The Skills Shortage in ANZ Isn’t Temporary – It’s Structural. Here’s What Leaders Are Missing

For many business leaders in Australia and New Zealand, the skills shortage still sounds like a short-term hiring problem. Once the market settles, the thinking goes, access to talent will improve.

The data suggests otherwise.

Jobs and Skills Australia shows that 29% of occupations were still in shortage in 2025, down from 36% in 2023, but far from resolved. Nearly half of all trade roles and two in five professional occupations remain affected, particularly in health, education, and construction. These aren’t edge cases. They’re roles that directly affect service delivery, project timelines, and growth.

What Makes This Structural, Not Cyclical

A structural shortage runs deeper than competition for candidates. It’s also about whether enough people with the right skills exist in the first place.

Australia’s Manufacturing Workforce Plan 2024 projects the sector will need around 120,000 additional workers by 2033, while simultaneously facing an ageing workforce, apprentice pipeline gaps, and rapidly shifting skill requirements.

Engineering New Zealand’s Long-term Skills Shortage Action Plan 2025 puts the country’s annual shortfall at between 1,500 and 2,300 engineers.

When demand keeps rising while pipeline constraints stay in place, the problem stops looking temporary. It starts looking like the new baseline.

Better Local Recruitment Isn’t Enough on its Own

Many businesses are still responding to this as a recruitment execution problem: post the role faster, offer more, push harder in the same market. That can help the margins, but it doesn’t change the size of the available talent pool.

Global research confirms the shift is already underway. A report by Everest Group supported by Emapta, based on a survey of more than 100 C-suite and senior executives, found that 78% of enterprises now see outsourcing as central to workforce transformation, not just operational support. Nearly 60% outsource three or more business functions, expanding well beyond IT into data and analytics, finance, sales, and strategy.

If the shortage is structural, the question isn’t only how to hire better. It’s how to build and maintain capability when local supply is genuinely constrained. That means looking at where talent can come from, not just how quickly it can be found.

How Some Australia and New Zealand Businesses are Getting Ahead of it

HLB Mann Judd, a multi-office advisory firm operating across Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, saw this coming before most. Back in 2014, the firm launched an internal initiative called the Future People Project to get ahead of the talent pressures they anticipated on the horizon.

What they found was a familiar combination: a tightening local recruitment pool, rising salary pressure from commercial firms, and a hiring model that couldn’t deliver the speed or scale the business needed. Rather than wait for the impact to hit, former Business Advisory Partner John Raffaele led a rigorous evaluation of offshore options, including a three-day tour of 14 BPO providers in Manila.

“Emapta stood out immediately. When I met with Tim Vorbach, the company’s CEO, his transparency and client-first thinking aligned perfectly with HLB’s values.”

— John Raffaele, Former Business Advisory Partner, HLB Mann Judd

The result was a 30-page business case that secured full partnership support. HLB Mann Judd began with a single division, using detailed process maps and 90-day onboarding cycles to roll offshore support across the entire firm. Within 18 months, all onshore divisions had dedicated offshore teams.

The outcomes were measurable – a utilisation rate above 75%, client turnaround times improved by 20%, an NPS score above 80, and less than 5% attrition since 2023. Critically, none of this came at the cost of quality or oversight. It came from building a model that supported both.

The approach gained traction beyond HLB Mann Judd itself. Other firms in the HLB network, some of which had previously struggled with direct offshoring attempts, adopted the same model after seeing the results. John Raffaele has since joined Emapta as Global Head of Finance and Accounting Operations, a full-circle outcome that reflects how deeply the model delivered.

From proven model to scalable growth

More Telecom, a Melbourne-based telecommunications provider, faced a similar challenge as it scaled rapidly in a competitive market. Starting with just seven offshore staff through Emapta, the company expanded to a team of 365 across customer service, IT development, QA testing, UI/UX design, multimedia, and data analytics. The offshore model meant one Australian hire equated to hiring up to two employees offshore, freeing the business to reinvest in capability rather than overhead.

“With Emapta, we didn’t just find an outsourcing provider. We found a strategic partner that empowered our growth while maintaining quality and cost efficiency.”

— Christine Briñas, Operations Manager in Manila, More Telecom

Why the dedicated staffing model is different

Most conversations about outsourcing still conjure images of cost-cutting and lost control. The model that is gaining traction among leading enterprises looks quite different.

According to the Everest Group research, 49% of enterprises are already using the dedicated staffing model, with a further 35% planning to adopt it in the next 12 to 18 months. The reason is straightforward: dedicated staffing offers something most outsourcing models do not, a genuine balance between control and scalability.

Emapta’s approach is built around this model. Here is what sets it apart from traditional outsourcing:

• Dedicated teams, not traditional outsourcing: Exclusive, highly skilled teams that work only for you, fully embedded in your tools, workflows, and culture, with you retaining full control and visibility.
• Modern workforce design, not labour arbitrage: Custom-built global teams across finance, data, AI, engineering, supply chain, and operations, designed to scale with flexibility and intent, not just to reduce costs.
• Radical pricing transparency: A clear breakdown of individual salaries and service costs, with no salary markups and no hidden margins. Savings come from smarter design, not opacity.
• Flexibility without lock-ins: No long-term contracts, no minimum hires. You get the freedom to scale, reshape, or pivot as your business evolves.
• Teams built for an AI-driven future: Access to pre-vetted, AI-ready talent through Emapta’s Talent Marketplace, supported by dedicated client success partners so teams can deliver impact from day one.

What Resilient Workforce Strategy Looks Like Now

The companies adapting best to the talent environment aren’t waiting for conditions to normalise. They’re building more than one way to access skilled capability, and they’re doing it with the same focus on quality, continuity, and control they’d apply to any critical business function.

The businesses building durable advantages right now are not waiting for the perfect hire or the right market conditions. They are designing workforces with global talent at the centre, AI-enabled capability embedded throughout, and the flexibility to scale without being locked in.

Emapta’s dedicated global talent model gives businesses a proven, transparent, and flexible way to access high-performance teams at the pace and scale their growth demands. No lock-ins, no markups, no compromises on quality.

For leaders still feeling the strain of ongoing shortages, the more useful question isn’t how to hire faster. It’s whether the business has a workforce model built for the environment it’s actually operating in.