Deloitte Report: New Zealand Firms Spend on AI Software, Not on the Workers Behind It

News · 2026-09-16 · 4 min read

Straight to the figure that matters. Among New Zealand organisations, 93% of AI spending is directed at technology, and a mere 7% at people and skills. That finding comes from Deloitte's newly released Tech Trends 2026 report for New Zealand. If you are a skilled worker weighing up opportunities abroad, it says a lot about where the real shortage lies.

Plainly put, New Zealand businesses have no lack of AI tools. What they lack is a plan for the human beings who must work with those tools. Add the country's ageing workforce and the labour shortages its regions keep facing, and the 93/7 ratio reads as a warning: firms are acquiring capability much faster than they are developing it.

Deloitte's Verdict on “Shallow Adoption”

Deloitte's Matt Dalton was blunt. As he sees it, the season of trying out AI is finished. The organisations now gaining ground are those ready to redesign the way work gets done, not those that fix a chatbot onto an old process and call it progress.

The report calls the second approach “shallow adoption.” Put a copilot inside a legacy workflow and the job description does not change; the team just gets another tool. The report suggests this is widespread. Globally, only about one in eight organisations has moved agentic AI into real production. The remainder are still running pilots that generate a lot of activity and very little value.

HR leaders, workforce planners and mobility teams should take note. In the author's reading, success in 2026 will not come from owning the most licences. It will come from reworking job roles, retraining staff for more valuable work, and sourcing the specialised skills required to manage mixed teams of humans and automated systems.

The Skills Employers Will Actually Pay Attention To

Deloitte labels 2026 the year of the “hybrid human and silicon workforce.” AI systems and robotics are absorbing more and more of the routine, repetitive or hazardous work. People are being moved, sometimes willingly and sometimes not, into positions demanding judgment, creativity and solid technical depth.

This affects recruitment and mobility directly. Automation is entering agriculture, utilities, infrastructure inspection and transport. In those fields, New Zealand's geography and thinly spread population already make staffing hard. The requirement for workers does not disappear in that picture. What changes is the kind of worker required, namely:

Technical operators capable of managing and servicing autonomous systems, rather than people who only use AI at a desk
Specialists in regional and infrastructure-heavy sectors, which is where physical AI (drones, autonomous inspection, remote robotics) is expanding fastest
Domestic talent retrained for higher-value roles, backed by targeted international recruitment wherever local skills gaps cannot be closed in time

When Dalton speaks of young people building “capabilities,” do not dismiss it as a slogan. It signals that the skills pipeline, not the software licence, is what will decide which firms actually capture value from AI.

Cybercrime Is Moving Faster Too

There is another warning in the report. AI is speeding up cyberattacks and making them more sophisticated. Criminals now use automated tools to run phishing campaigns and probe for weaknesses quicker than human security teams can respond. Aviation, healthcare, transport and other physical infrastructure are becoming more digitally dependent, so the cost of under-resourced teams and under-skilled operators rises in step.

The conclusion is the same as before. Technology with the wrong people behind it is a liability, not an asset.

Why This Is an Economic Issue, Not Just a Tech One

Deloitte's argument is really about economics more than gadgets. In a small, resource-constrained market like New Zealand, a poor workforce and AI strategy is not a one-off mistake; it compounds. A sound one gives a genuine edge, precisely because few competitors bother with the harder job of redesigning roles and rebuilding skills pipelines instead of just buying software.

For any business asking where its next technical, specialist or hard-to-find talent will come from, the 93/7 split is the number to remember. The tools are being bought already. Capable people to run them are what is scarce.

The Practical Lesson for Job Seekers

If you have technical or specialist skills, the message is clear: real, provable ability is what this report describes as scarce, so keep your certificates and work references solid and up to date. And as you explore openings in New Zealand or anywhere else, deal only with verified employers. A genuine employer will never ask you to pay for a job offer.

#new zealand ai trends 2026 #ai workforce strategy nz #hybrid human and silicon workforce #ai skills gap new zealand #physical ai adoption #agentic ai production #ai talent shortage nz #deloitte tech trends 2026 #ai recruitment new zealand #workforce redesign ai #upskilling for ai jobs #ai cybersecurity risk nz #automation and jobs new zealand #technical talent recruitment ai #future of work new zealand