Humankind expands Christchurch presence as demand grows for senior leadership talent

Canterbury has emerged as New Zealand's strongest-performing regional economy, topping ASB's Regional Economic Scoreboard for three quarters of 2025, and outperforming the rest of the country across employment, retail spending, housing activity and population growth. New businesses are being established in the region at twice the national rate.

But growth at that pace comes with a real pressure point: the senior talent needed to support it isn't keeping up. According to Robert Walters' 2026 Salary Guide, Canterbury leads all New Zealand regions in hiring intent, with 78% of Canterbury businesses planning to recruit in 2026, ahead of Auckland (75%) and Wellington (72%). And over half of New Zealand employers nationally (58%) report that recruitment processes are longer or more difficult than before, driven by skills shortages, high salary expectations and unsuitable applications.

In other words: ambitious companies are growing fast, and finding the right people to grow with them is getting harder.

A new kind of people leadership for Canterbury's growth companies

In response to this, we have expanded our Christchurch presence, hiring two new associates, Annabel Wheelans and Abbie Blacktopp, to work directly alongside Canterbury founders and executive teams.

"The Christchurch market is full of ambitious companies doing the hard work of scaling, often before they're ready or able to bring in a full-time senior people leader," said CEO Kalyn Ponti.

That's exactly the problem Humankind's fractional Head of People & Culture model is designed to solve. Rather than committing to a full-time hire before the business is ready, companies gain access to experienced people leadership on a fractional basis, working alongside their teams on recruitment, organisational design, leadership development, employment relations and employee experience.

"Access to experienced people leadership earlier in a company's growth journey helps founders make better hiring decisions, build strong organisational foundations and keep pace with growth."

When people and capital strategy aren't aligned, leaders feel it immediately

To mark the expansion, Humankind is hosting an evening panel event on 30 April in Christchurch, in partnership with BNZ and Oxygen Advisors (virtual CFOs). The event will bring together Canterbury founders and business leaders to discuss how companies make critical people and capital decisions as they scale.

"As businesses grow, the pressure points show up fast: structure, clarity, decision rights, hiring and performance expectations. When people and financial strategy aren't aligned, leaders feel it immediately. This conversation is about how founders navigate those decisions as their organisations scale well."

It's a conversation that's long overdue. For many Canterbury founders, the challenge isn't knowing that people strategy matters. It's knowing when and how to invest in it, and what that looks like at different stages of growth.

Humankind has supported more than 1,300 organisations across New Zealand to build high-performing teams. The company is also a founding contributor to the global Employee Experience Manifesto, which outlines the principles of Employee Experience (EX) and EX Design, and champions work environments that unlock talent and elevate organisational performance.

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