93% on Tools, 7% on People: Deloitte's AI Warning for New Zealand and What It Means for Skilled Workers

News · 2026-09-16 · 4 min read

Deloitte has released its Tech Trends 2026 report for New Zealand, and its main finding is blunt. Local companies have plenty of AI tools. What they lack is a plan for the people who must work with them. Anyone building a workforce, not just a tech stack, should take note, and so should skilled workers watching the New Zealand job market.

The Split That Says Too Much

One figure sums it up: in New Zealand organisations, 93% of AI spending goes on technology and only 7% on people and skills. New Zealand is already stretched by an ageing workforce and ongoing labour shortages in the regions. In that setting, the ratio is more than lopsided. It warns that businesses are buying capability faster than they are developing it.

Stop Bolting On, Start Redesigning

Deloitte's Matt Dalton did not soften the message. He said the time for AI experiments is over. The edge now goes to organisations prepared to redesign how work is done, not those that simply attach a chatbot to an old process.

For HR leaders, workforce planners and mobility teams, that difference is huge. Adding a copilot to a legacy workflow does not make a team more capable. It only adds one more tool to a job description that has not changed. The report calls this “shallow adoption” and says it appears to be widespread. Worldwide, only about one in eight organisations has put agentic AI into real production. The rest are still running pilots that create activity but not value.

For a business focused on talent and migration, that is where the opportunity lies. The organisations that get ahead in 2026 will not be those holding the most licences. They will be the ones rethinking roles, retraining staff for higher-value work and finding the specialist skills needed to run mixed teams of people and automation.

When Machines Take the Routine Work

Deloitte describes 2026 as the year of the “hybrid human and silicon workforce”. AI systems and robots will take on more routine, repetitive or dangerous tasks, which frees people, or forces them, into jobs that need judgement, creativity and technical depth.

This links straight to recruitment and mobility. Automation is spreading into agriculture, utilities, infrastructure inspection and transport, the same areas where New Zealand's geography and spread-out population already make staffing hard. Demand for people will not fall there; it will change shape. Businesses will need:

Hands-on technical operators who can run and maintain autonomous systems, not only office staff who use AI
Specialists for regional, infrastructure-heavy sectors, where physical AI such as drones, autonomous inspection and remote robotics is growing fastest
Local staff upskilled into higher-value roles, backed by targeted recruitment from overseas where local skills gaps cannot be closed quickly enough

Dalton also spoke about young people building “capabilities”. That is more than a feel-good line about development. It signals that the skills pipeline, not the software licence, will decide which companies actually get value from AI.

Security Threats Need Skilled Hands

The report also notes that AI is making cyberattacks faster and more sophisticated. Automated tools now help criminals run phishing campaigns and probe for weak spots faster than human security teams can react. As more physical infrastructure, including aviation, healthcare and transport, comes to depend on digital systems, the cost of thin teams and under-skilled operators rises with it.

It comes back to the same point: technology without the right people running it is a liability, not an advantage.

A Small Market Cannot Afford to Get This Wrong

Deloitte's message is really about economics more than technology. In a small market with limited resources like New Zealand, a poor workforce and AI strategy is not a minor slip but a disadvantage that keeps growing. A good one is a real edge, exactly because so few competitors are doing the harder job of redesigning roles and rebuilding skills pipelines rather than just buying software.

For businesses wondering where their next technical, specialist or hard-to-find staff will come from, the 93/7 split is the number to remember. The tools are already bought. People who can run them well are what is genuinely in short supply.

Planning a Move? Read This Part

If you hope to work in New Zealand from South Africa in a technical or trade role, show what you can operate, maintain and improve, not only which tools you have used. Keep your qualifications and certified copies of your documents in order so you are ready when the right employer comes along.

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