Most small and medium businesses recruit when someone leaves or when they are already short. That is expensive, produces rushed hiring decisions, and is entirely avoidable for the roles you can see coming.
The exercise
It takes an afternoon and most businesses have never done it.
- List every role, and who holds it.
- Mark the ones where departure creates a genuine capability gap rather than an inconvenience.
- For each of those, note: how long recruitment realistically takes, how long to competence, whether the skill is scarce, and any retirement horizon.
- Identify single points of failure — knowledge, relationships or licences held by one person only.
- Map growth requirements — what would you need to add to deliver the work you are pursuing?
The output is a short list of positions that need action before they become urgent.
Why the market context matters
Unemployment reached 5.6 percent in the June 2026 quarter, which makes general roles easier to fill.
It does not help with licensed and qualified roles. New entrants to workplace-based training fell 16 percent in 2025 to 16,780, construction apprentice numbers are more than 30 percent below their 2022 peak, and the trades workforce is ageing.
So the plan should distinguish between roles where you can recruit when needed and roles where you need to be building capability years ahead. Treating them the same is where businesses get caught.
Single points of failure
The uncomfortable question for each critical person: if they left next month, what would we lose and how long would recovery take?
Common answers that should concern you:
- The only person who holds a licence the business needs to operate.
- The only person who understands a system or process.
- The only person with a relationship to a major customer.
- The only person who can quote or price accurately.
Each of those is fixable with deliberate effort — cross-training, documentation, introducing a second relationship contact — and none get fixed without someone deciding to.
Build versus buy
For each gap, the choice is recruiting someone qualified or developing someone you have.
Recruiting is faster and costs more, and in scarce categories may not be possible at all.
Developing is slower, cheaper per person, and produces someone shaped to how you work who tends to stay longer. It requires you to start before you need them.
Supporting an existing employee into a licensed or qualified role — funding the qualification in exchange for a reasonable commitment period — is common and works. Note that any repayment clause must be reasonable and any wage deduction requires specific written consent.
The cost side of the plan
Budget on total employment cost rather than wage: ACC levies, KiwiSaver employer contributions at 3.5 percent rising to 4 percent on 1 April 2028, holiday pay, sick leave, public holidays, training and equipment.
The Employment Leave Act also moves annual and sick leave to hours-based accrual from an employee’s first day, removing the six-month wait for sick leave. Implementation runs to 2028 with the Holidays Act applying until then, but businesses with high turnover or heavy seasonal hiring should model the effect now.
Retention is part of the plan
A workforce plan that ignores why people leave will keep replacing the same roles.
The consistent drivers: no visible progression, work that stopped being interesting, poor management, sustained overload, and inflexibility. Money features and is rarely first.
Note that employees have a statutory right to request flexible working arrangements from their first day, with the employer required to respond within one month and able to refuse only on specified grounds. A business that handles those requests badly is losing people for a reason it controls.
Review it annually
A workforce plan written once and filed is worth little. Reviewing it annually alongside the business plan — what changed, what did we do, what is now urgent — turns it into something that actually prevents crises.
For businesses with a board or advisory board, it belongs on the agenda with the financials rather than being treated as an operational matter.
Stats NZ publishes labour market statistics quarterly, Education Counts publishes training pipeline data under an open licence, and Employment New Zealand publishes free guidance on flexible working and employment agreements.
Figures: Stats NZ labour market statistics, June 2026 quarter; Education Counts workplace-based learner data, 2025. General information only.
