AI and the future of work: inside Hero Exchange in Tauranga and Hamilton

Hero Exchange has been on the New Zealand highways in the last month, taking our in-person events for business owners, HR leaders and People and Culture professionals to Tauranga and Hamilton. 

We’re taking our Hero Exchange events across the country as part of our New Zealand roadshow. New Zealand businesses are working through new and pressing challenges when it comes to AI, hiring and payroll, and the answers that work in a market ten times our size don’t always translate. 

Someone running a team in the Bay of Plenty or the Waikato shouldn’t have to book a flight to compare notes with like-minded people solving the same problems. So we brought the panel, the demos and the team to them.

Both events drew the kind of crowd that asks the important questions. Both kept circling back to the same one: how can AI help my business? And is it important?

Here’s a recap of what happened…

Tauranga: a packed room and a lot of good questions

The Hero Exchange in Tauranga brought local businesses together for a session on the future of work and the practical side of AI. We opened at Trinity Wharf on 9 June, with Janine Hellyer, Director at BDO Tauranga, facilitating.

On the panel was Zach Ferris, NZ Sales Manager at Employment Hero; Karly Boast, Founder and Managing Director at Bold&Co; Grant Johnson, Founder and CEO at Rocketspark.

Our expert panel set the scene but our attendees soon joined the discussion. Ideas came in thick and fast about how exactly AI can save businesses critical time when it comes to employment.

What stood out was how willing people were to compare notes. Business owners swapped what they’d tried, while HR leads talked about the opportunities to streamline costly admin. And payroll specialists asked the sharp, specific questions only payroll specialists ask.

The conversations didn’t stop when the formal programme did. Attendees stayed on to talk with each other and with the Employment Hero team, and plenty of those chats carried on well after the event.

Hamilton: digging into the specifics

Two days later we were at the FMG Stadium Waikato in Hamilton. Ian Black, Director at Direct Advisory, and Neil Webster, our NZ General Manager, joined Bold&Co’s Karly Boast and Rocketspark’s Grant Johnson, who returned to be on the panel. Turnout beat what we’d planned for — always a nice problem to have.

The agenda covered AI, HR, payroll and the future of work, but the real value sat in the detail. People wanted specifics: how automation changes a pay run, what good onboarding looks like when your team is growing faster than your systems and where human judgement still has to lead.

For example, Grant described using Claude to pressure-test strategy before committing to it, and a research agent his team built to brief salespeople before calls. Ian now builds detailed client profiles ahead of new business meetings. The principle underneath both: AI makes the recommendation, a person makes the decision.

The Employment Hero team also ran demos onsite for businesses who wanted to see how our platform could help. They also had some genuinely exciting conversations with potential partners for the future.

AI as a growth tool, not a takeover

The thread running through both panels was that AI isn’t being used to replace people. It’s being used to take the friction out, to lift the speed and quality of what a team can get done, without adding headcount to do it.

The flip side of that is the cost of standing still, and this is where the conversation got uncomfortable in a useful way. Every business carries a manual tax: double data entry, chasing information, manual reconciliation and the hours that disappear into work nobody remembers doing. It doesn’t show up on a balance sheet, which is exactly why it goes unexamined for so long.

Karly’s challenge to the room was that leaders keep treating this as a technology question when it’s a readiness question. The tool matters far less than what it frees your people up to do, and whether the business is actually built to use that time well.

Which reframes the risk. The worry in most rooms is picking the wrong tool. The bigger risk is being too slow to start.

That’s the same principle behind our Employment Operating System, so it was good to hear it echoed back to us by the people living it. Technology is here to support while people stay front and centre.

Why in-person still matters

We could have run these sessions as webinars. However, there’s something particularly important about our Hero Exchange events.

You don’t get a hallway conversation over a video call and you don’t overhear the answer to the question you hadn’t thought of. Peer learning happens fastest when people can turn to the person next to them and say “how did you handle that?”

At a Hero Exchange, the audience is also genuinely mixed. Founders, HR and people leaders, payroll and finance managers, long-time Employment Hero customers and businesses who’d never met us before. Everyone brings something different to the table.

Credit where it’s due, though. The insight in those rooms came from our attendees. Our role is to bring the right people together, create space for meaningful conversations and spark the discussions that everyone has on their mind.

What’s next for Hero Exchange in New Zealand

The Tauranga and Hamilton events closed out this quarter but they’re not the end of the road. We’re already planning the next round of Hero Exchange events across New Zealand, with more cities, more panels and more of the conversations that made these two work.

If you missed us this time, come along to the next one. Bring your questions, bring the problem you haven’t cracked yet and bring a colleague who’d get something out of it too.

Based in Auckland or Christchurch? We’re coming to you next. Find out more and sign up to attend. 

Other event recaps: 

Employment Hero hosting leader roundtables at New Zealand Tech Week 

HR & People and Culture Leaders lunch with New Zealand’s startup founders