21.9% of Wellington employees work in professional services

Copilot training for the Wellington practice office

A practice can have useful precedents and poor access settings at the same time. Learn Copilot through everyday office work, with permission checks and professional review built into the exercise.

Enquire Where Copilot helps

Employees in professional services: 61,784Wellington, February 2025
Share of Wellington employees: 21.9%2 of 16 regions
Share across New Zealand: 18.4%all regions, February 2025
Location quotient: 1.19×more concentrated than nationally

Professional services in Wellington

Wellington's capital economy supports associated professional work, and the regional development plan records pressure from changes in government expenditure.¹ For a generic advisory practice, this makes accurate engagement records and careful reporting sensible starting tasks. Finance, property and IT offices can adapt the same training approach to their own approved document process.

We start with the work staff already perform in Microsoft 365: reading client email, drafting a report, reviewing a meeting and checking a workbook. Copilot's office capabilities and work-data grounding depend on the enabled experience.⁵ TheColab can deliver in your Wellington region office or remotely, with a partner and a systems owner involved in the pilot.

Paid employees in professional services went from 64,839 in February 2020 to 61,784 in February 2025 (−4.7%).

Share of paid employees in professional services, by region

Share of employees in professional services by region, Wellington highlighted
Region	Share	NZ	×
Auckland	24.1%	18.4%	1.3×
Wellington (this page)	21.9%	18.4%	1.2×
Canterbury	17.4%	18.4%	0.9×
Nelson	15.5%	18.4%	0.8×
Bay of Plenty	14.9%	18.4%	0.8×
Hawke's Bay	14.0%	18.4%	0.8×
Waikato	13.9%	18.4%	0.8×
Otago	13.6%	18.4%	0.7×
Taranaki	12.5%	18.4%	0.7×
Tasman	11.3%	18.4%	0.6×
Gisborne	11.0%	18.4%	0.6×
Marlborough	10.6%	18.4%	0.6×
Manawatū-Whanganui	9.9%	18.4%	0.5×
Northland	9.8%	18.4%	0.5×
Southland	8.8%	18.4%	0.5×
West Coast	7.8%	18.4%	0.4×

Paid employees at business locations in the region, February 2025. The tick marks the national share. × is the regional share divided by the national share.

Source: Stats NZ, Business Demography Statistics, February 2020 and 2025.

What professional services covers in Wellington

Divisions in professional services, Wellington
Division	Employees	Share	NZ	×
Media and telecoms	5,500	2.0%	1.3%	1.5×
Finance and insurance	11,516	4.1%	2.8%	1.5×
Property and rental	2,819	1.0%	1.5%	0.7×
Professional services	31,108	11.0%	8.3%	1.3×
Admin and support services	10,841	3.9%	4.6%	0.8×

ANZSIC06 divisions in this industry group: share of the region's paid employees, against New Zealand.

Source: Stats NZ, Business Demography Statistics, February 2020 and 2025.

Local context

Creative HQ's Wellington community includes financial technology names such as Hnry and Sharesies.² The region's professional audience is therefore broader than a legal or consulting practice alone. These employers provide context for local knowledge work; the exercises below are generic examples that your firm can review against its own standards.²

Organisations are named for local context only. No relationship with them is implied.

Towns in Wellington

Each town page has its own figures and local brief.

Or see Microsoft Copilot training across Wellington.

Where Copilot helps professional services teams

Draft a report from approved material
In Word, reference an authorised project brief and a clean report structure. Copilot supports document drafting within the Microsoft application experience.⁵ Ask for a section that distinguishes evidence from proposed interpretation. A reviewer checks quoted figures and commitments before the report enters a client file. Use a fabricated engagement while the team learns the checking process.
- Associate or consultant
- Copilot in Word
Catch a change in client instructions
Use Outlook to summarise a made-up email exchange with changing deliverables. The documented Copilot experience includes email assistance.⁵ Request the latest confirmed request, earlier alternatives and outstanding questions. The engagement manager reads the original thread and checks who authorised each change, then drafts a reply that seeks clarification where the scope remains unsettled.
- Client relationship manager
- Copilot in Outlook
Separate meeting decisions from suggestions
Practise with a Teams meeting about a fictional property review. Copilot can generate meeting summaries and action items.⁵ Ask it to identify decisions, proposed options and follow-up owners. Have the chair correct the recap before it is circulated. This teaches staff to recognise when a generated summary has treated a discussion point as agreed advice.
- Engagement chair
- Copilot in Teams
Check a practice performance workbook
Give Excel a synthetic project table with status, effort and invoice categories. Use Copilot to propose a grouped view and explain the formulas it uses. Spreadsheet assistance is documented by Microsoft.⁵ Reconcile the result with the unmodified table, then investigate uncoded rows. The practice manager decides whether the chart describes operational performance or simply a data-quality issue.
- Practice operations lead
- Copilot in Excel

Pilot a report on an isolated engagement

Prepare a fabricated matter folder and confirm the pilot users' access.
Draft a Word report from its brief and compare the output with the references.
Ask a partner to check the claims, assumptions and proposed client commitments.
Document the corrections and the folder rules before adding another exercise.

Courses

1Introductory
Microsoft Copilot foundations
A first hands-on session on Copilot Chat and Copilot in Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
2Organisation
Copilot rollout and readiness
Prepare the tenant, choose a pilot, and measure whether people use Copilot well.

Professional services in other regions

Other industries in Wellington

See Microsoft Copilot for professional services, finance and property across New Zealand, or all training in Wellington.

Professional services in Wellington: questions

Should the systems administrator attend?

Include someone who understands SharePoint permissions and staff access to engagement files. Copilot follows existing access scope.⁵ The pilot is easier to assess when the team can explain exactly which references each participant can open.

Can we add an internal guidance agent later?

Copilot Studio supports agents over chosen knowledge sources and tools.⁶ Start with approved office guidance, define the owner and test questions beyond its scope before deciding whether staff should use the prototype.

Is this only useful for large firms?

A small office can practise with a report structure and invented client correspondence. Choose a recurring job with an obvious reviewer, then establish a reliable process before expanding the number of documents or staff involved.

How do we assess the first report?

Check every factual statement against the brief and supporting files. Record unsupported claims and overlooked qualifications. A useful draft preserves uncertainty and gives the partner enough evidence to make the professional judgement.

Train your professional services team in Wellington

ScopeHeadcount, sites, Microsoft 365 plan and licences, and the teams you want to start with.
PlanWe propose a course, a pilot group and a format, and agree the files and meetings to use.
TrainOn-site or over Teams, in Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams, with your own work.

In person
Remote
Half-day workshop
Full-day workshop
Team rollout

Independent training by TheColab. Not affiliated with Microsoft.

Enquire

Tell us about your team in Wellington. We reply by email with a suggested course and format.

Sources

Written 6 October 2026. Employment figures come from Stats NZ Business Demography Statistics.

1. Wellington Regional Economic Development Plan: 2024 refresh, WellingtonNZ / Greater Wellington (accessed 2026-10-06)
2. Wellington tech sector, Creative HQ (accessed 2026-10-06)
3. Generative AI guidance for lawyers, New Zealand Law Society (accessed 2026-10-06)
4. Lawyers are responsible for court documents prepared using Generative AI, New Zealand Law Society (accessed 2026-10-06)
5. Microsoft Copilot overview, Microsoft (accessed 2026-10-06)
6. Microsoft Copilot Studio overview, Microsoft (accessed 2026-10-06)