About Us
Introduction
People in Payroll was founded on a simple belief — that Payroll, HRIS, and Governance deserve a recruitment partner who genuinely understands them.
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With a background in recruitment since 2017 and an exclusive focus on Payroll, HRIS and Governance since 2023, we bring six years of deep specialist knowledge to every engagement. This isn't a niche we stumbled into. It's the space we chose deliberately because we understood how complex, high-stakes, and underserved it was.
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Over the years we've had the privilege of partnering with some of Australia's largest and most respected organisations — ASX-listed companies, major financial institutions, healthcare providers, and government bodies — across their most critical people challenges.
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What we've delivered:
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HRIS Implementation Leadership: Partnered with large enterprise organisations to identify and place the senior leaders and specialists who drive complex system implementations across Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, UKG, Dayforce, and Oracle HCM.
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Royal Commission & Governance Support: Guided senior leaders and boards through royal commissions and high-level inquiries addressing wage theft and governance failures — engagements that required deep expertise, absolute discretion, and genuine trust.
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Payroll Remediation & Compliance: Supported organisations through payroll audits, underpayment remediations, and compliance initiatives covering unpaid wages, superannuation, payroll tax, and industrial instrument interpretation.
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Executive & Senior Placements: Placed senior payroll and HRIS leaders in some of Australia's most trusted organisations — people who went on to lead transformations, build high-performing teams, and deliver lasting change.
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High-Pressure Project Support: Worked alongside organisations on sensitive, time-critical projects where professionalism and discretion weren't optional — they were the baseline.
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At People in Payroll we're here for the professionals who make sure Australia's workforce gets paid accurately and on time — and for the organisations that understand how critical that function really is.
Our Vision
Payroll, HRIS and Governance are three of the most critical and complex functions in any organisation. When they work well, nobody notices. When they don't, the consequences are immediate, expensive, and very public.
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Our vision is straightforward — to be the most trusted specialist recruitment partner in this space across Australia. Not the biggest. The most trusted.
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That means giving clients honest advice even when it's not what they want to hear. It means knowing the market deeply enough to tell you what's realistic and what isn't. It means handling sensitive engagements — remediations, governance failures, executive transitions — with the discretion and professionalism they demand.
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And it means genuinely caring about the professionals we place.
The payroll and HRIS specialists who show up every day to make sure Australia's workforce gets paid accurately and on time deserve a recruiter who understands what they do and respects how hard they do it.
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That's what we're here for.
Our Method
Finding the right Payroll, HRIS or Governance specialist isn't a database exercise. The best people in this space are rarely actively looking — they're heads down delivering complex projects, leading transformations, or managing functions that can't afford disruption.
Finding them requires a different approach.
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How we work:
Retained Search & Executive Headhunting For senior and specialist roles we run a fully retained search process — systematic market mapping, direct outreach to every viable candidate in the market, and structured assessment against your specific criteria. You get a written shortlist of assessed candidates, not a pile of CVs. Every retained search includes a 12-month replacement guarantee.
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National Contractor & Interim Desk
We maintain an active national network of pre-qualified Payroll Specialists, HRIS Functional Analysts, and HR Business Analysts available for contract and interim engagements. When you need specialist capability quickly — for a go-live, a remediation, or a leave vacancy — we move fast with people we already know and trust.
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Market Intelligence & Passive Talent
Six years of exclusive focus means we know this market deeply. We have direct relationships with senior payroll and HRIS professionals across Australia — people who aren't on job boards and won't respond to a generic agency message. They take our calls because we've built genuine relationships over time.
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Referral Network
The best candidates come from the best networks. Our referral relationships with placed candidates and long-term clients give us access to proven professionals that no database can replicate.
We don't send CVs and hope for the best. We find the right person, assess them properly, and stand behind the outcome.
