August 1, 2026
The New Zealand labour market has softened. Seasonally adjusted unemployment sat at 5.2 percent in the June 2025 quarter, with 158,000 people unemployed (source: Stats NZ, Unemployment rate at 5.2 percent in the June 2025 quarter, 2025). The broader underutilisation rate, which captures unemployed, underemployed and available-but-not-searching people, reached 12.8 percent, or 403,000 people, in the same quarter (source: Stats NZ, Labour market statistics June 2025 quarter, 2025). Public and private restructuring is arriving into a tighter market, so outplaced people take longer to land and outplacement providers are asked to prove they can still move participants into real vacancies.
Career transition activity is driven by the labour market cycle and the private and public restructures that follow. Stats NZ reports the number of unemployed people at 158,000 and the underutilisation cohort at 403,000 in the June 2025 quarter, both of which frame the pool that outplacement services help move back into work (sources: Stats NZ, Unemployment rate at 5.2 percent in the June 2025 quarter, 2025; Stats NZ, Labour market statistics June 2025 quarter, 2025). Employment New Zealand's redundancy guidance sits alongside as the process backdrop, describing consultation, redeployment consideration and outplacement-style support as expected parts of a fair process (source: Employment New Zealand, Redundancy, 2025). For outplacement providers the constraint is rarely leads, it is fast access to genuine, still-open roles for each cohort.
Spacewalk gives your firm a private, branded job board per client cohort, so consultants spend time coaching participants rather than searching public job boards on their behalf.
Build your branded Spacewalk job board and invite your talent community in minutes
Whether you choose to stream roles automatically, invite employers or post them yourself they are automatically matched to your talent pool
Track applications, placements and community engagement from one reporting dashboard
Unlike generic job boards, Spacewalk gives you a branded, private or public jobs marketplace your talent actually trust, with sourcing, matching and reporting running automatically in the background.
Personal information about outplaced participants is regulated by the Privacy Act 2020 and its 13 Information Privacy Principles, administered by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner, Privacy Act 2020 principles). The Privacy Amendment Act 2025 added IPP 3A from 1 May 2026, which sets a notification obligation for information collected about a person from someone other than the person themselves, relevant when a sponsoring employer passes staff details to an outplacement provider (source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner, Privacy Act 2020 principles).
When your consultants connect participants to hiring employers, the OPC's guidance on privacy in recruitment expects that information stays with people directly involved, that referees are only contacted with the participant's consent and that unsuccessful applications are securely destroyed unless the participant has agreed you can keep them on file (source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner, Privacy in recruitment). Employment New Zealand's redundancy guidance sets the process framework the sponsoring employer must follow (source: Employment New Zealand, Redundancy, 2025). This is context, not legal advice.
This is an illustrative scenario, not a customer story. A New Zealand outplacement firm is engaged for a restructure of about 120 roles at a corporate client. The team stands up a branded board for the cohort during the consultation period and invites affected staff on the day roles are confirmed. An employer-direct feed matches each participant to live vacancies by function and location, and consultants see who is applying and interviewing rather than chasing updates by email. The final client report exports landings by function instead of a summary of workshops delivered.
By tracking each participant end to end. Spacewalk records registrations, applications, interviews and landings by cohort, function and location, so your team can show the sponsoring employer where its former staff went.
From an employer-direct job stream of verified, active roles with direct apply links, matched to each participant's skills, seniority and location. Your team can also post roles or invite employers to post, but the vacancies are not scraped from job boards or aggregators.
Yes. Each engagement gets its own branded board, so affected staff see a professional experience matched to your firm and their former employer's sensitivities.
No. Spacewalk sits alongside your case management as a branded job board and matching layer, so participants have a next step into work while your case notes stay where they are.
No. Right-to-work verification stays with the hiring employer. Spacewalk connects participants to live vacancies and tracks their progress.
The Privacy Act 2020 and its 13 Information Privacy Principles apply, and from 1 May 2026 IPP 3A adds a notification obligation for information collected about a participant from someone other than the participant themselves, which is common when a sponsoring employer passes staff details to an outplacement provider.
Spacewalk supports outplacement providers across English-speaking markets, including Australian outplacement services, UK outplacement providers and career transition services in the United States.
Explore Spacewalk for New Zealand private training establishments, New Zealand adult and community education providers, New Zealand employability programmes and New Zealand university careers services.
