Beyond payroll and compliance, HR leaders are being urged to treat EOFY as a chance to realign people strategy with the business
As Australian organisations close out the 2025–26 financial year, HR teams are under familiar pressure: finalise budgets, lock in workforce plans, and clear the administrative backlog. But according to one HR leader and judge at this year’s HR Awards, that framing sells the period short.
"EOFY is not just about closing out the year, it is an opportunity to reflect, reset, and shape what comes next together," said Amit Pahuja, head of people at Perpetual Private.
Pahuja's view – that EOFY should function as a deliberate strategic checkpoint rather than a compliance sprint – comes as HR teams also navigate a sharper-edged risk that surfaces every June: a seasonal spike in tax fraud and misreported expenses, much of it tied to deductions claimed by employees and contractors.
Avinash Singh, principal lawyer at Astor Legal, says EOFY consistently produces the year's highest concentration of fraudulent or inflated claims.
Why EOFY sharpens both opportunity and risk
For HR, EOFY has traditionally meant budgets, headcount planning and finalising single touch payroll (STP) declarations to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Pahuja says that focus on performance, cost discipline and execution is necessary, but incomplete.
"It is also a moment for personal reset. As we move into a new year, many reflect on their professional and personal goals. Teams reconnect, celebrate key milestones, and align on what success looks like ahead. At the same time, there is often an uplift in leave, as people take the opportunity to rest and reconnect with family and friends. This is something we actively encourage as part of building a sustainable and healthy culture," said Pahuja.
That dual focus – disciplined execution alongside genuine reflection – is, in Pahuja's view, what separates organisations that use EOFY well from those that merely survive it. He points to the role HR plays in connecting financial decisions to the human ones sitting behind them.
"Our role in HR is to work closely with Divisional Leads, the CFO and CTO along with the CEO to ensure direction is clear, consistent, and meaningful, so our teams feel connected to where we are heading. This includes structural elements such as budgets, workforce planning, and FTE decisions, alongside a broader focus on positioning the business for long-term success," Pahuja added.
The compliance risk HR can't ignore
While Pahuja's focus is strategic, Singh's perspective is a reminder that EOFY also concentrates genuine legal and financial risk – much of which intersects with workplace policy and employee conduct. Singh, who specialises in criminal defence relating to tax fraud, says the most common offence he sees is straightforward.
"The most common way individuals or small businesses illegally reduce their tax liabilities is by claiming certain expenses as business-related deductions when they are in fact for personal use," Singh said.
He noted the ATO has shifted from random audits toward pattern-based detection. "The ATO has become more aggressive and sophisticated in detecting tax fraud in recent years by focusing more on patterns that are consistent with tax fraud rather than random audits," he said.
Singh added that businesses claiming deductions well above their industry's average – relative to gross income – are increasingly likely to trigger a compliance flag.
Singh also flagged a rising threat that HR and finance teams should be alert to communicating clearly to staff: phishing scams impersonating the ATO.
"These scams often hold themselves out as the ATO and claim there are outstanding payments owed by their target. Often, these scammers will use emails very similar to official government email addresses, and their emails will bear the ATO's logos and signatures, which results in less discerning individuals being caught out," he explained.
For HR teams, the practical takeaway isn't legal advice – it's ensuring expense policies are unambiguous, documentation expectations are communicated early, and employees know how to verify a genuine ATO communication before acting on it.
A bigger compliance shift lands alongside this EOFY
Adding to the administrative load this year is a structural change to how employers handle superannuation. From tomorrow (1 July), Australia's Payday Super reforms move superannuation guarantee payments from a quarterly cycle to a same-payday obligation, with contributions required to reach an employee's nominated fund within seven business days.
The Australian Taxation Office has confirmed the measure is now law, replacing a system that allowed super to sit unpaid in employer accounts for up to four months at a time.
The change carries real consequences for HR and payroll functions specifically. Employers will need payroll systems capable of calculating super on each pay cycle rather than quarterly, and the long-used Small Business Superannuation Clearing House closes permanently today (30 June), forcing many smaller employers onto new SuperStream-compliant providers.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has also confirmed that late superannuation payments may now intersect with obligations under the Fair Work Act, given super is regulated under the National Employment Standards.
For HR leaders, this is a clear case where EOFY planning and forward workforce planning collide: get payroll and finance teams aligned on Payday Super readiness now, well before the new pay cycle obligations begin.
Treating EOFY as a platform for the next 12 months
Pahuja's broader argument is that the structural and compliance work of EOFY should feed into, not distract from, longer-term capability building. He says the conversation in HR circles increasingly extends to how technology and artificial intelligence are reshaping the function itself.
"We are seeing significant change across the industry through technology and AI. Our focus is not just on adopting new tools, but on ensuring these changes genuinely simplify work, enhance productivity, and support our people to perform at their best," Pahuja said.
That lens – using EOFY as a checkpoint for both compliance and capability – is also shaping how Pahuja is approaching his role on this year's HRD Awards judging panel.
"I will be looking for organisations and individuals who have driven meaningful, practical change, particularly where innovation and strong business partnership have made a real difference," he said.
"Having started my career in HR Business Partnering, I have seen firsthand the impact of working alongside leaders to shape decisions, influence outcomes, and support teams through periods of change."
For HR teams navigating the next month, the message from both interviews is consistent in spirit if different in focus: get the compliance fundamentals locked down early, so there's genuine space left to do the reflective, forward-looking work that defines HR's role in shaping what comes next.
That means treating workforce planning as an integrated digital and human capability exercise, getting ahead of the compliance pressures already building across Australian payroll teams, and using EOFY as the trigger point for both.
Pahuja is one of the many judges helping to determine the winners at the 2026 HR Awards. To learn more about the 2026 HR Awards judging panel, click here.
