How Investing in Workforce Planning, Recruitment, and Rostering & Scheduling Can Transform Aged Care
As the aged care sector across Australia and New Zealand grapples with rising demand, evolving regulations, and a shift towards home care services, aged care providers are increasingly recognising the need to optimise their workforce planning, recruitment, and rostering & scheduling capabilities. Operational excellence in these areas can significantly improve service reliability, reduce costs, and ultimately enhance the quality of care delivered to clients.
In this article, we will explore how process and technology redesign in workforce management can drive significant improvements. We will also examine how Trace Consultants, through leveraging best practices in demand and supply balancing from other industries such as retail, health, pharmaceutical, aviation, defence, F&B, and hospitality, can offer aged care providers the tools and strategies needed to achieve the “right person, right place, right time, right skill, and right cost” approach to care delivery. Additionally, we’ll delve into how the growing complexity of home care scheduling, driven by government funding reforms, can be effectively managed through advanced solutions.
The Growing Need for Workforce Optimisation in Aged Care
Aged care providers are currently navigating through an array of challenges—rising expectations from clients, government regulations, and an increasingly competitive talent market. The focus has shifted towards maintaining a high standard of care while managing costs. To succeed, aged care providers must invest in modern workforce management practices.
The workforce in aged care is inherently dynamic, requiring a balance between an ever-changing roster of clients and a complex mix of full-time, part-time, and contingent workers. With the added complexity of delivering care in different settings—whether in facilities or in the home—the challenges of recruitment, scheduling, and rostering have grown exponentially.
The right investment in workforce planning and rostering not only helps in managing resources more effectively but also plays a critical role in improving service delivery, client satisfaction, and compliance with governmental regulations.
The Critical Role of Process and Technology Redesign
Workforce Planning
Workforce planning is a cornerstone of operational excellence in aged care. It involves forecasting future workforce needs based on anticipated demand for services, and aligning staffing levels accordingly. For aged care providers, this includes understanding the volume and complexity of care required at different times and locations.
Modern workforce planning utilises data-driven insights to create accurate demand forecasts. By integrating real-time data on client needs, care plans, and geographical location, providers can build a more agile workforce strategy. This ensures that the right mix of staff, with the appropriate skill sets, is available at the right time.
Process redesign plays a pivotal role in improving workforce planning. By streamlining workflows, eliminating redundancies, and automating routine tasks, providers can free up resources to focus on more strategic initiatives. When combined with the right technology, such as advanced planning systems and AI-driven analytics, workforce planning can become a highly efficient and strategic function.
Recruitment and Retention
Recruitment and retention remain critical challenges in aged care, especially with the growing demand for skilled workers. Investing in a more efficient and targeted recruitment process can help providers source the right talent more effectively. Implementing technology-driven recruitment solutions—such as applicant tracking systems (ATS), video interviews, and online assessments—can reduce hiring time and ensure a better fit between candidates and roles.
Retention is equally important, and providers must create a working environment that supports long-term staff engagement. This involves offering career development opportunities, flexibility, and ensuring staff are rostered in a way that reduces burnout and maximises job satisfaction.
Rostering and Scheduling
Rostering and scheduling are at the heart of workforce optimisation. Ensuring that the right staff member is assigned to the right client, at the right time, and in the right location, requires a sophisticated approach. Traditionally, rostering in aged care has been reactive, driven by last-minute shifts and inconsistent scheduling practices.
Investing in intelligent rostering systems can transform this process. These systems analyse a range of variables, including staff availability, client needs, and geographical location, to create optimised schedules that maximise efficiency while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Automation of these processes can also reduce the administrative burden, freeing up managerial resources to focus on other critical areas.
In addition to optimised rostering, providers must also consider the impact of scheduling on the workforce. Over-reliance on agency staff, last-minute changes, or poorly planned shifts can result in increased costs, staff dissatisfaction, and, ultimately, reduced quality of care. By leveraging technology that allows for predictive scheduling and advanced rostering practices, aged care providers can ensure smoother operations, greater employee satisfaction, and reduced reliance on costly agency staff.
How Trace Consultants Can Drive Operational Excellence in Aged Care
Trace Consultants is uniquely positioned to assist aged care providers in transforming their workforce management practices. Drawing on best practices from industries such as retail, health, pharmaceutical, aviation, defence, food & beverage, and hospitality, Trace Consultants applies innovative demand and supply balancing strategies to the aged care context.
Demand and Supply Balancing
In industries such as retail or aviation, managing the balance between supply and demand is crucial for operational efficiency. The same principle applies to workforce management in aged care. By optimising the balance between staff availability and client needs, aged care providers can reduce overstaffing, avoid gaps in care, and drive down operational costs.
Trace Consultants employs sophisticated demand forecasting techniques, combining historical data, real-time client information, and predictive analytics. This enables aged care providers to better predict the volume and complexity of care required on any given day, ensuring that staffing levels are always aligned with demand.
Right Person, Right Place, Right Time, Right Skill, Right Cost
One of the key challenges in aged care workforce management is ensuring the right person is available in the right place, at the right time, with the right skill set, and at the right cost. This is especially critical in home care settings, where factors like geographical location and staff availability play a significant role.
Trace Consultants helps aged care providers optimise their workforce to achieve this delicate balance. By redesigning processes and implementing advanced scheduling systems, providers can improve both the quality of care and operational efficiency. This results in fewer scheduling conflicts, reduced travel time for staff, and lower reliance on high-cost agency workers.
Managing the Complexity of Home Care Services
With the increasing emphasis from governments in Australia and New Zealand on funding home care services, aged care providers are facing a new layer of complexity in scheduling and rostering. Managing home care requires not only finding the right staff for each client but also ensuring that schedules are optimised for travel time, availability, and cost efficiency.
Route Optimisation and Scheduling
Scheduling in home care must consider geographic location, traffic conditions, and time spent with clients. This makes route optimisation a critical aspect of workforce management. By integrating route optimisation tools into their rostering systems, aged care providers can reduce travel time, improve staff utilisation, and ensure timely care delivery to clients.
Trace Consultants leverages advanced technologies and practices from the transport and logistics sector to address these challenges. By applying the same route optimisation techniques used in industries like logistics and F&B distribution, aged care providers can significantly improve scheduling efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance the reliability of care delivery.
Managing Agency Use
As aged care providers expand their home care services, they often rely on agency staff to meet fluctuating demands. However, over-reliance on agency staff can drive up costs and introduce variability into care delivery. By implementing advanced workforce planning tools and predictive scheduling systems, Trace Consultants helps providers reduce their reliance on agency workers, ensuring that a larger portion of the workforce is permanent or part-time staff.
The aged care sector in Australia and New Zealand is undergoing rapid transformation, and workforce management is at the centre of this change. By investing in improved workforce planning, recruitment, and rostering & scheduling capabilities, aged care providers can not only meet regulatory requirements but also drive significant improvements in service reliability and operational cost efficiency.
Through process redesign and the application of advanced technologies, aged care providers can achieve the right balance of staff across different settings, ensuring that clients receive the highest quality of care. Trace Consultants, with its extensive experience in applying demand and supply balancing best practices from other industries, is uniquely positioned to assist aged care providers in achieving these outcomes.
As aged care providers look to the future, the ability to effectively manage their workforce will be a critical factor in their success. The investment in workforce management processes and technologies today will lay the foundation for a more efficient, reliable, and client-centred aged care system tomorrow.
