From HR to Payroll, Automatically: How Organisations Are Syncing Workday and Employment Hero Payroll

Most organisations we talk to that run Workday alongside a local Australian payroll engine don’t have a systems problem. They have a gap problem.

Workday runs the people. It’s the system of record for the whole employee lifecycle — hire, change, leave, terminate — and often the global standard across the group. Employment Hero Payroll runs the pay. It knows the super rules, the awards, what the ATO expects and when payslips have to be delivered. Both systems do their job well. The trouble sits in the space between them, where someone has to take what happened in one and get it correctly into the other, every single pay cycle.

That’s what our recent webinar covered: the SyncEzy integration that closes the gap, presented by Mark Bubner from our implementation team. This is the written version — useful if you’d rather read than watch, or if you want something to send to whoever actually runs your payroll.

▶ Watch the full webinar on demand (includes a demo of the integration portal)

The problems we hear most

Four things come up almost every time we talk to an organisation running both systems.

1. Leave and employee details are being manually transferred from one system to the other. The data already exists, accurately, in Workday. Someone re-types it anyway.

2. Employee details are out of sync between the two systems. And when they don’t match, someone has to work out which record is the truth before the pay run can proceed.

3. The team wants to manage the entire employee lifecycle in Workday. Instead they’re running a hybrid, with some processes in the HR system and some in payroll, and the seams show every cycle.

4. There’s no single source of truth for employee data. Which is really the first three problems wearing a trench coat.

None of these is dramatic on its own. Together they’re the reason this integration exists.

Why a local payroll engine at all?

If you’ve standardised on Workday globally, it’s fair to ask why Australian payroll needs its own system. The short answer Mark gave on the day: payroll never stands still here.

Super rules keep changing. Real-time ATO reporting obligations like payday super keep tightening. Award structures are their own discipline. Payslips have to be provided within one working day of payment. Getting it wrong is costly — serious breaches attract serious fines.

Employment Hero Payroll exists to keep abreast of all of that, so you don’t have to implement every legislative change yourself. The integration’s job is different: making sure the data feeding that engine is complete and current, and that what comes out of it gets back to your people. A global HR system for your global workforce, a purpose-built Australian payroll engine for your Australian staff, and no manual bridge between them.

How the workflow runs

The design principle is simple: Workday is the primary point of truth, and your team does all the work there — or as much as possible.

Onboarding. A new starter comes on board through Workday as normal. Once their profile is saved as complete, the integration picks it up and creates the employee record in Employment Hero Payroll, with all the relevant information carried across. By the time the first pay run comes around, payroll already has them.

The pay cycle. Timesheets captured in Workday flow through for the pay run in Employment Hero Payroll. Once the pay run has been completed and payslips are published, we pick them up and deliver them back into Workday against the right worker record — so staff receive their payslip within the legislated timeframe, in the system they already use.

Changes. When staff update their details — a new bank account, a change of super provider — they do it in Workday, and the change flows through to payroll so the next run calculates on the right data.

Offboarding. When a termination is processed in Workday, it flows through to Employment Hero Payroll and feeds the final pay run.

In data-flow terms: employees, timesheets and leave flow from Workday into Employment Hero Payroll; payslips and leave balances flow back.

What that gives you

• Employee data sync — the details in one system match the details in the other, without reconciliation.
• New hire automation — complete the profile in Workday, and the employee exists in payroll.
• Termination and offboarding sync — final pays are fed automatically, not by a hallway reminder.
• Custom field mapping — if there are things set up in Workday that your payroll depends on, they can flow through to the matching fields in Employment Hero Payroll.
• Scheduled synchronisation — the sync runs at defined intervals, so everything stays current without anyone manually firing it off.

What setup looks like

When you come on board, you get access to the integrations.syncezy.com portal. That’s where the connection between your Workday tenant and your Employment Hero Payroll account is authenticated, and where the configuration lives: settings, work pairing and leave category mapping — making sure the data you enter in Workday syncs to the right field in payroll. It’s a standard exercise for us, and we do it with you.

One thing worth knowing: your end users never touch the portal. It’s purely administrative. You can give access to as many staff as you like, but a handful is typically plenty. Your workers just log into Workday, manage their information there, and find their payslips there after each run. One place to go.

The go-live safety net is a ghost pay run: before anything touches real money, we bring the hours through and run a pay run against them, so you can see exactly where everything lands. As part of setup we sit down with you, map the different elements — including things like pay splits across bank accounts and super splits, both of which Employment Hero Payroll supports — and confirm it all behaves before your first real run.

After that, it’s set and forget. If you make organisational changes down the track and need to revisit the configuration, we’re available to help — that’s part of the red carpet onboarding and account management that comes with the integration.

Security and support

Staff information is about as sensitive as data gets, so the integration has to meet the same bar as the systems on either side of it. SyncEzy holds CASA certification and is SOC 2 Type II certified, and we keep those current as the protocols evolve.

Support runs 24/5 — from start of business Monday in New Zealand through to close of business Friday in the US, we’re open 24 hours a day. Payroll is time-critical in a way most systems aren’t, so if something looks wrong before a run needs to finalise, there’s someone to call.

Questions from the session

How quickly do payslips land back in Workday?

As soon as they’re published in Employment Hero after the pay run, we pick them up and deliver them into Workday. Generally they’re available the next day — sometimes the same afternoon, depending on what time of day the run is processed.

Can we handle pay splits across bank accounts, and super splits?

Yes. Employment Hero Payroll supports both. During setup we map your specific arrangement and confirm it in the ghost pay run.

When does a new starter sync across?
Once their Workday profile is saved as complete. Draft profiles don’t move — but as soon as the mandatory fields are done and the profile is complete, the integration picks it up and creates the employee in payroll.

How long does implementation take?
The connection itself takes about 15 minutes; the main dependency is having someone with admin access to both systems in the room. From there it’s usually two or three meetings of 45 minutes to an hour to pair the data points, then the ghost pay run. If you’re already established on Employment Hero Payroll, the whole thing typically runs about a week. If you’re new to Employment Hero, their setup process happens first, and we complete our part around it.

Watch the recording

The recording walks through everything above, including the portal demo and the live Q&A:

▶ Watch the replay

If you’d rather talk to someone about how this would work for your organisation — including pricing for your specific setup — a short call is the fastest path: