‘We’re actually facing a capability crisis that’s moving really fast and faster than traditional hiring can solve’
With many employers in New Zealand and Australia facing labour shortages, turning to independent professionals could be a significant step for companies to bridge critical capability gaps and maintain their competitive edge, according to an expert.
This is particularly true amid the changes that artificial intelligence (AI) is bringing to the business landscape. According to the World Economic Forum, broadening digital access is expected to be the most transformative trend among companies, with 60% of employers expecting it to transform their business by 2030.
Advancements in technologies—particularly AI and information processing (86%), robotics and automation (58%), and energy generation, storage and distribution (41%)—are also expected to be transformative.
However, skill gaps are categorically considered the biggest barrier to business transformation by Future of Jobs Survey respondents, with 63% of employers identifying them as a major barrier over the 2025–2030 period.
On average, workers can expect that two-fifths (39%) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025–2030 period.
“We’re not just facing a skills shortage,” Sara Kahlau, ANZ Lead at Outsized, tells Human Resources Director NZ. “I think that we’re actually facing a capability crisis that’s moving really fast and faster than traditional hiring can solve.”
Nearly half of hiring leaders across NZ are looking for new skills from candidates in the wake of these changes, according to a previous report. And NZ’s unemployment rate rose to 5.3% in the September 2025 quarter, hitting its highest level since 2016.
How can independent professionals help employers?
But it’s not just the volume of missing talent that keeps Kahlau up at night.
“It’s actually the speed at which we’re seeing capabilities changing,” she says. With the half-life of technical skills now just 18 to 24 months, by the time a new hire is onboarded and productive, “the cutting-edge knowledge that you’ve hired them for is already depreciating.”
In this situation, independent professionals are uniquely positioned to help organisations, Kahlau claims.
“They’re not just a staffing solution. They’re not just plugging gaps. They’re actually a strategic capability lever that really lets businesses deploy expertise that they didn’t have access to—potentially and definitely—at the speed of big business change.”
Kahlau’s team at Outsized manages a network of nearly 3,000 pre-vetted experts across Australia and NZ who can be deployed in two to five days. “That’s just signifying the speed at which you can actually deploy independent professionals,” she notes.
More than three in four businesses across NZ are hiring selectively amid moderate confidence across the country, according to a previous report.
The importance of workforce agility
With the way things are going, Kahlau recognises the importance of internal skills development programmes to try to keep up with the changing demand for skills.
“Because things are moving so incredibly fast and we don't want to throw out everything we know around training and development,” she says.
However, Kahlau advises HR professionals to adopt a holistic workforce strategy. “It’s about having visibility of the capability required and then thinking about the deployment speed that’s really needed,” she says. “Do we have time to allow for onboarding and training and developing of that individual or that talent, or do we actually need to move at speed and we don’t know if we’re going to need it longer term? Then being quite deliberate about accessing that in a different way such as using external experts.”
She highlights the importance of workforce agility amid the current environment.
“Agility these days is not just about flexibility anymore,” Kahlau says. “It’s actually about having the right skill, the right time and being able to pivot really fast and ideally faster than competition.”
Ultimately, the smartest organisations are those that blend internal development with on-demand expertise. “You cannot train your way out of a capability gap because it’s moving so incredibly fast,” Kahlau cautions. “But you can also not outsource your way to institutional knowledge.”
