Recruitment Challenges in the Aged Care Sector

The Aged Care Sector is experiencing upwards of 30% staff turnover each year, impacting the care Australia’s elderly receive.

Aged Care is vital to the wellbeing of Australian’s as they age. With an ageing population, demand for Aged Care services is increasing, making it more important than ever to have a qualified and reliable workforce prioritising quality of care.

With this responsibility, the Aged Care Sector faces significant challenges related to the recruitment and retention of staff.

The top three challenges faced by the aged care sector: 

1. Staffing Shortages
   With 370,000 Australians employed in the aged care sector, representing 2.5% of the national workforce, staffing is a critical component of delivering quality care. However, skilled workers are increasingly leaving the workforce due to rising workloads, long hours and low wages. These changing workforce trends make recruiting and retaining staff more challenging than ever.
2. Population Demographics
   As Australia’s population ages, the demand for Aged Care Services is surging. By 2066, projections indicate that just over 4.5 million people will be aged 65-74, with 1 in 5 people aged 85 and over. The Aged Care sector must prepare for this future demand, ensuring it is equipped to meet the needs of this increasingly ageing population.
3. Regulatory and Policy Pressures
   The Aged Care Sector is among Australia’s most regulated industries, and the requirements from government continue to grow after the Royal Commission findings were handed down, placing further administrative strain on Aged Care providers. To keep up with an expanding list of regulatory requirements, Aged Care providers must adopt technology as a tool to enhance efficiency and streamline operations, to ensure they can concentrate on their core service delivery.

These challenges contribute to Aged Care Organisations facing the ongoing struggle to find qualified candidates and hire quickly.

The risks associated with hiring under-qualified or unsuitable staff go far beyond immediate implications. In addition to compromised care quality, organisations could face reputational damage, legal risks, loss of funding, financial costs & risk of fines.

How important is RISK to you?

The elderly population report their greatest fear is losing their independence.  Another key fear they describe is being vulnerable to abuse in a community or institutional setting.  Not only are good practices required to meet legal and societal expectations, strong internal practices in aged care organisations provide a clear signal to clients that quality care is a top priority and allay fears.

To reduce these associated risks, there is a need for rigorous credential screening to ensure the suitability of workers as they enter the workforce and during tenure.

As per the Department of Health, the Aged Care workforce has specific screening requirements to ensure suitability for work in an aged care setting. These screening requirements are dependent on an individual’s role and the aged care provider they work for, particularly if they are NDIS registered.

Aged Care workers may have a working with vulnerable People/Children Check, a NDIS card, a Visa Entitlement, an AHPRA registration and more.

The government has also announced the introduction of an Aged Care Worker Screening Check, anticipated after July 2025. This new credential  will assist in delivering a national approach that better protect Australia’s elderly.

But what about now?

Aged Care Providers are required to screen their employee credentials to meet their compliance obligations. With these screening obligations comes a significant administrative burden and ongoing challenge for providers.

Technology is changing the recruitment landscape and can help providers meet these obligations while also reducing the associated administrative burden.

Specialised tools and software systems are helping organisations to save cost and improve efficiency in the HR space.

Oho is THE tool for credential screening in the Aged Care sector.

A one-stop-solution for managing, verifying, notifying and updating employee, volunteer and contractor credentials on recruitment and during tenure.

Oho provides a practical solution for credential screening on recruitment and during tenure that helps aged care providers meet compliance obligations, reduce their administration burden, hire quickly by streamlining the credential screening process, and complete ongoing compliance obligations by ‘always on’ screening for all employee, contractor and volunteer credentials.

• Oho provides ‘always on’ verification and visibility across all accreditation types, all workers and all sites.
• Oho integrates with HRIS and ATS systems to minimse change management, streamline processes and avoid double handling of data.
• Oho delivers increased speed during compliance checks to dramatically improve speed to contract.
• Oho reduces workload (with a minimum 2x return on investment) reducing admin work to dealing with exceptions only .
• Oho handles all the important credentials for the Aged Care sector at the click of a button..

Oho now protects over 3.1 million Australians and has completed more than 8 million verifications. Oho has detected over 131 red flags  in 119 organisations and assisted our clients to rectify thousands of compliance irregularities.

For more information about continuous credential verification with Oho:

Link: https://weareoho.com/

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