If that takes years, then that’s what we’ll do; it’s all about persistence.
Founded in 2016 as a cloud-based web app to store employee data, Humi supports small to medium-sized employers in managing HR, benefits, and payroll. Employment Hero offered many of the same HR features with the same target market, but with a five-year head start in the space.
Humi officially integrated with Employment Hero and launched its employment operating system in Canada in September, Humi co-founder and former CEO Kevin Kliman told BetaKit in a separate interview. The new leader of Employment Hero Canada called the turnaround “amazingly quick,” and Thompson said Employment Hero effectively rebuilt Humi in that time.
“We have a more mature offering,” Kliman said. “We have deeper and more features, so we’re a better fit for more companies across Canada, which is really awesome.”
Chasing more Canadian market share
Kliman specified that Humi (now Employment Hero) has a new learning management system, mobile app, and new scheduling and recruiting features. The refreshed product differs slightly in Québec, where it is still known as “Humi by Employment Hero” due to “unique compliance and operational concerns,” Thompson said.
The duo hopes these new features, as well as upcoming ones like earned wage access (which allows employees to get paid before payday), translate into bigger Canadian market share and thus make the country a more consequential line on its balance sheet.
“We’ve put a huge amount of time and effort into the UK business over the last … three or four years, and now our focus is just on Canada, Canadians, and Canadian small and medium-sized business owners,” Thompson said.
In October, Employment Hero said it reached $300 million Australian Dollars ($275 million CAD) in global annual recurring revenue (ARR), achieved profitability, and is on track to deliver its first full earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA)-positive year. The “vast majority” of its revenue growth this year, $30 million Australian Dollars, is organic, according to Thompson.
Image courtesy Employment Hero.
Meanwhile, Employment Hero Canada serves more than 4,000 of the entire company’s 350,000 business customers and is not profitable on its own, according to Kliman. Kliman said he’s gearing Employment Hero to grow into a $100-million business in Canada by improving the product and expanding its team.
“The more value we can offer to companies, the faster we’re going to be able to grow and the more value we’re going to be able to produce in-region,” Kliman said. Thompson agreed, explaining that software as a service (SaaS) businesses like Employment Hero need a lot of small business customers before they can reach profitability.
RELATED: Humi acquired by Australian HR software company Employment Hero
“You’re trying to make your product as cheap as possible, as affordable as possible, for small businesses, they don’t have a huge capacity to pay,” Thompson said. “That model is something that we’re obviously very familiar with, and you get to a certain point where you break through that and you get to profitability.”
While Employment Hero said it didn’t have any country-specific figures to share, the company’s milestone growth is roughly reflected in Canada. Kliman and Thompson said the company is growing roughly 30 percent across the board, including in headcount and revenue.
“Canadians with funny accents”
Alongside pursuing profitability and growth, Kliman said that not much has changed on the company level since being acquired, other than more evening meetings to sync up with the Australian timezone, working “a bit faster,” and picking up some of the parent company’s “successful habits.”
“It’s really nice, Australians truly feel like Canadians with funny accents,” Kliman said. “The teams are very well aligned.”
When informed of his subordinate’s comments, Thompson riposted that “Canadians feel like Australians with funny accents.”
“There’s just so much common about all those Commonwealth countries,” Thompson said. “Every time I’ve spent time in Canada, it feels a bit like home … we have a lot more in common than we have that separates us.”
Employment Hero’s culture has been a subject of public scrutiny. In October 2024, Australian publication Capital Brief reported that Thompson faced criticism from women leaders in Australia’s startup scene for a post made on X that made light of sexual misconduct allegations against WiseTech CEO Richard White, which Thompson downplayed as a “bad dad joke.”
In the following months, Capital Brief reported numerous stories on Employment Hero’s allegedly toxic workplace culture, including a rowdy offsite that resulted in employee terminations, multiple former employees describing the company as a “vile workplace” ruled by a “fear culture,” and internal complaints of abrupt strategy changes.
When asked about Capital Brief’s reporting, Thompson stood behind his company and said he is “immensely proud” of its culture. He said that any business of Employment Hero’s scale, with more than 1,700 employees, would result in “one or two” who leave disgruntled.
“In 2020, we only had 180 employees; the vast majority of those employees that were there at the time are still with us,” Thompson said. “We have a culture that people want to be a part of.”
When asked if Employment Hero had instituted any workplace culture policies following the reports, Thompson cited “the EH way,” which describes the company as mission-first, remote-first, and AI-first.
“We’re very deliberate about working on making employment easier and more valuable for everyone,” Thompson said, adding that remote-first work is more inclusive, flexible, and gives people greater autonomy and trust.
“Culture shock” after takeover
Kliman may have said not much changed at Humi following the Employment Hero takeover, but Capital Brief reported that employees felt culture shock within weeks of the acquisition closing. According to the report, Employment Hero quickly eliminated established Humi benefits, including a 4.5-day work week policy, and employees felt uneasy about the new parent’s “perk-free” workplace philosophy and high-performance management style.
“I believe in doing hard work to get results and I think that’s part of our culture.”
Thompson admitted Employment Hero had to “normalize some conditions” at Humi, saying that, as a global business trying to be inclusive and treat everyone as equals, everyone has to be on the same terms. Thompson added that he’s “happy to put on record” that he believes you have to “work harder and potentially longer to achieve things.”
“I don’t think any gold medalist has ever won a gold medal by doing less training,” Thompson said. “I believe in doing hard work to get results and I think that’s part of our culture.”
While the global power of Employment Hero flowed into Canada through Humi, it wasn’t a one-way street. Healthcare and superannuation (pension), and benefits are all either government-funded or fall back on the employee in Australia, Thompson explained, making Canada a market to learn in as much as it is to grow in.
“We’ve learned a lot about benefits delivery at scale through the Canadian market, and that’s something we can leverage and take into other markets as well,” Thompson said.
Feature image courtesy Humi.